Cindral, his lieutenant’s sigil gleaming against golden armor as he smiles down at me. His hands against my face as he pulls me to him, his lips sealing over mine. He had been so gentle, and I had been so happy to finally be seen as something more than the soldier they kept telling me I was.
My stomach had flipped. I had smiled beneath those full, warm lips, had pressed myself into him without knowing what I was asking for.
When he took my hand, I followed without question.
I don’t want to go any further. I don’t want the walker to see what happens next, and my head pulls back in instinctive refusal. Darian moves with me, his fingers not releasing my head where he holds it.
What a fool I had been, to think that I could have anything for myself. To see affection where there was only obedience. To mistake cruelty for softness.
“Steady.” The low, quiet tone attempts to soften the harsh sound of my breathing. “Just a little longer.”
I have no control over the small, pained noise that echoes from my throat in response to Darian. But my focus is on those memories, andonlythose. It’s all too easy to let myself sink back into the nightmares, let them swallow me up as they did so many times in the days and weeks that had followed, until I learned to box them up too, just like the rest.
But now I show them all to him.
Darian’s presence is barely noticeable. An itch, of sorts, the vague sensation of someone hovering behind me, just out of sight. But I can feel him, nonetheless. There’s a strange sort of comfort in that understanding, the knowledge that I am not alone in that room. Or perhaps it’s simply that I’m not there anymore. That my feet are planted firmly in Umbraxis, and Cindral is a long way away.
I let this man flick through my worst experiences, let him stand by and watch in the corner of my mind as a door closes behind me in Solvandyr on another day, and Cindral locks it behind him, pocketing the key.
Every detail unfurls between us in sickening clarity.
I am to teach you, he had said. And I had smiled again. Had taken his outstretched hand with a bubbling, girlish joy in my stomach, wonder and nerves fluttering in my stomach that I might finally experience what Reena whispered to me of with blushed cheeks during her visits.
But this was not what she had described to me.
After the first day, I had stopped smiling.
By the second day, I had stopped screaming, too.
And on the seventh day, when he had deemed my training complete, Cindral washed my golden blood from his hands at the basin without saying a single word. He walked away, and left me to bleed out on a soaked, stained bed.
I had dared to show him that small, hopeful part of me, the hidden piece of my soul that still remained after years beneath my father’s thumb, that was stillLyra, and he had stolen it. He ripped that version of me into pieces so small that I barely remember them now.
Duskbane will do worse, he whispered into my ear while I cried and begged him to stop.This is for your own good.
I push the memories away, shove them back down before anything else can slip through. I plunge into newer nightmaresinstead—Tharn, his mouth moving in unheard pleas, the way his blood sprayed scarlet and gleaming against crisp white snow. The sight of a soldier, clad in Lightbringer gold and chasing a boy through the dark trees, eating up the space between them with every long step. My arrow buried deep in his throat, the shock in his eyes. Angry faces, and shouts oftraitor,and pain. The bite of the snow against my back, soaking into my skin through a pretty white dress completely unsuitable for the Veilspire. The sight of the night sky, stars blurring in my fading vision and the scent of burning, innocent flesh in my nose.
It would have been a beautiful place to die.
When my eyes open again, my breathing is steady. It’s Darian who staggers back, sweat coating his face and his pale skin a sickly shade of green as he stares at me with that troubled, purple gaze.
He looks almost bruised, this male. As if the world has not been kind to him. A beautiful, broken bruise that wears his nightmares in the dark circles beneath his pretty eyes.
I wonder if I have added to them.
“Well?” The demand comes from behind Darian, and he flinches. “What did you get, Veyr?”
He doesn’t move his gaze from mine. I lift my chin and wait for him to share those days with the people watching us, waiting for him to offer up my worst moments as a form of payment for my life.
My lips feel dry. Cracked, and I taste iron as I lick them. He follows the movement, a small line forming between his eyes. But then the line smooths out, his lips lifting at the edges and the tinge clearing from his skin. He wipes his pain from his face so perfectly that I feel wrong-footed when his smile widens into something almost genuine.
He takes a step toward me, head tilting. And his words are almost a purr. “Not a lot. Empty-headed little Lightbringer.Although I saw enough to confirm her story as true, at least for the most part. Not a complete confirmation, but enough that I’m confident she’s not a complete liar.”
I wait. But he… he doesn’t say anything else.
Darian turns his back on me, slipping his hands into his pockets and sauntering back to his seat, dropping into it with the grace of a king as I stand there, searching for the trick. He reaches for the goblet in front of him and drinks deeply, draining it.
My eyes flick to the Duskbane prince. The reason for the memories I shared. But he’s not looking at me. Instead, he’s watching Darian, jaw tight and his eyes curiously bunched at the edges.
