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My instinct was to say nothing. That was always my instinct. The core of me had been shaped to trust no one, be suspicious of everything, keep all at a distance so they could never learn anything that could be used as a weapon against me.
I had already been careless with that. I’d been so wrapped up in Ash, so quietly euphoric over him finally looking at me, seeing me, that I hadn’t noticed my own brother skulking in the shadows, watching us. Everything he had learned, he had promptly used to harm me. And to harm Ash.
Balor had been doing that my entire life, though. He had spent two decades manipulating me as if it was a craft he took great pleasure in finely honing.
He was still doing it, even now, even from the forest. Even though I had finally escaped.
I realised I had been staring at Sanya in silence, and she was watching me with a patient if somewhat uneasy expression. For a split second, it was like I was outside of myself, watching my own motionless body, but at the same time I was trapped inside it and everything felt wrong. I felt so wrong. I’d spent the majority of my life mostly alone, but in this moment, I felt so painfully lonely that it almost took my breath away.
In this moment, I didn’t care what Sanya’s motivations were for asking, whether it was out of cunning, or because she was concerned for me, or just curious. In this moment, standing out in the dusty dry heat with only her, the loud cacophony of summer insects buzzing around us, the air too warm and stifling, stinking of rot and greenery, I wanted desperately to tell her everything.
I wanted someone to listen to me.
I turned to needlessly adjust the target so I wouldn’t have to look at her, feeling vulnerable to be sharing anything about me at all. “I recently lost a leg, and… Gillie and Prince Nua crafted me a new one out of branches. And other things. So. Your words are perhaps more apt than you meant them to be. That’s all.”
My face burned. I stepped back from the target and fumbled with my bow. Sanya dutifully stepped back as well until she was a safe distance from the target.
As I clumsily nocked an arrow and took aim, she said, “I’m sorry about your leg, Prince Lonan.”
“What is the point in being sorry?” I released the bowstring. The arrow missed the target by a foot and embedded itself in the grass beyond the training ring. “It has happened. It’s done. We can’t change what’s done or will be done.”
Being sorry didn’t erase the memory of feeling my mother’s bronze teeth tear a limb from my body.
“I don’t know,” Sanya mused. “I like to think we can change what will be done. If it’s yet to be done.”
“A heretic, then?” I asked. “Don’t let Fioda hear you say that you don’t believe she holds any sway over her own land.”
Sanya chuckled. “No, I’m not a heretic. I believe the Higher Spirits guide us. I just don’t believe they map out our lives as some others do. I believe in choice.”
How naïve, I thought, almost wanting to laugh.
“Choice,” I echoed. “Perhaps it’s easier to turn your back on the belief in fate and destiny when you aren’t born a High Fae.”
“Perhaps. I suppose your destiny has been decided from the get-go, hasn’t it? A fae prince. Though,” Sanya added, “I can’t imagine you ever thought this would be where you ended up.”
“No,” I muttered, nocking another arrow. “I did not.”
“So you did make choices. You chose to come here.”
“That wasn’t much of a choice.”
“No?” she asked immediately. “So you don’t want to be here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t say it.”
I lowered the bow and turned to face her, scowling. “What exactly are you trying to do, Sanya?”
“I’m just trying to figure things out,” she answered calmly. “I’m trying to work out why you are staying here, Prince Lonan, when you are so clearly miserable.”
My nostrils flared. “I am not—”
When the burning in my throat rendered me silent, my face flamed with heat. I turned back to the target in a rush, a fine tremor running through my hands as I lifted the bow and took aim.
“Will you tell me what brought you here, at least?” Sanya asked in her no-nonsense voice. “I admit, I’m very curious to know the events that led to the famed unseelie assassin prince living in exile on seelie land.”
I suppressed my flinch, keeping my face blank as I released the arrow. It once again missed the target.
