Legacy was dead by her own hand. Suicide? She asked to be buried next to me. I was no expert, but I thought I was alive.
"This is impossible," I rasped, anger flaring hot and bright within me.
Legacy, who had faced war unflinchingly—how could she fall to her own hand?
"Are you certain this is real?" I pressed, hoping for any hint of doubt, any sliver of hope.
"Seen the messenger with my own eyes, I did," he replied, oblivious to the way the bed seemed to sway beneath me. "General Ehuna said I should deliver it to you if you’re awake. Said she’d be along momentarily if you are."
"Thank you…" I said, my voice hollow.
“Tim. My name’s Tim.” With a nod, the messenger left, unaware that he'd delivered a weapon far more lethal than any magic or sword.
I curled my fingers around Legacy's bracelet. "Legacy, what have you done?"
Tears scorched the backs of my eyes and coursed down my face. Even with all of my aches and pains, it was the void where Legacy should've been that gnawed at my insides most fiercely.
I cried myself to sleep, woke, and then repeated the process, all the while clutching Legacy’s bracelet. A part of me wanted to hurl it across the room—to shatter something, anything, as broken as I felt inside. But I couldn't. It was all I had left of her.
Had she thought I was dead, buried in the tomb of Tannin’s fortress? My heart wrenched with the possibility.
"Collie?" Ehuna's voice cut through the fog of my thoughts. She stood there, tall and imposing, yet her eyes held a softness that felt like a lifeline. “How are you feeling?”
"Is this real?" I asked, thrusting the parchment at her, the words on it still screaming their cruel message. "They say she's gone. That she…" My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard to regain some semblance of composure. "That she killed herself."
Ehuna took the parchment, her lingering touch on my hand grounding, and my eyes blurred with tears again.
After a moment, she said, "You know Legacy better than anyone. Does this sound like her end?"
"I don’t know," I admitted. "On one hand, she'd never let them win like that. On the other, she thought I was dead."
“A lot of us thought that, Collie. We weren’t sure you were going to pull through. Your injuries were…” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
"Legacy and I… We were…" I began, my insides squirming like a sack of eels.
It was one thing to ignore my growing feelings, quite another to voice the reality of them in the presence of someone like Ehuna.
"We were enemies who became allies." I tried to swallow the knot of emotion in my throat. “And then we became something more.”
I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t meant for it to happen, but my heart had made the decision for me. My feelings had carved themselves into my being with the steadfast permanence of thesun rising and setting each day. I wasn’t even sure I knew the depth of those feelings.
Until now.
"Ah." Ehuna's eyebrow arched, a hint of surprise breaking through her stoic facade. "You loved her, and she loved you right back, so much so that she couldn’t bear a life without you."
I looked away, my face heating under the pressure of more tears. “I was trying to save her,” I choked out. “I’d been stabbed in the heart and thought I was dead anyway, but I was trying to bring down Tannin in the process. It was reckless, I know. I messed up.”
"Tannin’s still alive, but Collie," Ehuna said, her voice firm as she knelt beside my bed, "this is not your failing. We are at war."
Of course he was still alive.Iwas still alive, so apparently the fortress cave-in and my stabbed heart hadn’t been that bad.
"But she's still gone," I said, tears streaming down my face despite my best efforts. "And I never told her…never told her how much…"
I couldn't finish, the admission too raw, too late.
"Then fight for her," Ehuna urged, her hand on my shoulder steady as bedrock. "Fight with the love you carry for her as your armor."
I looked at her then so she could see my truth. “I’m damn tired of fighting this stupid war.”
