“Will you come in?” she asks, and steps back to let us.
I gulp, peering past her into the dark home, lit by the dull flicker of an oil lamp. There’s a rug on the floor and a sitting bench. And yes, I want to know who she is, and how she’s survived, but…
I can’t. I look at Roiven, hoping he’ll read my expression well enough to know that this is more than I can handle. I never wanted to see the ones I rescued as real people, because it would make the ones I lost, and the ones I killed myself, hurt all the worse.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Roiven says. “Thank you, Hevrin.”
Hevrin.I won’t forget it.That was supposed to be you, I think silently to the ghost of the Enchanted with the fishscaler.I wanted this for you. Not fire and drowning and fear.
“Can I know your name, lady?” Hevrin asks me. I blink back to the present, my throat tight.
“Cai,” I whisper. “It’s Cai. Caiteven.”
She smiles sadly at me, and I turn away, my head spinning.Roiven nods to her, and I hear the door close. I brace my hand on the wall, my body trembling. If the Empire is good and the witches are evil, then why is she safer here?
Roiven steps closer.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that would bother you,” he says, his voice low. “She wanted to meet you, to thank you.”
“I’m no hero.” My voice shakes.
Roiven frowns.
“To her, you are.”
“Do you know how many hundreds like her I’ve killed?” I whisper. “More. More than hundreds. And I saved… thirty-two. I think. From all that.”
“But you saved her.”
“By luck,” I whisper. “She lived, they died.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “They died. And if it weren’t for you, she would have died too. What made you do it? Why did you risk your life?”
“I had to.”
“Somebody was making you?”
“No. Of course not; nobody could know.” Not even Harfor. “But it was wrong. It was all wrong, and they told me using the Enchanted was the only way to stop worse things from happening toeverybody,but I… I did not even question it. What kind of fool….”
The witches aren’t evil enough for me to justify the deaths of even one Enchanted, much less the cost of the whole war. Even if Roiven has been showing me a carefully curated truth, they took in Hevrin. Isn't that proof enough?
“What are you going to do about it? Are you going to return to that life or are you going to fight for one where things like that don’t happen?”
“You could have warned me she was here,” I whisper, and look back at the closed door.
“I thought it would be a pleasant surprise.”
“Iamglad she’s alive,” I tell him, in case he thinks I’m that heartless.
“I know. Would you like to keep walking? Or would you like to see if Hevrin will still have us inside?”
I nod down the ravine. Roiven steps down the path and I follow him, around another bend in the crevasse.
“She and Nor married eight months ago,” Roiven tells me as I fold my arms over my chest. “Hevrin was a builder by trade, but she likes the gardens, and that’s what she does now. She helped grow all the food we’ve eaten.”
My eyes burn so hot I have to squeeze them shut.
“Can we talk about something else?”
