With trembling fingers, I slip my hand into his.
Xander finds some towels in the bathroom of the loft and brings them down for me to dry off, my teeth chattering from more than just the cold.
“It’s the adrenaline,” he says without prompting, letting me choose where to sit first. I sink down into Alexi’s chair, and Xander takes the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. “It’ll be coursing through you for a while, so don’t be surprised if you find it difficult to sleep tonight.”
“It already is,” I say under my breath, setting the towel on the ground before leaning back, hugging my knees to my chest. Emotions I haven’t let surface in weeks press at my chest and behind my eyes, but instead I focus my attention on Bella. OnSiyala. “Tell me about her.”
Xander does. He launches into the tale of how she was captured by the guards at the Mage Kingdom border, shot but not dead. The pain of the arrow had forced her to shift, a surprise to everyone including her. “It took a while for her to talk to me, towantto talk to me,” he says, his gaze forward as he recalls his time with her—with Siyala.
“What made her talk?”
“I didn’t torture her. I didn’t lay a finger on her,” he says quickly, likely hearing the accusation in my tone. “I got her to open up to me by telling her aboutmyself.” He lets out an embarrassed laugh, the tops of his cheeks turning a light shade of pink. “I groveled, for lack of a better word, and apologized for my inaction when the king came to the tower. I explained the resistance and who the king was to me. I assumed she wouldn’t give a shit about any of it, but Siyala proved me wrong. She is strong. Fierce. A force to be reckoned with, and I figured that theonly way I could gain her trust was to give her something she could use against me if she needed to.”
“And did she? Need to, I mean?”
He shakes his head, tucking the dark strands at his temple behind his ear. “No. Siyala and I became friends. Of a sort.”
My eyebrow arches at the added definition.
“We talked a lot about her life in the tower. What she remembered from back home. And about you.”
Heat creeps my own cheeks when I ask, “What did she say about me?”
“She didn’t dive into anything personal when it came to you, not for my lack of trying. I didn’t know anything about you—besides the fact that you are the true heir to the throne and that the king is obsessed with you. I had no idea what sort of danger you might pose or what kind of obstacle you’d be. All I knew of you is that you ran away with a guard who I later found out was a prince and that you had magic. Beyond that”—he shrugs, the right corner of his mouth lifting a fraction—“it wasn’t until I spoke to Siyala that I learned enough about you to know that you were—are—a good person. And if she was willing to endure whatever torment King Dolian might inflict on her, while snarling in his face that she’d kill him, then you must be someone worth protecting. You must be someoneofworth to her.”
My chin falls to my chest as I bite down on my lower lip. I don’t deserve that sort of praise and certainly not from her. She had been trapped, just as much a prisoner as I was. “And yet she endured more suffering because of me. Because of who I am to the king.”
“You can’t hold yourself accountable for other people’s choices, Rhea,” he counters, flexing his hands where they rest between his knees. “You didn’t order the guards to shoot her. You didn’t demand that they bring her back to the dungeon forthe king to question. And if you want to argue that she was only in the forestbecauseof you, then you also need to acknowledge that atanymoment, Siyala could have chosen to leave you. She had the mental awareness to run away from you and Nox and try to find her way back to the Shifter Kingdom on her own. But shechoseyou. She made that choice not out of command by you but because shewantedto.”
My chest rises with a ragged breath.
“Take it from someone who has had to learn how to navigate around their own guilt. There is no amount of self-imposed penance that can ever fix someone else’s choice.”
“And what sort of things might you blame yourself for?”
“The death of my mother. Of my friends. Of Alexi and countless others.” He looks down at his hands, turning his palms to face up. “I know what it is to feel like everyone who comes into contact with you is now in danger. Iknowbecause it’s something I live with too.”
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, shaking my head. “For those losses. For the way I treated you when I first got here.”
Xander gives a quick nod, looking about as uncomfortable as I’ve ever seen him—earlier talk of Siyala included—before stoicism once more masks his features. The ease with which he can let his guard down and put it back up again is impressive. I ask more about Siyala, and he explains her time in captivity and how he helped her escape.
“She is back home in the Shifter Kingdom?”
“I made sure of it,” he answers. Then, more quietly and with a gentle fondness, he adds, “Much to her chagrin.”
I smile as a fraction of the tension caught in my chest eases knowing that Siyala is now safe. And I’mhonoredto know her true name, even if I might never have the opportunity to call her by it. My shivers begin to subside as quiet once more trickles in,Xander and I watching each other until he lets loose a long sigh and leans back against the couch.
“So.”
“So,” I mimic, sweat beading along the back of my neck. I expect him to berate me for my actions, and I prepare whatever meager defense I can in preparation.
But Xander catches me off guard when he says, “Come with me to meet the members of the resistance.”
“I— Xander, it’s too risky. If the king—”
“Look, I understand, probably as well as you do, what the risks are. The dangers. I’ve lived my entire life pretending to be something I’m not in order to build this movement. I’m going to tell you what I told the men who wanted you dead because of the risk you pose to it all: IfIam willing to bring you in, knowing that at any moment you could betray us, that the king could force you to tell him everything, then that should be enough reasoning for anyone else. Please, Rhea, I think it will be beneficial for us all if you go.”
My throat constricts around a single word. “Why?”
