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I smiled at the lightness of his tone, something I’d never heard from Miles before. He told me about how he’d taken her to a crest in the Rhedrosian Mountains where they could look out on the city at night. He told me she always dreamed of learning to play the harp. He told me she asked him a lot of questions about being a soldier, and if he liked it, and how he felt about Kauvras’ conquest. She was from Coldwater, somewhere across the Widow’s Sea in a place called the Surging Isles, and had traveled with her brother to Taitha. He’d been born with his ankles twisted like vines on a tree trunk, and they’d heard there was a blacksmith in Taitha who could make braces to help him walk on his own.
But it didn’t take long for his voice to lower, the momentary joy on his face turning to grief. I could almost taste his heartache hanging in the air as he told me about how she left.
“She never liked the idea of Kauvras’ conquest. She’d made that clear from the beginning. I didn’t like it either, but it was my job. There was nothing I could do to stop it.” Miles stated, sounding defeated.
“You can take a stand, Miles! You can leave! You don’t have to do what he says!”
“I do have to do what he says. I can’t abandon my post, and I sure as hell can’t abandon my men.”
Her face had flushed with anger, her hands waving as she spoke. “You’re going to continue murdering people for him because he told you to?”
“I’m not murdering anyone.”
“You’re taking their lives away from them. That’s murder.” She shifted on her feet, her blue eyes on fire as she stared me down. “You leave Kauvras or I leave you. Those are your choices. You’re not stupid, so I suggest you make the smart choice.”
“I was stupid. So fucking stupid, Petra, to choose Kauvras over her.” His agony hung between us, almost tangible. “But at the end of the day, there was a truth to it all that was much harder to face.” Black eyes met mine, and in them was a sorrow so deep, so profound that I felt his grief in every one of my bones. “I didn’t choose Kauvras over her. I chosemyselfover her.” He nodded, his eyes finding the fire as he spoke. Despair was etched into every one of his features as his truth fell from his lips. “And not because I value myself more than I did her. Hell, to this day, I’d die for her. I chose myself because it was easy.”
I watched him, his eyes staring at me but seeing her. “Abandoning my duty was the hard thing to do, even if it was the right thing to do. It was much easier to let her leave, blame it all on her. And I did. I blamed her for a long time. I blamed her for leaving, I blamed her for ruining my life, I blamed her for the fact that I was unhappy.”
He slowed his breathing, trying to recover from the turmoil he’d caused himself by telling me this story. I could tell by the way his scar flexed over his neck that he was fighting back words. “What?” I asked.
His tongue ran across his lips, as if he were measuring what he was about to say. “I know you’re my Queen and this may cross a boundary, so forgive me for intruding.” He took a deep breath. “It might be hard to understand the reasons behind Cal’s actions. It sure as hell would be hard to forgive him. It’s easy to withdraw from him completely. I don’t blame you for wanting to do that.” He inhaled again, blinking the smoke from his eyes. “But don’t let the easy way out keep you from your happiness.”
I was silent, breaking my stare from him as something foreign washed over me. I shook my head, furrowing my brows, trying to find a rebuttal to his words, but there was nothing. Nothing but the stark naked truth looming uncomfortably over me.
“Choose yourself over Cal if you want to. But it seems to me that by choosing Cal, you’d be choosing yourself, too.”
Chapter 44
It’d been a long, long day on horseback as we traversed the trail through the Pass. Every part of me ached, but I welcomed the pain. It distracted me from a truth I’d yet to face. Ludovicus had regained full consciousness but had stayed silent. I caught him glancing at Miles more than once, as if he was afraid that Miles would finish what Cal started.
I’d left Miles and Belin sleeping beside the fire and trudged my way across the leaf-strewn ground, barely illuminated by the moon that was just beginning to rise. I knew better than to venture off the trail, especially after sunset, but the sound of a stream called to me, and I was desperate to get the grime of the Pass off my skin. I had to remind myself to fear the monsters that I knew tracked me with glassy eyes. I no longer had any power against them aside from the sword at my hip.
Somewhere on the bank of this very stream, I’d saved Miles from dying a gory death at the wrong end of a bonehog’s tusks. That’s where he’d figured out the leechthorn hadn’t affected me. I squeezed my eyes shut at the thought, at how little I’d known about myself then, about how little I still knew.
The stream was frigid, the breath leaving my lungs as I dipped under the surface, my bare skin rising with goosebumps as I stood again and waded back to the shore. I took my time dressing, savoring the feeling of solitude, even as the animals in the forest around me screeched and cawed. This was what I needed — to feel clean, at least in one way.
“What the hell are you doing?” I jumped as a familiar voice barked from behind me. Belin approached me from the treeline, his face hard with anger. Those were his first words to me all day, and they hung in the air between us like smoke.
I shrugged, wringing my hair between my hands, trying to keep my composure under his gaze. “Bathing.”
He continued marching toward me, and each step was so hard, so intentional that I swore I could feel them reverberate through the earth. “Why the fuck would you leave the path?”
I scoffed, my wet hair falling over my shoulder as I crossed my arms in a defensive stance. “I can take care of myself.”
“You know it drives me mad, right?” he blurted.
Miles’ words rang through my head.Choose yourself over Cal if you want to. Yes, I did want to. A conversation like this was useless to both of us. I sighed, preparing for the bullshit that I knew was about to unfold. “What drives you mad? My silence? My attitude?”
“Your blatant disregard for your own life.”
My eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of his words.
“When I shot the arrow at Tobyas in the forest, you threw yourself over him without even considering an arrow could be coming for you next. You charged at Umbri, putting yourself in danger when Ispecificallyasked you not to. Now you wander off the trail through the Onyx Pass to bathe, naked as the day you were born.”
I raised a brow. Had he seen me bathing in the stream? I swallowed hard, looking him up and down, acting like I was composed. “So?”
“I see it in your eyes, Petra. You’d burn yourself to dust if no one stopped you, even without your powers. You’re giving up.” The words were seething, scorching in their intensity.
