“Hey.” I laid my hands over his. “It’s okay, I promise.”
He leaned back against the tree, his eyes closed. “It’s just, your parents?—”
“Did the best they could with the information they had.”
He ignored my comment. “—made so many bad decisions.”
“That may be,” I agreed. “But this one was on me. Sure, they brought it up, but I was never a girl who played with dolls. Rather, I played with my mom’s jars of preserves, mixing what I could to create something brilliant.” The memory rose in the forefront of my mind and I laughed. “While that was once strawberry, orange, moon flower jam, now I hope that I will be able to find cures for more serious ailments—the ones healers haven’tsolved yet.”
He said nothing, allowing the soft evening sounds of the forest to take over the tension between us, and neither of us spoke for so long that I was sure he had fallen asleep. Though I knew I should ask about the rations he had brought, I didn’t feel a shred of hunger, anger at Leif still my prominent emotion.
Memories of the laundry room surfaced in my mind.
“Otho?”
“Hm?” His voice was quiet, reserved, not his usual tone.
“Why did you keep my secret? You know since you . . . saw . . .” I didn’t know how else to reference the incident.
“I . . .” His voice vibrated and my magic read the shame coming from him. “It . . . I mean, you being a woman, didn’t affect me. There was no reason for me to reveal the truth to Adis.”
I’d grown adept at listening between the words he was saying. “But you would have if it came to it.”
He released a deep sigh. “At first . . . yeah, you’re right. But then I started to get to know you and—” He glanced around at the trees, as if he just remembered where we were. “I don’t have many supplies on me.” Otho frowned. “But I have some jerky and that should get us through until we reach the front lines tomorrow.”
He held out a single slice of jerky in my direction, but I pushed it away. I wanted answers. “How did you find me in Malheim?”
He tore a bite of the jerky off, chewing and swallowing, his throat bobbing. “I’m the general of the army. If you don’t think I can track a few horses through the woods you’re delusional.” He reached forward to toss another log on the fire. “Next time, when someone tries to kidnap you at night, scream. I don’t care who you wake.”
I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening. He knew so much about me, but it wasn’t that simple. “There were so many of them. I didn’t want you or Cal to be hurt.”
He grabbed my hand so suddenly it nearly made me jump outof my skin. “Listen here, Runa. Don’t you ever sacrifice yourself for me or anyone in my family, okay? You matter too. I know Cal wasn’t the friendliest at dinner, but he would have fought for you too.”
“But Cal?—”
He tilted my chin so our eyes were connected, and the emotion I saw in their depths scared me. “Cal is an idiot. He is anti-war—always has been. But the thing is, him promoting peace and preaching against the war won’t save us. Being neutral is the same as letting them win.”
The night air instantly grew colder as I absorbed the full meaning behind his words. “But you told me that you are fighting this war for you.”
“I am,” he clarified, steel in his gaze. “My parents were killed in the Purge too.”
The final missing piece of the mystery that was Otho slid into place. This was how he knew about magic. This was why he was so against it. Like me, he had been orphaned because of what they thought our parents represented.
“I had wanted to pursue this war without magic, mostly because it is my job, and because I was afraid of the persecution our kind faced before, but . . . it is becoming clear to me that we don’t have a choice, especially since Adis plans to use magic no matter what. And now Hansen too. It’s just the two provinces now, but I fear that this is the beginning of something bigger.”
My mouth was dry. “Can you . . . can you read?”
His chin dipped. “Almost all Seid who are above the age of fifteen can. Our parents knew much more than they let on I think and channeled a lot of their energy into teaching us at a young age. Yours and mine both.”
My mind flashed back to the night when I had lost my parents, and I pushed the memory away before it could consume me. “But they couldn’t foresee their own death.”
He shook his head. “I disagree. I think they did.” I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion. “I think they knew therewas no way for them to avoid the Purge. They knew the only thing they could do was teach their children to read, and hope that those with the seeker affinity would find the books and find each other and?—”
“And fight,” I finished for him, my gaze fixed on the flames that were flickering. When I had first been taken from my home, I had been so against joining the war, so ready to die. But in that moment, I realized that dying was the easy way out. It was time for me to fight for what was right. For too long, the Seid had hidden in the shadows, tossed aside, and purged from society. Though there was dark magic that could lead to problems, ignoring the existence of that magic, or using it only for personal gain, wouldn’t make it go away. It would only lead to that power falling into the wrong hands.
“Tomorrow we will return to the front lines.” Otho faced me, and somehow I already knew what he was about to say. “Runa, you deserve freedom, you have already given so much of yourself for this war. If you don’t want to continue with me, I understand, and I can leave you to create a life in Salheim.”
The feeling that had circulated in my chest, the one that had been birthed from sadness but had now transitioned into something else, bloomed. I was done being dragged from place to place, ripped from everything the moment I was comfortable. I was done being lied to.
