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His brows furrowed. “I’ve not heard of structures within the Void.”
“I don’t understand why my guardian didn’t share more with me. Fuck, if I wasn’t so weak-hearted, I might have found the magic to heal my father long ago and avoided all of this pain and trouble.”
Renton’s palm flattened against her spine, straightening her up. Even perched on the railing, she had to angle her head to meet his eyes. “There is nothing to be gained from playing the what-if game. Trust me.”
“Would you kill your father to save your kingdom?”
He grimaced. “I’m not the right person to ask that question.”
“Why is that?”
“Because before I met you, I don’t think there was anything I wouldn’t do. Unlike Chaos that manipulates you, I had a choice in every one of my actions. Every decision I made. Unlike you, there is nothing redeemable inside me.”
Tenah couldn’t help but place a hand to his cheek. “Do you really think so little of yourself?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. When he didn’t respond, she placed both of her hands on his chest. The solid thud of his heart was a comfort, but the note of dark magic pulsing there stirred Chaos awake in her channels.
She shoved the dark magic back.Not a single drop of your vileness touches him.
You are quick to protect this one.
Panic reared up in her chest. She needed a quick distraction from the taunting voices before they caught on to just how much Renton meant to her.
“What did Boedworth do to you?” The question fell from her lips, stemming from her need to crawl inside his mind and examine his frayed pieces.
“It’s not a pleasant story.” Renton lifted her hand and pressed a lingering kiss to her palm.
“Not many things in our lives have been.”
Through long lashes, his eyes darkened a shade as if veiled by storm clouds. “Boedworth’s hatred started with my father’s opposition of his rise to power. The older clans recognized his wickedness. My father organized many protests and earned his clan the worst of the hunts, spanning as far as Advanth’s territory. He was absent for long stretches of time.”
Tenah understood the weight of that absence. The loneliness.
Renton absently stroked fingers along her markings. “It should have been Mias’s responsibility to care for my mother. She had horrible episodes, withering under the mass of voices in her mind. It was up to me and Aeyis to get her to drink water. Eat. Bathe. She once explained the range of her Ashen gift, and it still disturbs me.”
She grimaced. Much of her earlier years were hazy, but for the most part, she’d had Ames or the staff to tend to her needs. “You worry for Aeyis too.”
He gave a brief smile. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I became quite overprotective of him. Especially when Mias took a position under Boedworth. Mias saw an out from caring for a mother and the siblings he detested, and Boedworth saw an opportunity to further divide us. He single-handedly dismantled Mire’s clans until no one survived to oppose him.”
“He killed your father.” The words tasted bitter on her tongue, fires awakening in her channels. For a moment, she was grateful Boedworth had faced a demon in the end. She hoped her father had made him suffer.
“My father’s clan was ordered to Nightfall. When they didn’t return, my camp was dispatched as an initiation.” He reached out to trace the beaded hem of her shirt. “I should have never left home. But part of me reveled in the fact that I was good at what I did. I assumed I would make quick work of the hunt.”
Renton peered out at the swaying trees in the courtyard gardens. The pounding of drums thundered in the distance as Denoden kicked off its nightly festivities.
“Two Corrupt Ashens had ravaged Nightfall. We found my father’s clan skewered on the city’s spires. A hole had been burned through my father’s chest, so hot the wound had cauterized. He’d been dead for days.”
Bile rose up in her throat. She would have pulled her ruined hands from his body, horrified with herself for ever placing them upon him, but he kept them trapped over his slow-beating heart.
“My clan was demolished.Children, Tenah. We were all just fucking children pretending to be hunters. It didn’t matter how hard I fought. It wasn’t enough. Corrupt left me for last. I think they reveled in my pain. And then one of them…tore into its own chest with talons.” His features twisted. “One breath, I watched it rip out a sliver of crystal, stained black by its poisonous blood. The next, agony stabbed through me, and my vision went black. I was lost in it for a time.”
Tenah let her finger run slowly over the ridge of the scar through his shirt. “This.”
He nodded.
“Did it feel like death?”
“It felt like hell. Like my entire body would never be whole again. I was convinced I would die there. I wanted to, but then I thought of everyone else in the path of those monsters. And I couldn’t give up on them. My father’s body was too heavy to drag back to Mire, so I buried him in the sands as deep as my burnt fingers allowed. I walked for five days, driven by the need to warn the other clans, but no one could believe that a child would survive such an attack when my father’s clan had not.”
