“You,” I whisper. Sava shoots up into the sky in a burst of flame and claws. The beat of her wings lifts the hair off my neck and makes me squint into the wind.
The attention of the hulkingthing, impossibly large, turns to me. Most of the kraken’s body remains in the ocean. But the long ends of two tentacles curl on the rocks of the Bluff, and the bulbous head of the kraken emerges from the sea some twenty or thirty feet off the rockfield’s shore, where the Bluff’s rock bed drops away.
“Go away.” My voice shakes. My head screams as needles of pain lance through it.
Little knight…
Its wet, inky eyes stare at me, unblinking. The pain smashes through me, splitting my head down the middle.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want you. Can’t you just leave me alone?” The pain is as unrelenting as a tide.
Iron bars squeeze around my heart as the tentacles slowly withdraw, slithering across the rock and vanishing into the crash of theocean’s waves. The head of the creature remains a moment longer, and then it vanishes, too. And the ocean is a black mirror shining beneath the moon, the waves rolling against the rockfield.
The kraken is gone. The headache softens, but doesn’t go away entirely.
A deep, soul-crushing ache crosses through me. Rejection, loneliness. I feel like I’ve gutted myself, and on top of the pain and anger I was already feeling, the misery threatens to swallow me whole. But I still hate the thing in the water more than I long for it. I have to.
I press the heels of my palms to my temple, hard. And then, I fall to my knees, cracking onto the hard stone. My breath comes in desperate hiccups as one tear escapes my eyes, and then another. Everything hurts. It’s a pain bigger than I know how to bear.
This is my fault. My emotions are swirling out of control. Sick overwhelm at the death of the exiles, shame for attacking Roiven when he couldn’t defend himself, an empty heartache for the thing in the water, and the crushing realization that everyone I cared about wanted me dead.
Haven’t I been a good soldier? I’ve killed everyone they ever told me to.
Roiven still kneels on the ground in front of me, staring at the ocean where the beast disappeared. His head turns slowly to look at me. Beneath the glow of his orange eyes, I can just barely make out that his mouth is hanging open in shock.
“How?”
I bend over, hands clutched around my waist, and wonder how I’m ever going to survive this pain. I can barely breathe.
“That was the… how did you, ofallpeople, bond tohim…” Roiven sputters.
Bonded? No. Oh, no. That’s witchcraft. The pain slams back into my head and I whine, desperate to escape it.
“Make it go away,” I beg. “I hate it. I hate that thing.”
“Cai,” Roiven whispers. My name is a brittle, fragile thing in his mouth. “You should not think such things about your familiar.”
And all of a sudden I’m crying so hard there isn’t any sound to it, and my face burns hot and the tears hurt as they escape my eyes in silent wracking sobs that shake my whole body, and I spent two years mourning a life that wanted me dead the whole time, and if Malkin knew what I was she’d probably have wanted me dead, too, but I’ll never find out, because she’sgone, and I’m still here, even though nobody wants me to be.
Roiven blinks and stands. He approaches me slowly, with his hands raised, like I’m a wild animal. The King of Witches crouches beside me. His hands hover over my shoulders, like he’s scared to touch me. And he should be. I swore I'd kill him.
But at least the shiphesank was a warship in enemy territory.
“It’s alright,” Roiven says.
“Nothing is,” I try to say, but the words come out choked and garbled.
He rests his hands on my shoulders, lightly, tentatively.
And then, he pulls me against his chest, and I collapse against my enemy and cry all the harder.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Roiven murmurs. “Breathe. It will pass.”
I don’t believe him. But I draw a ragged breath and hiccup through another, snot dripping from my nose, as the man I hate more than anyone gently pats my left shoulder and murmurs again: “just let it pass.”
“Don’t be nice to me,” I manage to say. “I hate you. And I shouldn't have hit you when you couldn't defend…”
I scrunch my lips up and bury my head in my elbow for a moment. This is too much. And it’s insane.
