Page 46 of The Truth

His jaw trembled as he moved further into the charred rubble, and he felt Shinyara bristling at the edges of his mind, waiting to catch him should he fall. Perhaps they hadn’t been in the house, perhaps they had been in the market when the flames blazed, or in the bakery, or the butcher’s. And if that were the case, he would never find them no matter how hard or long he looked. Perhaps they were destined to rest in this city of death, and it would be to this place he would make his pilgrimage year after year.

And just as that thought entered his mind, he saw a thing that cracked him in half.

Farda stumbled, tripping over a fallen stone and slamming his knee to the ground. He hauled himself upright, his legs fumbling beneath him as he moved closer. There, in the corner of the room, the bones of two children were pressed against the wall, their arms wrapped around each other.

He took another step and fell again, slashing his shin on a piece of shattered steel. Again he stood, again he walked, again he wept.

The twelve steps Farda took across that room were the twelve hardest steps he had ever taken in his life. The heaviest weight he’d ever carried, the deepest pain he’d ever felt.

When he finally reached the two sets of bones, he dropped to his knees, gasping as he hit the stone.

There, that moment, kneeling in the ashes, the scent of strawberries and cream in the back of his mind – that was when he broke.

Of all the things Farda had faced in this world, of all the darkness he had seen, all the death, there was nothing that had come close to the terror he felt in his heart at that moment. And terror truly was the only word for the feeling that shook his bones. He had watched his father die when he had seen only twenty summers, body devoured by consumption. He had seen his mother slowly fade, her memories slipping past her. By the time Heraya had finally chosen to embrace her, Miram Kyrana had not even remembered her own sons’ faces. He had seen the darkest of things, but this… this was inconceivable.

For so many years of his life, he had not understood the way others had spoken about children. But when Hana and Valyianne had been thrust into his life, they had forced him to understand.

There was something pure in the heart of a child, something beautiful and awe-inspiring that could never be explained. No words could have left a person’s lips that would have caused him to believe he could ever have cared for anything in the world like he did for those two girls. They had looked to him like he was the moon and stars, and the sun only set so he could rise. To them he was a mountain, the sky and the ocean, and they looked to him for everything. And in exchange for such love, all they had asked of him was to keep them safe, to find a place for them in his heart and to protect them. And he would have burned his own soul to do so. Without a second’s hesitation.

And yet, there he stood in the ashes of the home they had died in. Died in each other’s arms, alone.

The tears that streamed in freefall down Farda’s cheeks were eternal. He had failed those two pure souls. The greatest task that life had ever given him and he had failed.

His hand trembled as he reached out, fingertips hovering over the bones.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the agony cutting him deeper than any blade. “You must have been so scared.” He swallowed hard. “My girls…”

The thought that in their last moments Hana and Valyianne might have wondered why Farda wasn’t there to protect them was a thought that would haunt him for the rest of his days. If he had known when he had hugged them goodbye, it would be for the last time, he would never have let go. And if he’d known he would never again hear Hana sing, he would have asked her to never stop. He would have sat and listened until he grew old and faded from the world. And he would have eaten everything Valyianne baked, every morsel and scrap of food, and he would have died fat and happy.

If he had known he had been saying the words ‘I love you’ for the last time, he would have said it again, and again, and again.

On that day, as he knelt and lifted Hana and Valyianne’s bones from the ashes, a part of him died. A part of his soul came free and left the mortal world with his girls.

For Farda, that was the day joy died.

Chapter Fourteen

Forger of Destiny

One Month Later

City of Aerilon – Autumn, Year 2680 After Doom

Aerilon was the physical manifestation of everything Fane hated: the greed, the opulence, the entitlement. The city’s sapphire mines and trade position meant their coffers were never short of burgeoning.

From his conversations with the Exucendi of Printhouse Tarashír, a third of The Order’s wealth either originated from or passed through Aerilon in the east and Aonar in the West. He had heard the reports of Orinhale, heard the whispers that the princess had been taken against her will and held to ransom, that King Thandred had sent assassins to end King Inthisar’s life.

He believed those reports about as far as he could throw Councillor Vorst, and that man had been well fed from youth. There was something rotten at The Order’s core, something broken and rancid. He would find a way to fix it, and he would start with Aerilon.

Fane opened the door before him, lifted his hood, and stepped into the rain.

Even in the downpour, the streets of Aerilon were packed to the brim with traders and hawkers selling everything: fish, fruit, weapons, tools, jewellery, silks, furs, and a plethora of other trinkets Fane did not care to examine. Being so close to the Lightning Coast, the city faced near-constant rainfall, and it had been built with that in mind. The city was constructed on a constant upwards slope, the keep standing highest at the centre, and everything sprawling outwards from there. Awnings stretched out from the sides of every building, angling towards the centre of the streets which were all sloped towards drains that ran along the street sides. That water was then funnelled down and filtered into large reservoirs and pumped back up for use in the city. The water recycling system was perhaps the only thing Fane actually liked about Aerilon.

As he walked, a hooded figure took their place on his right side.

“How was your journey, commander?” Castor whispered.

“Long and peaceful,” Fane responded. “The others?”