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Before she could answer—if she was willing—a memory drowned us both.
I tried to push it away, but I couldn’t.
When my father sent for me, I’d been delighted, even though I was furious he’d abandoned me. I’d walked fifteen miles to reach him, through the freezing night and into the blistering day. In my dream, Honor walked alongside me, although every step blurred and took us a mile.
Then he’d lived in a castle in the forest, protected by the Scourge. I’d brought the Scourge under the Bone Mountain later to protect others fromthem.
I’d walked deeper and deeper into that forest, smelling something rancid that made me gag. When the zombies first lurched out of the darkness, I was terrified. Even though I knew better, in my memories, my heart still raced, my breathing suddenly shallow.
Honor’s fingertips skimmed mine. I glanced over at her, startled by the touch, but she was staring around her with her red hair moving in the breeze. She looked as if she hadn’t even noticed the accidental touch.
The zombies led me past the corpses of their victims that hadn’t turned. The bodies lay sprawled on the ground in various states of decomposition, and my stomach churned. I understood now why my father hadn’t wanted me to see this.
When they led me into the castle, I’d expected to be taken to a throne.
But instead they took me to a deathbed, and in it was the man who had abandoned me for Lysander. He seemed smaller than the last time I saw him. Looking at my father’s wan, sunken face, the way he tried to form his cracked lips into a smile, hatred washed over me.
But I wasn’t even sure who I hated most.
“I’m dying,”my father said weakly. “I’m not strong enough to carry the Scourge curse any longer.” His desperate eyes locked on me. “But you’ve always been so strong, son.”
They were desperate words.
I had lifted the bone crown from his hands, and I had said the words.
“I crown myself the leader of the Scourge. I bind myself to the dark magic that gives his land life.”
And then as the Scourge knelt before me, blood still smeared on their faces, I knew who I hated the most.
Myself.
“Zehr,” Honor said quietly.
I turned to find her at my side; the two of us had an entire Scourge army crouched at our feet. We stood beside the throne that towered above the bone kingdom. I wasn’t sure if I was in a dream or if this was real and the two of us had shadow traveled.
Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
She paused. “You know, Damyn told me that in order to have a healthy relationship, you have to be honest with each other.”
I started at her, bewildered. There were many confusing things in that sentence, but I was especially confused about why she thought I cared what Damyn thought. “Excellent advice, I guess, from the elderly dragon knight.”
She grinned at me. “He's not elderly. He’s only ten years older than me, and he’s far younger than you, Zehr.”
Jealousy gripped my heart. But I forged on; Honor would drag me into ridiculous circles endlessly. “So what do you need to be honest with me about?”
She smiled at me.
“I don’t hate you,” she told me quietly. “I forgive you.”
Anger flashed over me; the words were so unexpected and disarming that I didn’t know what to make of them. “I don’t need your forgiveness.”
Her smile widened. “Too bad. I like having you in this world, Zehr.”
Then she was gone. She’d slipped out of my dreams.
Then I felt something changing in the real world. A gathering of magic, tingling through the air. The smell of electricity hung in the air as if lightning had just struck. Terror washed through me, jolting me awake.
Her hands were on the bone crown, and she was lifting it from my head. For the first time in almost two hundred years, the throbbing pain of the crown receded.
