“There’s no rush, Sam,” Jo offered, settling in to wait, her free hand resting against his knee. “The elves say we have at least two more days until we reach High Luana anyway. You have time. Just go slow.”
Samson took another breath, a deep inhale that seemed wet with brimming tears, and a quiet, grounding exhale through his nose. When he looked at Jo, he seemed less anxious, and older than she’d ever seen him. Suddenly, she thought she could see every year of the countless hundreds he had lived.
“Why doesn’t he want anything to do with us?”
“He’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” As far as Jo was concerned, the only thing anyone should fear was Pan.
“Afraid of losing his world again, his people, his culture. He sees the Society as the catalyst for . . . for the last time he lost it all.”
Jo pressed her lips together, mulling over her next question. “When you say ‘lost it all,’ you mean his wish?”
“No, that was the first time he lost it all—his wish that brought him to the Society,” Samson whispered, never breaking eye contact with Jo. “The last time was my wish.” Her blood ran cold, even as anticipation and intrigue licked beneath her skin. “My wish caused the end of the original Age of Magic.”
Jo . . . hadn’t been expecting that. Luckily, once the floodgates had opened, Samson wasted no time elaborating.
“There was a war,” he said, and then laughed dejectedly to himself. “There’s always a war, isn’t there? But I . . . I wasn’t a soldier. I was a fletcher, watching my fellow countrymen die, watching villages burn, and I . . .” Samson shivered, no doubt remembering the sights and sounds of death, the stench and pain of a war he’d never wanted to be a part of. “The war was between those who had magic and those who did not. And I thought that maybe, if I begged, if I wished hard enough, I could—” His words failed him for a moment. But with a harsh exhale and a tightening of his jaw, he finished. “I wished to remove all magic from the world. I thought if I wished for it all to be gone, every last trace of it from everyone and everything, there’d be nothing to fight over anymore.”
“It didn’t just take the magic away, did it?” Bile rose at the back of Jo’s throat, her stomach twisting violently. “It also removed the magical peoples and creatures, too, right?”
“I didn’t know that I’d . . . I didn’t mean for it todowhat itdid. I hadn’t realized that—” Samson babbled, burying his face in the free hand not linked fiercely and painfully with Jo’s. “I had never meant for something like that to happen, but I . . . I couldn’t take it back. S-Snow said the deed had been done—it was when we learned about the dangers of forcing a transition without closing the Severity of Exchange. He’d forced the jump and it completely made a new age. Maybe if he’d hadn’t? But the damage was done. Eslar blamed me for the erasure of his people from the first moment I woke in the Society.”
Jo remembered her first week at the Society, and Eslar’s passing comment about a time when Elves had existed. There were also the comments about Snow, how shifts with wide Severities of Exchange could be . . . violent. She’d been too new, too green to catch any subtleties between Eslar and Samson at the time, but now every remembered interaction between them seemed weighted.
What must that have been like for Eslar, watching a wish decimate his entire race? To have to live with the one at the root of such genocide for decades, generations? But to find the cause not to be a wretched soul, but a good-hearted man who made a scared and hasty choice that too many paid for?
“You and Eslar though . . .” Jo paused, trying to find the right words. “You always seemed so close.”
“That took years andyearsof apologies.” Samson sniffled through tears that seemed determined to fall even through his fingers. “It was a century before I could even get him to pass the salt. Eventually . . . Yes, we found a quiet peace and I thought it may have been enough. But how could have it had been?
“Now, the elves have returned—he’s got people back. He’s got hishomeback now. And . . . I thought that maybe, maybe he’d l-let me apologize once more, g-give me a chance to finally s-settle this so that we could move forward and put it all behind us for good.” With a quick swipe at his eyes that did nothing for the snot and tears streaking his dark features, Samson looked at Jo with a weary smile. “I know I don’t deserve closure, but I had hoped for it. We spent so many years together . . . there was so much time and he seemed like he . . . Not that you ever get over something like that. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been the one to ask him for help, he’d have listened to your plea. Perhaps if I hadn’t been selfish, if I hadn’t wanted it to be me to bridge the gap, he would have offered his assistance in all of this far sooner. And for that . . . For that, Jo, I am sorry.”
His words were filled with guilt and longing and pain, and Jo felt her own magic mingle with his, taking in the despair and destruction as if she could remove it from deep within him, spare him from it all. She eased him into another hug, allowing tears to soak into the fabric of her tunic as she rubbed soothing circles into his back.
It was obvious now, where all Samson’s anxieties about contacting Eslar had originated. Still, he’d tried. For the team and for the mission and for Snow, he had tried and tried and tried. And while much was still left unsaid, that had to count for something.
If nothing else, Samson’s pain and guilt counted for Jo, and she would find a way to make them count for Eslar, too.
Chapter 12
A Royal Audience
Two more days on the ship to get to High Luana were proving to be two too long.
Wayne and Takako had spent the first portion of the trip gambling with the elves and then the second portion avoiding the elves due to Wayne’s cheating. After Sam had confessed his secret to Jo, they’d spent the better part of the evening together, doing nothing at all. Jo appreciated the quiet companionship and she had a feeling Samson felt much the same, because he sought her out the day after, and the day after that.
Finally, High Luana came into view.
Mountains stretched up from the sea, and above them towered a giant spire. It stood offset from the main island, connected by an arching bridge made of two colossal sculpted elves linking outstretched hands, palms upturned, as though they were holding the bridge itself between their loving arms.
“Is that—”
“The castle where the king sits? Yes.” The tall elf cut her off. “The bridge to it has stood even longer than the Sapphire Bridge.” He gave her a long side-eye.
“My assurances still stand. Bring me to Eslar Greentouch and I won’t destroy another thing of elvish make. Despite what you and your men may think, I am no enemy of the elves.”
A curt nod was his only response.
