Stone gently grabbed her hand, untangling it from where she gripped her hair. “So then tell me.”
She shook her head and spun back toward the tunnel. “If I return to Vargah empty handed, my father will disown me. More than he already has.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I made a mistake,” she said so quietly Stone almost missed it. “When we were all children. I made a mistake and it ruined my family. It ruined me.” Aesira lowered the torch and faced Stone. “Ican’t afford to keep making mistakes. To keep disappointing and hurting people. I have to find Desmond. I have to get this right. Kamari will be out of time. The treaty will be abolished. War will be back in Vargah and Novaria before we know it.” Hurt flashed across her face, in her eyes, in the tightness of her mouth.
Stone wouldn’t have that.
“The very fabric of my being is stitched together by my mistakes,” he said. "It doesn't mean I don't deserve a chance at a future. It doesn't mean you don't either.”
Silence hung around them as she watched him. Her face morphing between sadness and resolve. Then, she stepped forward, her arms snaking around his middle, her face pressed against his chest. "Thank you."
His hand found its way to the back of her head where he anchored her in place. "For what?"
She looked up and he had to fight against the urge to thread his fingers through her hair and keep her close.
"I just think I've needed to hear that for a very long time," she said. To his pleasure, she pressed her cheek back into his chest, her voice muffled through the fabric of his shirt. “Eldrin was only nine when he died. We were huddled together in our safe room. Kamari, Eldrin, and I. We were meant to stay put. Stay quiet. He heard the singing first and wanted to follow it. Kamari tried to stop him, but I let him go. I opened the door. I dared him to look.”
The beating in his chest slammed against his ribs and he wondered if Aesira could feel the way his heart overworked when she was close to him.
“The Strix was waiting on the other side. It flew so fast, he was gone before I could even scream.” She pressed her face deeper intohis chest, so he held her closer, one hand around her waist and the other against the back of her head.
“I was sent to the Order that same year and if I fail this, I’m done,” she said. She peeled herself away, letting the spot against his heart grow cold. “The Order has already stationed me elsewhere but if I don’t make this right, I’ll be forced to hang up my armor. Forced to join the temple. Live a life of solitude.” A broken smile spread across her lips. “Pathetic, right. The great Aesira Zeliath.”
Her dry laugh rang down the cavernous tunnels. “I’m a fraud. My reputation is built on desperately trying to please others in the hopes of burying my own mistakes. I thought coming here I’d be able to find a part of myself worth saving. Be this great person so many others see but the truth of who I am—a reckless, broken girl with horrible habits of hurting those she cares about—can’t be outrun.”
He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. “If you are a fraud, then we are the same." Her face twisted, then a deep, nefarious growl cut through one of the tunnels, splintering the stone in the wall of runes.
“What was that?" Aesira clutched his arm.
Another growl shook the ground beneath their boots, vines quaking on the walls.
“Run.” Stone grabbed her hand as she ditched the torch. The ladder creaked and wobbled.
Another low growl from the hallway. Closer. Louder. “Quickly," he said, pushing Aesira up, the ladder shaking beneath the weight of them.
The ceiling shook, rocks tumbling to the ground, slicing into their arms and legs on the way.
“Almost there,” Aesira said.
She reached the top, pulled herself up. Stone was a few rungs behind, another ear–splitting roar reverberated up the tunnel. Stone’s hands gripped the opening, Aesira’s fingers pulling at his shirt, when the last rung gave way, making him slip farther down. “Stone!”
He caught himself, pulled himself up and out of the opening just before one of the rungs on the ladder snapped and they slammed the hatch shut.
“A dragon?” Bee’s honey eyes were wide as they sat around a campfire. “A real dragon?”
“We don’t know if it was a dragon.” Stone tossed a stick into the fire. Another headache was brewing behind his eyes but he was thankful that whatever feeling had gnawed at his stomach in the tunnels had disappeared. “We didn’t actually see anything but whatever it was, it was not happy we disrupted it,” he said. Aesira glanced at Stone through the flames. The firelight mixed with her eyes, kissing her skin in warmth.
They hadn’t talked since they fled the hatch, hurriedly told Birdie and Bee to find a campsite as far from the ruins as possible, and now they were here. Not saying what they should be saying.We almost died, again. You told me your secrets now let me tell you mine.
“I guess we can rule out that the king is not anywhere underground.” Birdie wrapped her arm around Bee’s shoulder. “A small blessing.”
“I’ll take the first shift,” Aesira said. Birdie and Bee found a place to curl up and Stone should have left too, should have found somewhere quiet to close his eyes until it was his shift, but he couldn’t find the strength to leave her alone. Not after what she told him underground. When she noticed he was still next to her, she sighed and bumped his shoulder. “Go to bed,” she said. “I have this.”
“I’m not tired.” It was a lie. He was exhausted but he wrapped his fingers around hers and held her hand tightly. “I wanted to tell you something, before…” He shook his head. “Well before whatever that was, interrupted us.” She stroked her thumb along the back of his hand, he savored the gentle notion. “I’ve seen Ravki before.”
Aesira studied his face and he wanted to shrink against her burning eyes. She was so beautiful. Powerful. Leagues above him, but she was also right here, still holding his hand, and maybe that meant more than he would allow himself to believe.
