Page 10 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“You think I was even given one when they burned my family home, killed my parents and sold me to this cause?”

“I can give the choice back to you. To leave all of this behind.”

“You don’t understand, do you?”

“Make me.”

“How is that my job? Do your eyes not suffice to see the bed that was made for me? What a luxury would it be to leave this behind. To be able to close my eyes and not see what I’ve been seeing for the past fifteen years. What a luxury to be able to pretend I’ve not committed the sins I was forced to do. To not remember the choices, I’ve had to make. Choices of forcing children to be slaughtered in their own homes, asleep. Or awake, facing the blade of a bloody hungry soldier who will not stop at their death.” She took a deep breath. “Do not tell me what humanity is and is not. How it heeds and prays to you. How none of this falls in your hands because you simply grant what you’ve been asked of. Because I know. But do not ridicule me with your offers. Being here is a big enough sin. I am not ready to commit the sin of closing my eyes before catastrophe. I will bear witness even if it consumes me whole. I will remember every face, every name, and repent for all of it. If I am forced to be here, it is the least I can do. Being consumed by guilt is the way I wish to die if I am ever granted the honour of leaving this wretched world.”

He was wrong to assume that it was anger he was seeing in her eyes. Desolation often looked like resentment, condemnation. “Forgive me.”

Rowan’s eyes widened for a moment. “For what?”

“You asked me if I hated what I was. Maybe I do.”

She still wasn’t convinced if she’d heard what he’d told her correctly. After all, why would the God of War condemn what he was. Why would he even apologise to her?

The greatest question out of all was the strange interest he’d taken on her particularly. He’d not seen him speak a single word to anyone else or even reply to all that he was asked by curious and infatuated soldiers who’d done nothing by marvel and awe at the sight of him. Even though he’d sat in on every meeting they had, watched every training and heard every single plan made, she was almost entirely sure he’d not paid mind to a single thing that was told or shown.

Despite his presence, he’d shown so little interest in this war that she was beginning to wonder if there was even a point to his presence there. She wondered if he couldn’t make himself leave after he’d found out the human he seeked had died. Maybe he was lingering because he was hopeless and grieved in his findings, but she quickly shook her thoughts when she remembered that despite his human form, he wasn’t human at all.

Even from afar, she could tell she was being watched. Bent low near the river bank, she studied the stream and the clear crystal water of the longest and largest river in Tisiania that separated the north and south. Mugril and Gobresh. Well, part of Gobresh. Part of Gobresh above it was now claimed as Mugril land.

His voice came from behind her. “There is rain coming.”

One glance at the skies and you could tell that rain had no such desire. “You can predict the weather now?” she asked, keeping her back at him as she scribbled down useless notes in her diary which she knew Henry’s and Adam’s soldiers checked daily when she left her tent.

“There is wind, and where there is wind there is rain. I thought you’d know this much since they hold you in such high regard as knowing nature ably. I’m told you use it to your favour all the time, to aid this army and its invasions. To know how to make nature your ally is not easy. Nature does not make allies and it usually has a mind of its own when it comes to choosing sides and who to favour.”

“They’ve been lucky guesses,” she confessed. They’d actually been desperate guesses that had somehow turned true. Sometimes to her dismay because they’d worked too well. Well enough to convince just about everyone she was vital to this war.

“No such thing as lucky guesses. If nature has favoured you when you wished for its help, then it’s simply a game of convincing it of your intentions.”

Rowan didn’t wish to entertain him, didn’t wish to regard him, nor acknowledge him at all. But she found herself doing the opposite. “You regard nature as an entity?”

“Because it is. One body. Soil is its skin. The trees its lungs. The rivers, the lakes and the seas are its blood. And humans are tiny little parasites who give an unbearable itch you can never get rid off.”

Her eyes drew shut when she felt the urge to laugh. Running a hand over her disobeying features until they schooled back to normal, she turned to him. “Now we are parasites.”

“A harmless metaphor.”

“Metaphors are indirect ways of telling the truth.”

“Didn’t say it was a harmless lie.”

Her mouth twitched and she bit her lip hard until the metallic taste of blood soured her mouth. “Was the human you were looking for also one?”

“Because she meant something to me didn’t make her anything special. On the contrary, it made her a target.”

“Whose?”

“Fate.”

She frowned. “Aren’t you the King of Gods? The bearer of Dawnbringer?”

“There is always something that stands above us, Rowan. And something that stands above them and so forth. We aren’t masters of our own fate. We’re simply slaves without shackles. I might have power over you, but there are things that have power over me. It is how it will always be.”

She could understand though she would have preferred it not to. She didn’t wish to understand a God like him. “You don’t seem interested in our war.”