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And if that were the case, I would go home, of course.
But how in hell was I supposed to know?
I watched Zera limp through the garden as she tended to her food – her bony frame about to snap under the weight of a world she could no longer save. Reining in the darkness. Keeping the peace.
Understanding.
The insight struck with lightning force, coming out of nowhere and yet so painfully self-evident I should have seen it days ago. Of course I hadn't been able to move that bloody bag. Not with the way I’d gone about it – out of curiosity, trying to make a point. But none of this was about being right or wrong. It was about keeping the world safe, about protecting the last bit of hope we could find.
If I truly only wanted to know on which side of the line I fell, rather than to show anyone what I could or couldn’t do …
Maybe it was time for one last attempt.
Chapter 19
Iwaitedafullhour after Zera had gone to bed, sitting on the doorstep of her small cottage, staring at the spring constellations, thinking of Creon. I wondered where he was and what he was thinking. Wondered if he missed me, wondered what he’d say of the idiocy I was about to attempt, and decided he’d probably enjoy himself tremendously if he had any idea – a thought that cheered me up far better than the prospect of likely failure.
It was the image of his smile in my mind’s eye that eventually moved me to get up and make my way back into the cottage, where the last glowing embers in the fireplace still provided a little light. I lit a single candle, just to be sure the room wouldn’t go all dark, then tiptoed back to that damn bag in the corner by the bedroom door, which looked deceptively unremarkable.
I sat down before it, breathing slowly to keep my rattling heart in check, and gently placed my palm against the rough cloth.
Understanding.
How else would one carry the grief of others?
I closed my eyes and thought of Creon – not the dangerously seductive, painfully brilliant side of him, but the part he hid like a shameful secret, the loss and the loneliness and the overwhelming guilt. Thought of Agenor, of his fears as the years passed and my mother was still nowhere to be found. Thought of the tears leaking from Lyn’s eyes, thought of Tared and the light blazing around him—
And the bag’s grief rolled over me.
It wasn’t mine, and yet it was. Somehow it feltfamiliar, the anguish blooming from the marrow of my own bones and oozing into every fibre of my being; I learned to distinguish a dozen shades of sorrow in that first heartbeat, the gnawing cold of guilt and the suffocating weight of lingering heartbreak, the bitter taste of what could have been, the never-ending spirals of self-reproach. The shadows of Creon’s soul were part of mine, suddenly, a tangle of blood-drenched memories. The years of Agenor’s life pressed down on my shoulders, the awareness of the world he’d lost and would never see again. I recognised the bruises on Lyn’s overburdened heart, the scalding flares of Tared’s bonded love, the yearning emptiness where their life together should have been.
And under my palm, the rough cloth gave way just a fraction.
Nothing more than a hint of softness where unyielding steel had been, but it wasmovement, and the breath caught in the back of my throat as I pressed my fingers deeper. I hadn't expected even that much yet. This was the easy part – the people I loved and understood already.
How in hell did Zera empathise with people she wanted dead?
The softness under my fingers turned rigid again. Damn it. Perhaps that was not the place to start. I drew in a deep breath and thought of Valdora of Svirla, the sour-faced, thin-lipped alf female who seemed to have made it her life’s mission to object to every single word I spoke on the Council floor. An adversary I didn’t want to see dead by any means – I just wanted her to shut the hell up every now and then.
But if I stopped being offended and tried to understand … She was the head of a large house, overseeing several dozen alves whose safety depended on her decisions. She’d lived to see a proud, independent family reduced to underground rebels, had survived centuries of warfare and the hell of the Last Battle, and now some stubborn twenty-one-year-old was telling her how to save the world?
I recognised her particular flavour of sadness the moment it unfolded within me, as if my flicker of empathy was the only invitation it needed – the aching absence of a father she’d lost, the burden of a house she felt she could never do justice to, a worry for the future that kept her awake at night.
Oh, hell. I swore to the bag before me I’d never snap at her again.
It shifted another fraction.
Encouraged, I thought of Thysandra – cold, stoic Thysandra with her almost unwavering loyalty to the fae empire and the Mother. Had she ever known anything other than the intrigue and backstabbing of the Crimson Court? Wasn’t it quite understandable, really, that she’d ended up clinging to anything stable in that environment, even if the most stable thing happened to be a murderous High Lady terrorising the world?
And there it was, rising in me with a timidity bordering on fright – Thysandra’s quiet pain of always remaining overlooked and undervalued, of fighting for every word of appreciation. It wasmypain now, memories mingling with magic, and again the bag moved when I pressed against it, shoving perhaps half an inch over the smooth wooden floorboards.
Ophion. I pressed away the sting of cold loathing at the image of that slick smile and those vicious green eyes – loathing was too easy. Sure, he may be a violent bastard, but then again …Kinslayer. Would any creature, no matter how ambitious, really slaughter his entire family and not waste another feeling on it? Or might the cocky arrogance be some stubborn attempt to convince not just the rest of the world, but also himself that the sacrifice had been worth it?
That thought was all it took.
Ophion’s grief didn’t rise timidly. It pierced through me like a blade to the heart and brought a tidal wave of agony in its wake, the wounds of dozens, if not hundreds of other fae I’d wanted dead. Hurt took over, a tangle of spine-chilling images. I was the blade cutting my own father’s throat. I was the cries of a dying child. I was the fearful glance over my shoulder, I was the odd smell of the wine an enemy handed me, I was the straight-faced lie that framed the innocent … My own body ceased to exist. I became the fears of a conniving court, the forced smiles and the desperate kills and the bone-crunchinglonelinessof that life in the service of death.
But I understood. Hell take me, I understood.
