“I felt fear, but I wasn’t afraid.” My chest tightened at the old memory. I’d thought of it so many times over the years that returningto it felt like settling under a familiar blanket. “Father taught me that long ago, that it was possible to feel fear and not let it make you afraid. Fear keeps you sharp, but being afraid can paralyze you.”
“That sounds like Gideon Ashbourne, all right. What happened then?”
Hearing the fondness in his voice was like pressing hard on a bruise. How many days had he spent at Ivyhill over the years, attending Father’s balls, pulling pranks with Gemma, swapping secrets with Farrin late into the night? Things I wished I could have enjoyed along with them. Things I would never do again—not without this sadness, this awareness of lost years looming over me.
“I had one friend among the new recruits, and I killed her,” I said bluntly, my fingers trembling at my sides. Thinking of my past was always dangerous; this time it had ripped away my composure altogether. “Her name was Petra. She was unfailingly kind to me in the days before our trials. Life would have been unbearable without her. But in the end, that didn’t matter. The Warden told me to kill her, and I did.”
I came to a stop at the water’s edge, my eyes burning as I stared across the lake at the old wooden pier. I nodded sharply at it.
“Petra didn’t have magic,” I said. “I told her and the others like her to wait on that pier while the rest of us distracted the hostiles—a water titan the Warden had roped into the festivities, a dozen Roses in masks. Though at first we didn’t know they were Roses.”
“My brave Mara,” Gareth said softly.
“No. Not brave.” Suddenly I didn’t have the will to tell the story nicely; was it even possible for such a tale to be nice? “Petra rowed away from the pier, abandoning the others. She was terrified, I’m sure, and she made a break for it. I don’t know what she thought she would do—get to the opposite shore and run? Run where? A tiny human girl alone in the Old Country?”
My voice was fraying at the edges. I blinked hard, set my jaw. “TheWarden took me up into a tree and bade me to watch. I was her favorite even then. She told me that allowing Petra to join our ranks would corrupt the Order. That she was a coward, and cowards were dangerous. She told me that I should be the one to get rid of her, that the binding magic would honor my sacrifice, strengthen the bonds between me and my fellow recruits. So during the hunting games, I did. I stabbed her in the heart and watched her die.”
I laughed bitterly into the night. “I didn’t want to kill her. Gods, I didn’t want to. But after I did it, the Warden was sopleased. She told me she was proud of me, and that made everything feel a bit better. What sort of monstrous person does such a thing?”
“You weren’t monstrous, Mara,” Gareth said. “You were a frightened, manipulated child.”
Then he touched my arm so gently that it made me unreasonably furious. Now that I’d said it aloud, my story seemed pale beside Gareth’s confession, and the realization left me feeling broken with shame.
I jerked away from him and took a step back. “I’m sorry. This was a terrible idea. I don’t know why I thought you needed to hear this.”
“But Mara—”
“It’s insulting to compare this to what you’ve gone through. Memories for memories, violence for violence?” I let out a harsh laugh. “I killed a girl when I didn’t have to—I could have saved her and chose not to—and you had your autonomy stripped from you entirely. This is far from a fair exchange.”
I started walking away, but he caught me by the arm before I could get very far.
“You know how I told you I’d be happy with you storming around being angry at me for the rest of our lives?” he said ruefully. “This is not one of those times. You can’t walk away from me like this right now, not after what we’ve just shared.”
“It’s insulting to you,” I muttered, staring at my dirty bare feet.
“This may seem like a radical concept, but in factIget to decide what I do and do not consider an insult.”
“I’m so sorry for what they did to you.”
“Mara—”
“You didn’t deserve it. No one does, but especially not you.”
Gareth took my face gently in his hands. He was always taking my face gently in his hands, as if I were a treasure to be revered; part of me hoped he would never stop.
“You say that as if I’m some paragon of goodness,” he said gently.
I looked up at him through a veil of tears. “In fact, you’re a menace.”
He smiled, smoothing his thumb across my jawline. “That’s more like it.”
Then he kissed me—so soft and sweet that it left me breathless—and for that brief, precious time in his arms, on that moonlit black beach, I let it happen. I wouldn’t ever again, I told myself. But I could allow it this one last time. I could almost trick myself into some kind of happiness.
The feeling lingered all the way back to Rosewarren. A quiet heat thrummed between us, his eyes blazed every time he looked at me, and my body felt so primed to devour him that the longing was like physical pain. I knew there was work to be done; I hadn’t completely lost hold of my senses. Returning to Rosewarren would mean fresh grief, which I would push aside to tend to everyone else’s.
But right then, all I could think about was him—how much I wanted him, howgoodit would feel to be with him, and how I would have to somehow find it in me to turn him away forever.
Then we came within sight of the priory, and my whole body went cold with dread.
