I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to breathe through the unsteady pounding of my heart.
We fell into silence again. Lorien didn’t seem to want to talk anymore, despite Eamon’s repeated attempts to engage him in theoretical discussion, so I got up and went to sit beside Zayn instead, because I was worried about him; he was clearly still not his normal self, his usual energy dampened by both his injury and Lorien’s presence.
“How’s the shoulder?” I asked—because that seemed the easier topic.
“I could use another drink.”
“It really helps to dull the pain, doesn’t it?”
“Not especially, no. I’d just prefer to be drunk for this next part of our adventure.”
I rolled my eyes but managed a weak smile.
He shifted slightly, wincing. “This rune magic…” he began after a moment. “I’ve heard of it in passing. Wicked stuff.”
“The spells can give the bearer immense power, Lorien said.” I paused, my throat tightening. “But they also take a lot of the user, apparently. Sacrifices of mind and body...of their entire self.” Just saying the words made me feel sick.
There was no doubt that the spells in Aleks’s body were fully active now. It was bad enough, the destruction he was causing to my realm. But what about the destruction he was doing tohimself?
What was he losing?
I’d been replaying it with vivid clarity all day—the last time we’d faced one another on the battlefield. How he’d hardly seemed to recognize me.
I didn’t say it out loud, but Zayn seemed to pick up on my fear. He placed a comforting hand on mine. “I don’t think even the darkest magic could erase you from his mind.”
I wrapped myself around his arm and leaned against his uninjured shoulder with a sigh. “I hope you’re right,” I whispered.
He tilted his head back against the wall. He seemed to be drifting off again, until suddenly he spoke. “I’ve been thinking.”
“I didn’t know you were capable of that.”
He chuckled. “I make a point of not doing it unless I have to.”
“Well…what were you thinking about?”
A pause, and then: “How I should have fought harder to protect him when we were younger. I was there. I saw the Light Keepers pushing him out of sight, stealing him away for lessons, for supposedly routine training and disciplining. He never talked about what they did to him, but the signs were there, if I’d cared to see them.”
“You weren’t fully yourself,” I reminded him.
“No. But I had moments of awareness. I was still me, sometimes, even with Lorien’s presence always coiled in the back of my mind. I could have tried harder. And when I finally broke free…”
I looked up, urging him to continue.
“I don’t remember a lot from those years. But I don’t think it’s magic that stole those memories, in my case. I think it’s my own mind, blocking out the truth of it. Because I don’t want to think about how easily I went along with terrible exploitation. How many people I let down, just so I could avoid difficult things. Not just Aleks, but other family as well.”
“…You have a younger sister, don’t you?” I recalled.
“Not that it matters. She won’t remember me; she was too young when I left. And I doubt I’ll ever bother trying to meet her again. Why would I force myself back into her life? I hope I can see her one day, from afar, just to make sure she’s okay. To see who she’s become. But I’m not going to subject her to all the darkness I’m guessing I’ll still be carrying with me.”
I laid my head back on his shoulder, trying to come up with the right words to say.
“If I could go back in time, I’d like to think I could change something. That I could look closer at Aleks and see what they were doing to him. That I wouldn’t be such a coward, this time.”
“We do what we have to do to protect ourselves,” I said quietly. “You can’t save anyone when you’re drowning yourself.”
His body rose and fell with a deep sigh. “Well, I’m not drowning anymore.”
“So now we save him,” I said.
