AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m in the outer room of Stavros’s quarters, on the sofa where I always sleep. It was only a dream.
My gaze finds the man who haunted me in that dream standing a few paces away, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression set in a glower. “You were mumbling and thrashing around. It was getting disturbing.”
My mouth tightens. “Sorry I disrupted your sleep.”
The other time the former general woke me from a nightmare, he leaned right in to shake my shoulder. He seemed mostly amused when I nearly sliced open his throat before I realized who he was.
He trusted that I wouldn’t actually hurt him then. He doesn’t now.
He knows how easily I could.
Not a single bit of magic squirms in my chest, though. There’s nothing about this situation it can fix, as even it is apparently aware.
Stavros shrugs, and a different part of my brain kicks in, noting that he’s only wearing an undershirt and drawers. The sculpted brawn of his arms and legs is on full display, his biceps flexing with the movement. “I’m sure my sleep is very high on your list of concerns. I’ll be fine now.”
I expect him to stalk away, but he pauses with just a slight shift of his feet. “What was terrifying you this time? Ster. Torstem and his cronies?”
My gut twists at the memory. An honest answer tumbles out before I can think better of it. “The hangman’s noose.”
Stavros’s stance goes absolutely still. He stares at me for a moment, all trace of the glower gone.
We also both know who’s most likely to lead me to that noose.
Does he have any idea how nervous I’ve been of him all along? Has it even occurred to him how much courage it took to stay here night after night, knowing how badly things could go wrong ifheof all people discovered my secret?
Even when he’d warmed to me, even when he was beingnice, I was still a little bit terrified of him.
It’s all out on the table now, though. I don’t have to hold back anything I’d want to say out of fear of what he’d realize if he reads between the lines.
Maybe it would help me re-earn his trust if he could see that I’ve considered his side too.
I swallow against the dryness of my mouth. “I understand, you know. Why you consider me a threat. Why you see riven as monsters. I don’t trust my magic either. Why do you think I’ve tried so hard not to use it?”
A little of the bite comes back into Stavros’s voice. “Why not turn yourself in, then?”
I grimace at him. “Because I haven’t been using it. I’ve kept it under control. If I really thought I was on the verge of being a danger to the people around me…”
“It doesn’t seem as if most riven think of themselves that way.”
“Most riven go insane,” I mutter, and hesitate. I’ve barely admitted what I’m going to say even to myself before.
But it’s true.
My fingers curl into the sheet puddled around my waist. “I assume the insanity comes from using the power. So as long as I restrain myself, my head shouldn’t get muddled like that. Sometimes… sometimes I think it’s a good thing the first time I realized what I could do, I killed my sister. If it’d been a smaller act with smaller consequences, I’d probably have kept going. I’d have hurt so many more people. This way the damage was mostly contained.”
Julita speaks up from the back of my skull.Ivy… you can’t think any of it was right. You shouldn’t have had to deal with this mad power at all.
And yet I do have to deal with it. I can’t say my pain is worse than what I could have inflicted on hundreds of others combined.
Stavros’s jaw clenches. For a second, I think he’s either going to shout at me or laugh.
But when he speaks again, his tone is milder. “Is that why you took up your calling as the Hand of Kosmel? You said you had things you wanted to set right. You decided it was some kind of penance?”
“Something like that.” I look down at my hands. “I was born with a broken soul. I know that makes me a monster. But for as long as I’m able to… I’d like to be other things too.”
My body tenses, braced for the blow I’m expecting to come, whether verbal or physical.
Stavros props himself against the side of a nearby armchair, no longer looking as if he’s holding himself back from storming away. His arms come down, the one that ends in a stump resting on his thigh. He doesn’t wear a prosthetic to bed, of course.
