I exhaled, releasing a low laugh. “I think you’ve been through enough.” I paused, chewing the inside of my cheek. “If you need to talk about it, I’m here.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking at his weapon for a moment. When he finally looked me in the eye, resolve hardened his stare. No more stalling, then. “Are you mad at me for how I feel?”
His question was simple, straightforward. It nearly knocked me off guard.
“No,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. “How can I be when I felt the same?”
He tilted his head. “Then what caused that attack?”
I flinched at the word, but it was the truth of what I’d done. I’d considered the same question while he was gone, and I wasn’t sure I had an easy answer. There were so many things twisted inside of me, I no longer knew how to handle my emotions. And that day, I’d snapped. The fight had been about Ophelia, but it also hadn’t.
“It was about being lied to for so long by so many people I trusted, that I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I never lied to you.” He clenched the railing.
“I realized that after,” I agreed, nodding. It only took that conversation with Ophelia to realize how much of an ass I’d been to the best friend I’d known my entire life. Tol may have averted some truths, but he had never lied. “If I’m mad at anyone, it’s myself. Or maybe I’m mad at the twisted fate that landed us here.” The beings that took our lives and treated them as their playthings. Pawns.
Tolek pushed off the rail and paced around the circular tower, hands behind his back.
“Things used to be easy,” I muttered.
He froze at that, and the mountains seemed to hold their breath. “For you,” he whispered. There wasn’t malice in his voice, but recognition.
“What do you mean?”
“Mali,” he exhaled, coming back to stand beside me and looking me square in the face, searching. Some shreds of understanding clicked together in his mind, and he sighed. “I’ve lived my entire life in your shadow. No, my life wasn’t hard per se—I’ve been afforded a level of privilege from my family name—but I was always your sidekick, thesecond choice.Youwere the future Revered, partnered to the most incredible warrior, and I was…there, by your side.”
“Ophelia—”
“No,” he cut me off, eyes hardening. “I don’t want to talk about her yet. I want to talk about us.”
I clenched my jaw, teeth aching to grind the truth in his words to dust.
“You were the star all our lives, and I never resented you for it. Even my own parents didn’t want me around, and maybe that’s where most of this pain stems from, but that, paired with being second best to your closest friend and watching him love the girl you want…itwasn’teasy, but I accepted that was what my reality was.”
My brows pulled together as he bared the truth of his fucked-up life, and I realized not all scars were visible. Tolek may not have suffered as I had, but hehadbeen struck.
“Everything changed when you left,” he continued, shoulders tense. “I feel awful for even saying it, but I got a taste of life outside of your shadow. And then I felt guilty every day for enjoying it because I would have rather had you back with us than have any attention for myself.
“You were my brother, Mali. Had been since birth. And I thought you were dead.” His voice cracked over the last word, but he blew out a frustrated breath and forged ahead, seeming like if he didn’t, he’d lose the nerve. “I know why you did it, but it fuckinghurtto find out the truth. And again, I cast my feelings aside because I knew you needed support assimilating back into our world more than you needed to feel guilty for hiding things from me.”
I tried to think back to our childhood, to see it from his perspective. He was right that I—Ophelia and I—had been on a pedestal. We’d never asked for it. I refused to feel guilty for it. But that didn’t make his feelings any less valid, and hearing how he’d felt for nearly two decades was a knife through my gut.
Hearing how he had been cast aside by his own parents twisted the blade.
And how he had put aside his feelings for my own upon my return…that was the final blow. Cyph was different—more practical. When he didn’t puzzle out a way around the choices I’d made, he’d accepted them. But Tolek had always been the more volatile of the two, driven by emotions, whatever they may be. Even while he was stifling them, they had been there, pain and resentment simmering.
He was wrong about one thing though.
“I deserve that guilt,” I admitted. “I made mistakes. So many fucking mistakes. I thought I was doing the right thing in signing the treaty, but I didn’t realize what it would cause. And I never realized how you felt.”
About Ophelia, his family, or my leaving.
“That’s my fault, and I’m sorry.” He placed a hand to his chest. “If I wanted to resolve my own feelings, I should have spoken up.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I should have seen it.” If I was truly a good friend, I should have understood how he’d been treated our entire lives. Should have dragged him out of the shadows and into the light where he belonged.
Tol shrugged. “It’s all out in the open now.”
