“Tell me how it feels to you,” he said. “How strong is it?”
“I—I guess I feel like I’m…shattered?” she whispered, compelled to give him what he wanted despite not understanding why he wanted to know. “Like my heart has been broken inside my chest, and it’s in so many pieces I don’t think it will ever go back together the same way.”
He stared, intense and unblinking.
Why did he care? In the midst of his grief and sorrow, why did he suddenly want to discuss…this?
“But it’s nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. What you’re going through?—”
“It’s not nothing,” he interrupted. “And it does matter.”
She drew in an unsteady breath.
“You’re supposed to join the Honor Guard soon, right?” he asked.
“I—” She released a small laugh, bewildered by the wild deviations in conversation. “Yes. I’ve almost reached my five years.”
His breathing had deepened, and the grief in his core was suddenly punctured with anxiety. “And then you’ll be sent into Viterra.”
“That’s the plan, isn’t it?” She leaned closer, trying to understand the direction of his thoughts. “Aren’t you in charge of all this now?”
He sat back, and his gaze finally dropped, landing on her knees. “I am.” The anxiety faded once more into grief, and he threw his head back to rest against the chair cushion. “That’s true. Small blessings.”
Bemused, Anna wondered if the stress was messing with his mind. What was he getting at with these questions?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He did nothing other than laugh—a dark and tragic sort of chuckle that made every hair on her body stand at attention.
“I think you need a hug,” she said.
He smiled resentfully at the ceiling. “You think?”
“Yes.”
“You willing?”
She hesitated. As much as she wanted to offer comfort, she knew exactly what would happen if her skin came into contact with his.
His head tilted her way. “I didn’t think so. Don’t worry. I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.”
She nodded, still fighting the temptation to touch him.
“Willyou?” he asked.
Sudden tears stung Anna’s eyes, and she had to look away as she handed him her most vulnerable truth. “I don’t know.”
“You will,” he said with utter conviction. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Later that night, after a bath and set of fresh clothes, Anna headed down to Kywyn’s wake with Maddy. The pyres for the fallen had been built on the sacred lands west of the Tree, where thelavaniétemples to the Great Mother had been erected. Acolytes trekked here to commune with the Great Mother, but Anna had never been religious. She only spent time in this area of their lands when they were returning a soul to the Light.
She and Maddy followed the flow of bodies intothe cold night, their boots crunching through snow. Sniffles and low murmurs filled the air, but Anna was more distracted by the miasma of sadness around her, tasting of metal and smelling of freshly turned soil.
It did little to dispel the pain of the knife in her heart though. She was nauseated from the agony and wondered whether she should have ventured so far from the Tree when she felt her strength sapping from her muscles by the second, exhausted from the emotional torture. Echoes of the headache she’d suffered over the past weeks bounced between her temples.
She wasn’t sure she could handle this sort of pain much longer. Why hadn’t she been more diligent about learning the emotion cage? That should have taken priority over coercion.
Emotion like this, prolonged and undiluted, could kill her. She was certain of it.
