“Will,” Aya soothed, her hand soft on his arm as she stood. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not—”
“I’m not taking the crown.” The words were directed at Galda, but they had Will drawing up short.
They hadn’t talked about it. But he knew Aya better than he knew anyone. He knew she did not want to rule. But to hear her say it so definitively, to witness her choosing herself for the first time in—
Had he ever seen her choose herself?
“Though it bodes well for Aidon that the people don’t seem bothered by a Visya on the throne,” Aya continued lightly.
Galda blinked.
Aya toyed with a loose thread on the sleeve of her infirmary tunic, the gray fabric worn and frayed. But she did not give in to Galda’s silence.
“You realize they see you as more than a Visya,” the trainer finally said steadily. “More than a saint, even. No one in our history has taken on a wrathful god and lived to tell the tale, except for you.”
“I did not do it alone,” Aya argued. “And if it weren’t for Pathos and Saudra, I wouldn’t have survived.”
Pathos, and Saudra, and…
Did you see my mother?Aya had asked him late that first night in the infirmary. He’d wedged into the small bed with her, Suja’s orders and his own healing be damned.
The question had startled him, and not just because they’d been lying in silence for so long that he’d thought she was asleep.
He hadn’t seen Eliza.
He’d been the one to try desperately to pull her away from Sage. But that did not mean Eliza’s spirit had not visited her daughter that day. Will could hardly explain the things hehadseen. He would not question Aya on this—not if it brought her some modicum of comfort.
“I don’t know that the people care to get caught in the logistics of it all,” Galda mused.
Will scoffed. Of course they didn’t. They certainly hadn’t bothered before.
“But,” Galda continued, her eyes narrowing as she regarded Aya, “I will support your decision. If not you, then who do you propose?”
Aya smiled—the first genuine one Will had seen from her since the battle. There was a spark in her eyes, one he knew to associate with Aya having knowledge no one else did.
Seven hells, she’d beenplanningsomething. How had she even found the time?
“There is only one person I can think of who’s deserving of such a crown. Whose loyalty to Tala istrue,” Aya said.
Will frowned. Surely, she couldn’t be thinking ofhim. If Galda’s wrinkled nose was any indication, she seemed to agree.
Will was selfish, and he’d come to terms with that. He would continue to be if it meant Aya got to live the life she deserved.
He’d never be like—
“Liam.” The realization came so suddenly, it took him a moment to realize he’d said the man’s name aloud.
Of course.
Itwasan obvious choice.
Aya grinned as she nodded her confirmation. “Liam.”
76
It was a strange thing to long to return home and yet dread doing so at the same time, yet Josie oscillated constantly between the two throughout her weeks in Dunmeaden.
