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To this clan, this bond.
“Finn? Finn!” Taj sounds like he’s been calling my name for a while.
Instinctively, I turn the tables on him, attacking instead of retreating. You attack or you’re eaten alive inside the Temple. “How did you become a commander this young? What did you do?”
“Are you… what, doubting me?”
“Doubting you?” I say. “Now that’s interesting. Why would I?”
Taj is silent for a long moment and at first, I think he won’t answer and I’ll have to say something snide just to prod him.
But then he says, “I made a mistake.”
It’s as if he’s echoing my thoughts. “Explain yourself. What sort of a mistake? Run away from the enemy, did you? Or wait, I got it. You were ordered to do something and that gave you such a hard-on you couldn’t walk.”
Here I go, my sarcastic self in full display, and after last night, I should put that side of me away, lock it inside a box and bury it in the ground, but it’s a part of who I am now. Might as well bury myself.
He doesn’t even seem to notice what I said.
“I saved the General, during a campaign in the south,” he says quietly.”
“That’s a big mistake,” I mutter.
“My mistake was that I didn’t die.”
“Saving the General was a noble act,” Ariadne says as we leave the small room where I had such a revelation, trooping down the stairs one by one. “It’s no wonder they promoted you, Taj.”
“A campaign in the south.” I’m gripping the rail, shuffling my feet one at a time as I go down the stairs last. Stairs are terrifying even for seeing people, let alone blind old me. “You were after the Fae-bloods.”
His silence is answer enough.
“You saved the General and he captured people, sent them to the Central capital,” I go on, following the thought.
“I was a soldier,” he says harshly. “I followed orders. I was a cog in the machine.”
“Easy to say.”
“Easy?” He’s waiting for me as I climb off the last step. “Really, that’s what you think? I had no choice. It was many years ago. How old do you think I am? What choices do you think I had as an abandoned child taken in by the army, a squire following the troops?”
“Fuck.” I nod, sigh. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all you have to say?”
“Yes. Okay, Taj. I’m starting to see your point, all right?”
He harrumphs. “Let’s get going. Here’s Skotos.”
The clopping of hooves answers my question before it leaves my lips.
“You named your horse,” I say.
“Yeah, imagine that, even a black-hearted Fae-killing thug like me can name his horse. Come, Skot!”
He’s furious at me and at any other time, I’d have given back as good as I got, but right now all I feel is a sense of the ground giving way under my feet.
I rush after them, not sure what else I can say. All my beliefs, my credos, are being overturned one by one, and I can’t catch up. It’s all dark around me, in me, an unknown, a chasm so deep I’ve never felt so sure I’ll fall to my death before.
When I stumble, I fully expect to tumble headfirst into the abyss, but strong hands steady me.
