And I lift my sword.
He is my power. He is my strength and my shield, my will to fight. He pulls me from the darkness of my mind; he channels it and changes it, guiding me to him.
And I follow.
I fight my way through the people who raised me. I push my way through his own people, turning them around, urging them to keep going. All is not lost. All can never be lost, not while Ronan lives.
Not while we live. Because I can feel him through whatever it is that binds us together, and I can see the awe and wonder in his eyes as he fights his way back to me. I can see myself through his eyes.
Yes, he is a force of nature. That can’t be denied.
But so am I.
The gates open behind me, and our own cavalry rushes in. The charge wasn’t planned—Adria’s own charge was a surprise—but we must have been ready for it. The clash of the riders turns the tide. The cohorts regroup. The lines reform. We’re back in formation, and we’re charging forward.
And I’m back at Ronan’s side. He crushes his shield into the ground, freeing his hand to reach for my waist, healing a gashthere I can’t feel. He brushes my neck with his hand, and then he lifts his shield once more.
“To victory!” he yells, and my heart swells as we take up the cry.
“To victory! To victory!”
In minutes, the battle is won. Their lines break, their people flee. Adria shouts the retreat from somewhere far, far away.
I raise my eyes over my shield and watch her go, watch the blonde streak of her until it vanishes into the distance, a single point of light lost among the sands.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We’re back in the palace before it hits me. The weight of what just happened.
It doesn’t come immediately. My thoughts blur through the moments that follow. They blur through the triumphant march down the streets of Faros, through the ringing of the temple bells and the singing of the people, through the speech that Ronan gives on the palace steps, declaring victory in battle but reminding the city that the war is far from over.
They coalesce into a dull hum as we enter the palace, as our armor is taken from us, as we walk down the stairs to the baths, my movements as automatic as they were in the fight.
Only when we’re alone there in the cave, the torchlights flickering in the quiet darkness, do I really feel it. The gravity of it all, the battle and the consequences and the fact that we’re still alive, still here, still breathing.
I feel the terror and the grief and the sick regret, feel the bodies fall to the ground beside me, behind me, in front of me. Some at my hands, at the end of my blade, under the cover of myshadow. I collapse into sobs, my hands reaching for the ground. I feel dirty and tainted and so, so alone.
And then Ronan’s hands are pulling me to him. He’s taking me into his arms and holding me tight. He’s brushing the tears from my eyes and pressing soft kisses to my head, to my hair.
He holds me like that, my body small against him. He says nothing, but he touches me with his light, stroking my back and letting it soothe me, letting it comfort me until I relax against him.
Then he guides me into the bath and washes the blood from my body. My own blood, the blood of others. He washes the sweat from my hair, the dirt from under my nails.
And then, when I am finally clean, he joins me in the bath, kissing me softly. “This is what I wanted to protect you from.”
“Does it get easier?” I ask. I know there’s more of this to come.
He sighs, looking over his shoulder at the cave walls. When he answers, his voice is miles away. “No. But you get stronger. Or harder, maybe. I don’t know if it’s a good thing. I don’t think we were meant to go out there and do what we did today without feeling it, no matter how just the cause may be.”
He leans forward and pulls me to him, cradling me against him. “I would do anything to keep you from it. I would do anything so that you never have to feel this way again.”
There’s only one thing that can make that possible. “We have to kill her, Ronan,” I say, my voice small. “I wanted to kill her in the throne room for what she did to you, but now, after this? I don’t just want to kill her. Ineedto kill her. There’s no other way to stop her. Does that make me a monster?” Am I no better than her, really? Am I just the same, dreaming of revenge?
“No, my darling,” he says. He presses his hands to my heart. “You looked at war in the eye and saw it for what it was. The truest evil there is. And you’re willing to sacrifice everything,even the love you have for your sister, to stop it. That doesn’t make you a monster.”
He tilts my chin up and looks me in the eye. “That makes you the strongest woman I know.”
“I heard you saw our sister today,” says Seth as I take my seat at the table.
