Page 50 of Hearts Lost

Orryen’s shoulders relax. I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m completely naked with a bundle of ragged clothes clutched over my privates.

“W-What?” I begin. “What’s this all about?”

Lythienne steps forward with her lips pressed into a thin, tight line.

“That woman destroyed the teleportation hub,” Lythienne says. “Thankfully, the weapon she’s carrying left a signature. I was able to track it.”

“With absolutely no help whatsoever,” Rowan adds, twisting his lips into an expression that makes me want to punch him even more than usual.

“Well, yes,” Lythienne adds. She looks like she’s been forced to swallow something sour. “Rowan has been quite—”

“Weapon?” I stammer, cutting her off.

Orryen’s frowning at me in a way that makes me feel cold.

“I’m sorry,” Orryen says. “That woman is armed. She’s carrying some magical weapon from King Grathgore. She came here to destroy us.”

His hand is still clenched around my shoulder, and for a horrific, swirling moment that’s the only thing that keeps my knees from buckling. My pulse is very loud inside my own skull, and some part of me notes how strange it is that my heart is still pounding after something lodged deep inside of it has just shattered.

Ithronel was hiding something. She was hiding everything. And what a voids-damned idiot I’ve been.

There’s a scraping, splashing noise. Orryen turns to look past me, toward the lip of the waterfall, and everything around me moves very slowly, like pushing through honey. Or ice. I follow Orryen’s gaze, reaching past his tight lips and narrow eyes.

And there’s Ithronel, standing on the edge of the waterfall, her eyes wide, her dress soaking wet, and her hair flying out behind her like pennants from the Kingdom of the Summer. She scraped her knee climbing up here, some part of me notices. Blood runs down her dark skin, mixing with the water streaking her shins.

Ithronel draws a deep breath, then hesitates, and there’s one terrible moment when the entire void balances on a sword’s point and I think she might just step backward and fall onto the unforgiving stones below.

Voids, no! The image flashes through my mind, sickeningly vivid, Ithronel’s body shattered against the stones, her hair drifting through the water, blood on the waves. Horror swells up inside me, pressing hot and thick in the back of my throat. I break away from Orryen and step toward her.

“Ithronel,” I say.

She’s looking at me with wide eyes, like a rabbit tangled in a net, and voids help me, what an idiot I am. How could I have fallen for this? How could I have fallen for her?

“I won’t let them hurt you,” I say.

I shuffle forward and hold out my hand, even as my chest pulls so tight I feel like I’ll never be able to breathe again. Ithronel’s eyes flicker over Orryen, over Rowan and Lythienne and Elanerill, and how much of this was a lie? How much of the Ithronel I thought I knew was invented just to manipulate me?

I take another step forward, holding out my hand as the wild river crashes to the ground behind us. Ithronel gives me a look that’s almost ashamed, almost an apology, or perhaps just another lie. And then she places her hand in mine.

My magic rushes forward, heat and warmth surging from the tips of my fingers and into her body. Her breath catches, and her eyes widen, snagging on mine.

Yes, I think. I have secrets too.

Then sleep drags her down, and she falls into my arms.

* * *

“Ah,”Lythienne says. “Here they are.”

I don’t want to see. I don’t particularly care what the weapons look like, or where Ithronel somehow managed to hide them, but my neck forces my head up anyway and my eyes drag themselves to where Lythienne is kneeling beside the bundle of our gear that Rowan and the woman Arryn have just pulled over the lip of the waterfall.

Lythienne is holding Ithronel’s sleeve. The sleeve she’d cut off in the void. The one she’d used to carry fruit, to tie around her waist. Always the first thing she’d taken off and set down, as though she couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

I watch, blood thudding numbly in my skull, as Lythienne takes her dagger and slices open one of Ithronel’s sleeves. There, hidden by the fabric, are two tiny, gleaming silver spheres. Rowan snorts; rage pounds behind my temples, and for a heartbeat, I think I really might punch him.

“Not much to look at, are they?” Rowan says.

“No,” Lythienne agrees, with a frown.