The darkness threatened to consume her whole. One more betrayal was all it would take, and she may never trust again.
“Tell me it wasn’t you.” Sparks crackled around her fingers, singeing his once-bright coat. “Tell me it wasn’t you who ordered it!”
“I wish I could.”
Vi released him. She wasn’t sure if she pushed him or he stumbled back. But the net result was the same. Once more, they both stood against opposite walls in too-small space.
“Tell me… the truth.” Vi forced out. “No lies, no half-truths.” She shook her head and cast a hand through the air, as if she could dispel the shadows he’d spun around her—the mystery that had made him so horribly alluring. “Tell me what you’ve done. Tell me everything, like I asked of you in the West… and tell me why I shouldn’t tell Sarphos to get the whole of the morphi army and kill you as he wanted to from the start.”
“Other than the fact that if the morphi killed me, it truly would spell their demise?” Taavin said, painfully deadpan, worrying the bracelet around his wrist.
“Do not deflect!” Vi pointed her finger at him, wishing she could pin him down. His words were slippery things. “What is your role in all of this?”
Tell me you aren’t betraying me too, her mind screamed.
Taavin took a deep breath, his eyes fluttering closed. “Everything I’ve said has been the truth. I was taken from my home as a child by Lord Ulvarth and the Faithful. They murdered my mother and burned everything she’d worked to create to the ground. I was troubled by visions—nightmares of you.”
“This is not my fault,” Vi growled before he could continue. If he was about to blame his actions on her, he had another thing coming.
“My actions are my own.” The man had an uncanny and uncomfortable ability to read her mind. “But you need to understand where I was in life: I was alone, sequestered,tormented… And I was a pawn for Ulvarth to consolidate power. The Lord of Swords is nothing without the Voice. He needed someone as a figurehead—someone he could manipulate into saying everything he wanted. Someone who would live in fear of him and never utter a word about the truth of his twisted directives.”
“So you told him what he wanted to hear,” Vi concluded, all their past conversations falling into logical place.
“He locked me away with the flame at the top of the Archives of Yargen, denied me food and drink. Told me I would receive nothing until I espoused the words of the goddess. At first, I lied, making things up for him.” Taavin’s words became hurried, almost crazed. “But he would say, ‘Taavin, you must have misheard. Listen again.’”
It was Taavin’s turn to approach her. With every statement he drew nearer. Arms outstretched, as if begging her for something. But Vi wasn’t sure what, or if she had anything to give.
“So I began repeating what he’d say to me—the things I knew, things he all but told me, he wanted. I became his parrot. If I knew he wanted a man condemned, or to march against a city, or to take over a celebration, I would say the words. He would have the Voice’s proclamations… and I would eat.”
“And with your words, you knowingly condemned innocent people to die.” Vi stared up at him, their noses nearly touching.
“If that’s what it took to survive.”
“How many people saw you say these lies? Was it only Ulvarth? Or did the Swords hear as well? Did the citizens?”
“I did what I had to do to survive. But I took no joy in it. I didn’t want to. I knew what I was doing and I loathed myself for it. But I was a captive; I was helpless.” Taavin shook his head, running his hands through his hair. When he looked back to her, his eyes were haunted and far more sunken than they’d been just moments ago. This was the shadowed edge of his personality that he’d always kept hidden just below his hopeful, driven exterior. “What would you have done? Curled up and died?”
“I wouldn’t have told a power-hungry lunatic to murder innocent people for no reason!” Her voice rose now and Vi shoved him away. Taavin stumbled, reaching out to the cave wall for support. She wouldn’t have him looking down at her. “If I had to die to spare them, I would’ve.”
“It’s easy for you to say that here, now… but not when hunger is gnawing at you. Not when death is staring you down. You don’t know what you’d do then.”
“I do know what I’d do. Because I’ve seen death. I’ve seen it on my land, in my people, and in visions of the world’s end that haunt me even still. I’ve seen it in the faces that tried to kill me as I risked my life every step to get here.” Her voice had gone low. “And I risked it all, not for me, not for you, but for this world. For my family. So don’t youdaretell me I wouldn’t die for a cause greater than myself.”
“I never wanted to hurt anyone.” He was pleading now. “I didn’t—”
“Just because you didn’t wield the sword, doesn’t mean your hands are clean of blood.”
“Had I stopped him then, he would’ve let me die and found another babe to rip from their home! The Voice is reborn, Vi. Time and again. So even if I had died, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
His eyes were ablaze and, for the first time, Vi’s mind and mouth fell silent.
“If I hadn’t done as Ulvarth asked, if I let myself die, I couldn’t have stopped the Swords of Light when I was able. I wouldn’t have been able to hear Yargen’s words when they came in earnest. I wouldn’t have been able to do the best I could from my powerless position for the people of Meru—allof them. I wouldn’t have been able to help guide you here and begin to make sense of this.” Taavin thrust his index finger at the watch and Vi felt it press painfully against her breastbone. “I wouldn’t have had the ability to help stop the world’s end. He would’ve let me die, done his will anyway for a few years, claiming he was acting on my last words as the Voice, and then placed another helpless child right back in the position I was in.”
Vi looked from the watch to Taavin. Every emotion ravaged her thoughts. There was sorrow for him, frustration, hurt, confusion. He was in more pain than she could imagine—the agony she’d always somehow known was there finally laid bare—and seeing the hurt unleashed only sparked her own profound sense of suffering.
Above it all, anger thrummed within her. So much that her spark had taken residence in the hole Jayme had left in her chest. Pressing her eyes shut, Vi tried to find sense in the darkness. But there was none to be had, and she was forced to look once more at Taavin.
“I trusted you,” she whispered.
