“I know.”
“Boden’sgone,Antal.”
There it came, the wound they’d been dancing around—layers of reconciliation and grief bandaged around the freshest cut, trying to staunch the bleeding. There went Fi’s mortar. There went her wall. Boden was gone, reduced to a memory of blood choking her nose and his hand too light in hers, of screams sent to the Void until her throat turned raw. What happened to that fierce woman she’d been, standing her ground against a daeyari? She could barely stand now, clinging to Antal with whitened knuckles.
“What do I do Antal? How do I make this stop hurting?”
Her chest tightened, scarcely room to breathe. Antal held her against him.
“You don’t, Fionamara. It hurts a little less with time. Not right now. I’m sorry.”
She let him lower her to the ground, let him pull her into his lap so she wouldn’t have to sit in snow, his arms warm around her. She pressed her head into his chest as tears stung her eyes.
Antal always lauded her bravery. She couldn’t let him see her cry.
“Before he died,” Fi said. “Boden said he forgave me. Did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”
Boden was selfless to the end, using his final words to free her. Fi didn’t know what to do with freedom, with Boden gone and Astrid gone and only herself remaining. This persona she’d manufactured out of fear, finally unshackled from the trial they’d endured ten years ago, testing whether she could stand on her own.
Antal stroked her hair, light claws against her scalp. “Do you regret the years you spent with him?”
Of course not. They were good years, good memories of building Nyskya into a home. Fi and Boden did their best with what they had.
“I wouldn’t trade them for anything,” she said.
“Then your time with him wasn’t wasted.” Lower, “Razik looked me in the eyes as he died. My father’s claws at his throat, he looked at me and said it wasn’t my fault. That he’d choose me again. Then I watched him bleed out on the floor.” A heavy breath lifted his chest, lifted Fi as she burrowed against him. “A century later, I’m still not sure I deserved that forgiveness. But it was given to me. Wasting it would be far greater insult.”
Fi clamped her mouth shut. She didn’t trust her voice not to crack.
“It’s ok.” Antal tipped her chin up—forced the motion when she resisted—exposing a rebellious scowl and tear-damp cheeks that stung in the cold. “Thisis ok.”
He brushed a knuckle beneath her eye, wiping it dry.
Fi only knew how to hiss. To fight. “This has all been an act. I’m a coward.”
Antal scoffed. “Impossible.”
“It’s true. I pretend to be brave. I pretend to know what I’m doing.” The confession rolled out of her, evidenced by tear-stained cheeks. “This is all I really am inside.”
“Have you ever thought less of me? The moments I’ve shown you vulnerability?”
Fi paused. Frowned. “No…” His softness brought them closer. She respected him more for it. She shook her head. “No, but that’s not…”
“Not what?”
“That’sdifferent.”
It wasn’t different. It wasn’t different at all, and Fi’s brain couldn’t process the realization, that the trait she’d found so endearing in Antal was the exact same she’d warred against in herself.
“Strength is easy to fake, Fionamara. Vulnerability is hard. Yet here you sit.”
Fi’s sight blurred behind tears, hot in her eyes, chilling her lashes. She’d felt less exposed when she lay naked beneath him, begging him to put his teeth on her. Yet Antal met her without derision.
Her walls crumbled.
