Great.
“I cannot manifest,” I say at last, forcing myself to speak the words out loud. Then I tip my head back a little, trying to catch Valtar’s eye. “Can I?”
He shakes his head.
“So…even if I am who they think I am…it’s hopeless.”
“It was always hopeless,” Valtar murmurs. There’s such terrible heaviness in his voice, it seems to drag silence down after it. We sit for some while again, neither of us speaking.
“Do you think…” I begin, then stop, uncertain I can bear to shape the question out loud. “Do you think Lord Elis might still be alive? Down there in the dark? Do you think there’s a chance they’ll find him before…before…?”
Valtar is very still. He holds me but does not rock me, and even his breath seems to have ceased. The only sign of life is that still-racing heart of his thudding against my cheek. Finally, I feel him shake his head.
I cannot help the tears that fall. Turning my head, I simply weep into his shoulder. He wraps me closer, murmuring gentle words I do not hear. I’m overcome once more, this time not with heat and terror, but with cold despair. It is a long time before Ican manage to find words again. “Was it so very bad?” I ask, knowing even as I form the words that it’s a stupid question.
“Yes,” Valtar answers simply.
“Tell me,” I whisper. “Please. Tell me.”
It’s cruel, perhaps, to make him talk about it. But there is some part of me that feels if I can know the truth, if I can face it straight on, then maybe…maybe I can bear some of it for Valtar. For Elis. It’s a foolish idea, one to which I cannot even quite put words. But I press on even so, refusing to shrink away.
At first, Valtar resists. But then, as though my voice has worked a compulsion over him, he begins to speak. The words are reluctant but clear in this shadowed sliver of reality in which we huddle together, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“In that place,” he says, “down there…one comes face-to-face with oneself. There is nowhere else to look but inward, no other monster to be vanquished than that which dwells in one’s innermost being.”
I let his words roll around inside my head, trying to make sense of them. What kind of internal monster could have overpowered someone like Elis? I would not have thought the young lord carried anything dark or dreadful inside. He had seemed to me to be made of nothing but spirit and spark, charm and courage. But then, I didn’t really know him. Perhaps he did not really know himself. Not until the very end.
“And you, Valtar?” I ask softly after a little while. “Did you see yourself in the dark?”
He nods.
“And what is he like? The dark side of Prince Valtar Skylock, what sort of man is he?”
A growl rumbles in his throat. “Not the sort of man you want to know anything about.”
But he’s wrong. He’s so wrong. I do want to know. I want to know every side of Valtar—good, bad, noble. Even murderous. I want him to be real with me, to be open with me. I don’t like this wall between us. It’s as though the more I’ve come to know him, the more I’ve realized how much he’s hiding…and the more I don’t want him to hide.
“Let me decide for myself,” I say, perhaps more sharply than I mean to.
Valtar’s arms around me stiffen. “But I can’t let you decide, can I?” he rasps. “Because you’re so trusting. So open, so earnest. So full of light andlife, while I? I am a creature of destruction. I taint everything I touch with death’s stain. Even you. Especially you.” His head bends forward, his face buried in my hair for a moment. I feel the strain in his throat as the next words emerge through his clenched teeth. “You are so…alive, Rosie. So much more alive, so much more real than anyone I’ve ever known. And while I know you will—youmust—be changed by all the evil of this world, I cannot be the one to do it. I cannot be the one to corrupt you. I cannot be the one to look into your eyes and see the moment when you realize that…that I am not…”
His voice breaks off, an inarticulate sound of pain in his throat. I draw back from him a little, peering up into his face. Thescintilhe dropped lies where it rolled several feet away, but its faint glow is more than enough for my eyes to discern his face. Those sharp edges, those deep hollows, chiseled by the hand of a cruel master into the harsh features of a man who walks the edge of monsterhood. And yet those eyes of his—they are the eyes of a man. So full of sorrow, gods! I’ve never seen such sorrowful eyes before, not in my whole life. I didn’t think Valtar capable of expressing such extremity of emotion. He’s always been so stoic.Even his inexplicable anger last night was carefully controlled, carefully channeled.
But now he gazes at me with such open devastation, it could stop my heart.
I find I want more than anything to ease that pain. Perhaps I’m not what Alderin needs, not the hope of Belanor or the world. Perhaps I cannot justify the deaths of my champions. Perhaps all this pain and suffering is worthless because I myself am worthless—too weak a vessel for the power I’m meant to wield.
But here, in this moment…maybe there’s something I can do.
My fingers release their hold on the front of Valtar’s tunic. They rise, trembling, slip along the skin of his jaw, his cheek.
His breath catches. His black gaze lowers suddenly, focused on my lips.
I lift my chin, my eyelids dropping half-closed. I don’t want to force anything. Not this time. Twice before, we’ve kissed on my impulse. But there is no impulse here; there is only invitation. My lips part as I raise them toward him, and I feel his ragged breath, warm against my skin.
Then, with a faint whisper of “Gods!” he lowers his mouth to mine.
It isn’t much insofar as kisses go. Just the pressure of his lips and my hand resting on his cheek. Just his arms wrapped around my body, frozen in place. It’s barely even enough to call it a kiss, and it does not justify the sudden burst of light erupting in my chest, looping in wild circles only to pool in the well of my belly. It’s strange, confusing, a little frightening even…and so delicious. Our first real kiss, mutually chosen. The taste of it, the sweetness of it, is more than anything I could have anticipated.
