He didn’t say another word about it. He could tell she understood.
Helaina stopped, bracing her arms over her thighs as she tried to catch her breath.
“Do I need to carry you?” he teased.
She remained crouched, shoving at his hip with one hand. “Not happening.”
He laughed as she glanced up, heaving in oxygen as quickly as her mouth would allow. “How much further?”
“Well, at your pace...” He put his hand above his eyes to scan the horizon. “We should be done at dusk.”
“Can we just tell him we made it to the top?” she groaned in annoyance.
“He senses lies, Helaina. You must know that by now, come on.”
Her forefinger and thumb hugged the bridge of her nose like she was stifling a headache. “Of course he can.” She pushed herself forward, sweat trickling down her neck, crossing over that thin, faint scar Callum had given her.
His mouth turned downward. He had harmed her, threatened her with torture. He had almost hit her when she spat at him. Theo had held him back. Yet how had she returned that savage behavior? By saving the one being he couldn’t live without.
Manos had told him all he had missed while in his coma-like state. That she had fought Breyer’s fire drake form. That her swordplay actually held up against one of their own.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she replied, still breathing heavily alongside him.
“Why were you going to do it? When we found you that night on the road.”
She ambled over to a boulder and sat down, wiping her brow. Callum handed her a small waterskin from his belt. She drank and ran some along her neck.
Callum waited patiently as she collected herself.
“I used to think sadness was the worst thing a person could feel,” she began. “That there could be nothing worse than misery. Then I found out how wrong I was. The worst thing you can feel is nothing—cold, hollow nothingness. I wanted... Ineededthat emptiness to stop.”
Callum’s face grew somber. He knew that feeling all too well.
“I haven’t really done good for anyone. All I’ve done is hurt. I thought I could save everyone else the burden.” She smiled sadly. “You can’t fulfill a prophecy if you aren’t alive to do it.” Her laugh came out choked and nervous, like her loss of life was a joke.
Enough of that.
He crouched down to her level and gently reached for her. She flinched instantly, and he withdrew his hand, wishing he could take back their first encounter. His taunting, his malicious words.
He gave her space, placing his hands on the rock beside her.
“I will forever be grateful that Theo found you, thatwefound you. If you hadn’t been here... Aaron would be gone. And I’m not sure I could exist a day in a world without him.”
Her throat bobbed like she might start to cry.
Fuck, he was making it worse.
He scratched the back of his neck, thinking about how to make her see.
“If... it means anything to you, that is one life where your actions were not a burden. You were a blessing. I know it’s only one... but he ismyone.”
She rubbed at her eyes before tears could actually fall.
“That night, when my mother forced us into that brothel, when I hid my brother and made him swear not to make a sound. That was the night I found my purpose. I waited, until I was bigger, until I was stronger. It took years... but I went back for those men. I went back to that broken town, and I waited in that horrid place. I spent days there, reliving the sounds and the smells of that night, but I refused to leave. Somehow, I knew they would return. Men like that don’t change.”
He watched her chin quiver at the story he had pushed down into the pits of his mind.
