“You can, and you will,” he pants, voice gradually petering out. “If you wish to return home.”
He dangles St. Laurent like a carrot before a horse. Does his cruelty know no bounds? And yet… he is right. Idowish to return home.
Wordlessly, I pry the oars from his stiffened fingers. Another wave breaks over our vessel. Arctic water showers us, and I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood.I can do this. Just keep rowing.
It is not the East Wind who rows our fragile vessel to the door suspended in the middle of the sea. It is a mortal woman from Marles, cutting through tumultuous waters, hands white-knuckled around the oars until her arms give out.
18
ABARRAGE OF WIND BLASTSopen the doors to our suite. The East Wind stalks inside, the frayed hem of his cloak snapping around the scuffed leather of his menacing black boots. I pause warily at the threshold, watching him pace. His spine is a rod of iron attaching hips to skull. His shoulders—bunched, coiled with repressed rage—creep continually toward his ears. Soon enough, he will wear a channel into the floor.
I trace the scar on my bicep where the wound from the arrow has smoothed over. Following the second trial, the final twelve were taken to the infirmary, where they were treated and released. Having completed the second trial in last place, Eurus and I were the last ones to be seen by the healers.
“Last place isn’t how I imagined I’d be entering the final trial,” the East Wind growls.
After a moment, I step inside and shut the door. Pacing and pacing and more pacing: door, desk, sofa, table. As he passes before the window, the shadow of his body momentarily eclipses me. “I don’t understand. You’re a contender for the prize. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Eurus halts, pivots to face me, that hood seething with darkness, always. “I should have been first,” he says. “I told you how important it was that I make the top three for the final trial. The advantage is enough to all but guarantee victory.” His wings stir, the long, curvedbones partially unfolding in a motion I have come to recognize as a desire to flee. “Instead,” he clips out, “I find myself in last place, the odds of winning too slim for comfort.”
Shaking his head, he turns to stare out the window. What does he see? Likely nothing. Not the gilded skin of this marvelous city, nor how the mountains cast violet across the valleys where the forest thickens and a ribbon of silver carves a slender path.
“I should have asked someone else for help,” he mutters, his back to me.
Lamplight spills across the overlapping black scales encasing his wings. I stare at the hundreds of small, self-contained suns shining across his back, and wonder why I feel no joy at witnessing how beautifully the light is refracted. “You said you n-needed me,” I murmur with a sinking heart. “That I was the only person you could trust.”
“That may be true, but trust isn’t how you win a tournament. Victory is not claimed by the weak.”
“Are you insinuatingI’mthe r-r-reason you came in last?”
Eurus whirls around. “Had you not hesitated in climbing down the cliffs, we would have likely reached the beach first, unscathed.”
Though my back seeks to bend, my mind will not allow it. It is of iron, tempered steel. It reminds me of how far I have come. “I did my best to help y-you. Had I not b-been present, you would have succumbed to the poison before ever reaching the d-d-door.”
“If not for your delay,” he tosses back, “I might not have been hit at all. Had you swum to the boat, I could have reached the door without having to return to shore for you.”
I have often imagined an existence where fear of water did not plague me. Perhaps, in another life, I could have swum to the dock. But that life is not mine to claim. It never was.
“I don’t know wh-why you’re so upset,” I say, and I’m ashamed to find my voice quavering, my fumbling tongue not far behind. “We f-f-finished. You got to the th-third trial. You still h-have a chance to w-win—”
“There is no chance,” he says.
He will not give. It is everything or nothing.
“I h-hear you, Eurus. I’m trying to r-reassure you—”
“I don’t need your reassurance!” he shouts, tossing up a hand. “What I need is competence. Certainty. Courage.” He shakes his head at me, scoffs, then turns his back.
His blatant disregard for my feelingshurts. I am not perfect, but I am good. To think we’d made progress in building trust, however tedious the development.
“I d-don’t appreciate your t-t-treatment of m-me,” I grind out. “You could be k-k-kinder to—”
“I will do what I want.”
Blood crawls through my chest, up my face, its heat splitting open my veins. His response has all the finality of a guillotine. History dictates I bury my words. I pack them into a tight, dense ball of everything I wish to say but dare not. By the Mother, when do I decide what is best for me? When do I begin?
Think of what you want—then claim it for yourself.
“Shut up,” I whisper.
