“I’m sorry you had to watch me earlier, when I was tossing about in my own disappointment.”
“There is nothing to apologize for, Alora. You’ve been through a lot in such a short lifetime.”
I pause for a moment in my thoughts, unsure of the weight of my words.
“There’s always those that will have it worse than I do. I just need to push through and endure. I’ll be fine.”
I’ll be fine.
And I will be one day, because I don’t have the luxury not to. Because the alternative is that which I’ve teetered on before, and I long ago made a promise to Leeson I wouldn’t attempt again.
So I force the words out again, “I’ll be fine.”
Lis stands then, gracefully, as if she were a goddess to usher in goodness and grabs my hands again. I nearly move them away so she can’t hold them, but she does anyway. I don’t needsomeone to feel bad for me. Her empathy deserves to be on those suffering worse than I have, someone more deserving. But she squeezes her hand, holding tighter than I thought her petite form could.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” she says softly before kissing the top of my hand. It’s not seductive or lewd, or even inappropriate honestly. She makes it feel reverent, as if she sees the real me, the one I’ve quietly shoved aside for nearly all my life.
I do my best to not break down, so I fill the emotions with lead and heave them down further into the void of a heart, where the vines can bury them deeper and choke away anything good that may grow from them.
Chapter 35
Alora
“You mean to say that the oracles you’re descended from left a loophole in King Euron’s bargain with them?” I practically shout at Lis with this new revelation.
She sits there looking at her nails in the softening mid morning light. We’d spoken from the early night hours and were still lost in conversation.
“Yes,” she replies, “I had assumed that there would be text somewhere in the old oracle grimoires that have been lost to us.”
I knew that some of those books had landed in the hands of The Hidden, Yasper had brought them up when the council hadbegun to question The Devourer. How convenient now that we’d let King Euron’s right hand man know we possessed them.
I throw a grape, that somehow had arrived when Lis and I were talking on the balcony, into my mouth and pop it between my teeth.
Making a mental note to somehow get that information back to Merinda or Helene, I chew furiously until I accidentally bite down on my inner cheek in the process.
I quickly move my hand to my jaw and curse.
Lis continues to watch me with the same studious expression she’s worn most of the morning.
“Perhaps, if you didn’t try and eviscerate everything near you at this moment, you wouldn’t cause yourself more harm.”
I glare at her before popping another fruit in my mouth.
She chuckles and adds, “Just a thought.”
I hadn’t expected us to become fast friends, but it was apparent that Lisiandra was different from most others, she has something about her that still continues to believe in humanity. I’m almost jealous to be honest that she hasn’t become jaded to our world.
I shrug before asking, “Tell me more about this safeguard?”
Lis continues to inspect her nails and without a beat answers. “Honestly, I’m not even completely sure. My grandmothers had just reiterated the tale of the goddess and her great love story.”
I set down the piece of fruit I was about to consume, my mouth suddenly sour with the tale being mentioned.
The same storyhetold me in the streets of Treach.
Clearing my throat, I ask, “The one with the betrothed and the jealous nobleman?” I roll the berry I’ve since picked up between my fingers.
Lis answers, almost whimsily, “Not when you say it like that! No, the version where the woman is granted the blessingof always having her true love because she fought against the odds.”
