His voice broke, and Ezer’s heart did a terrible twinge. Today was full of awful revelations.
‘I tried to bring her back to Alaris, but it was too late. The wolves were closing in, and I had to fly away. I had to …’ He took a shuddering breath. ‘I had to leave her behind. So that I, the future of Lordach, could survive.’
His eyes were downcast. Terrible, the expression on his face.
He looked like he hated himself.
‘I went back after the battle ended, to recover her by sunrise. To bury her the way she deserved. But when I got there … she was gone. I found the site; I could see the blood in the snow.’ His voice broke. ‘And now … now she fights on the Acolyte’s side.’
It was silent for quite some time. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, watched the way he seemed to let the grief wash over him, before he forced it away.
‘How?’ Ezer asked.
He shrugged. ‘The Acolyte’s magic is dark. A terrible thing. We’re told not to leave the victims behind, because the Acolyte … he has the power to bring the wounded back from the edge, with a loyalty so strong, they don’t fear death any longer.’
That was news to her.
And it made the Acolyte all the more terrifying.
‘What was her name?’ Ezer asked.
His eyes met hers, and they looked so utterly sad. ‘Soraya. She was betrothed to Kinlear.’
Of course.
That name … she’d heard it countless times now, spoken between Kinlear and Arawn like a curse.
An untouchable thing.
It all made sense now, why they seemed to hate each other. Why they stiffened in one another’s presence.
‘I failed her,’ Arawn said. ‘I could have trained her harder, could have paid more attention, and?—’
‘You tried,’ Ezer breathed, and suddenly she understood why he’d spoken those hurtful words to her the other night. They weren’t about her at all. Not really.
Because when he looked at Ezer … he saw the ghost of Soraya.
It hurt her more than she cared to admit. Was that why, all this time, he’d been drawn to her? Why he’d given her the speaking stone, why he’d tried to train her to fight and wield?
Was she a way for him to fix his mistakes?
She wrapped her arms even tighter around herself, wishing she could fade into the steam.
But that would require walking away from him. To leave him standing here, alone and broken … and she didn’t know if she had the strength to do it.
‘I didn’t try hard enough,’ he said.
She remembered the words he’d uttered to her in the woods, when he’d first empathized with her about losing her uncle. About her own grief. And so she echoed those words back to him now.
‘I understand that to mourn … is to feel half dead yourself.’
His lips parted, like he remembered, too.
‘My magic – my connection to the gods – it has struggled since losing Soraya. She is why I’m not in battle, Ezer. She is why I’m too weak to fight, a liability if I go to war before it returns. We grew up together. I had hoped …’ His cheeks reddened. ‘… that maybe she and I would be matched. She made me feel things I didn’t know were possible in this life. She made me feelfree.’
Ezer could see the light leave his eyes when he spoke of freedom. It was something the Sacred did not have … and for him, it had died with Soraya.
‘I never told her how I felt. And thank the gods, because they chose Kinlear for her instead.’
