I want to tell him to fuck off. This ishisfault. But I fold over, focusing on pulling in the air that I desperately need until my vision begins to clear.
A pair of dark, worn leather boots comes into view. I keep my eyes on them.
Cindral rarely wore the same boots twice if he could help it.
He says nothing. Only waits quietly as I pull myself back together. As I build up those pieces once more, pulling in the broken threads until I can swallow. My hands still tremble as I raise my head.
“You don’t need to answer.” He studies me, and I despise the hint of softness behind his gaze. The faint thawing of hatred because he feels sorry for me. “I won’t touch the topic again.”
“I don’t want your sympathy.” Even my voice sounds broken, and I swallow again. “What else is on this list for today?”
He looks at me for a long moment. “I need to attend the training ground. I’ll take you back to the…I’ll take you back.”
The thought of that—of sitting and watching those bars for hours once again, not moving and alone with my own thoughts—
“Take me with you.”
Kaelen
This is a mistake.
Raising a hand in response to Eldritch’s shouted greeting, I stop myself from looking back for the dozenth time. Lyra’s footsteps are heavier now than they were this morning, and I find myself slowing my pace without voicing her delay.
I’ve seen fear so many times. I’ve seen wielders filled with it as they faced their end and the unknown to follow, seen it in the faces of families waiting for news, and I’ve seen it in the fucking mirror too many times to count. So much so that I’ve stopped looking.
I know what pretending it isn’t there looks like.
Damn it all, but I don’t want to soften to her. She’s Vaelion’sdaughter—and though it doesn’t surprise me that she was mistreated under his care, I still feel the stirring of anger low in my stomach. More than that, I find myself wanting to know…more. My fingers rub against each other to stop myself reaching for her again.
Eres has already lost his mind over her. Darian, too.
Darian knows.
Her thoughts made him ill, and her dreams nearly killed him. The nightmares that wait inside her mind were dark enough to petrify even a dreamwalker, and yet the witch keeps her face so expressionless that you’d think she thought of nothing at all.
Lyra. Her name blooms again in my head, and I try to bat it away. But it lingers.
I don’t want to think of her as a person. As aLyra. Easier to place her into the box in my mind, to name her an enemy and not think of her at all.
Except that’s proving surprisingly difficult, and extremely inconvenient.
I can’t afford another person to care about, and particularly not awitch. Not even when that witch walks quietly at my side, her chin lifted and fists clenched as if she waits for the next blow. She believes herself to be broken. Worthless, if her words last night were any indication. Vaelion let her believe that. And did far worse.
He tortured her.
Touch her skin. It’s new.
Even the thought of what that means raises bile at the back of my throat. I’m starting to suspect she is neither broken nor worthless. That perhaps her own pain outweighs even ours, hidden beneath haunting eyes of flame and ember that I can’t banish from my mind.
Lyra.
Jumping the rickety fence easily, I’m halfway through turning to offer her assistance when her feet land with a thump on the ground beside me.
“Be careful.” I don’t mean to snap at her, but I’m not sure I have anything other than anger inside me anymore.
Perhaps she and I are more alike than we realize, because she snarls right back at me. “I’m perfectly capable of climbing a ridiculously small fence.”
Fuck, but she has a temper. Maybe one to match mine, and I suddenly feel a prang of sympathy for Eres for putting up with me for so long. And for Darian, too. Erevan knows he’s faced the worst of me more than once, and my stomach turns over once more. Another conversation we need to have.
