I mull this over, circling my toes in the water and watching the ripples as they fan out across the water. After a long silence, Shaw speaks once more.
“The reason I can do what I do,” he stops. Presses his lips together. Tries again. “I have the skills I have in survival and strategy and warfare because I was trained in them when I was a child. When other kids were learning to walk, I learned to fight. Instead of bedtime stories, I was read war time strategy. I could shoot a gun and wield a sword before most kids can even manage their silverware. When other kids were old enough to help around the farm, I was old enough to go on my first mission.”
I furrow my brow. “Why?”
Shaw shrugs. “It’s best to train early, when your psyche is still developing so you can be shaped into whatever they need you to be. My father needed a child soldier. An assassin.”
My eyes widen as the horror of Shaw’s words settle over me. “What use would a child be? That’s horrendous!”
“It’s just good strategy, actually. One that’s been used in warfare for millennia. No one suspects an innocent child of being a spy, so no one guards their words around one. And no one guards their bodies around one because children aren’t seen as a threat.” His tone is pragmatic and detached, as if he isn’t speaking of horrors he himself endured. Hatred for Shaw’s father rises within me, for jading his son and for stealing parts of his soul he had no claim to.
“I…I did a lot of horrible things, Mirren. Things that would make you run far away from me. Youshouldrun still, if you’ve any sense.”
I wave him off. “We have a deal and I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him resolutely.
At this, he finally looks at me, his face agonized. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Shaw, you’ve been warning me since the first day I met you. Have I ever listened?”
“You do possess a frightening combination of stubbornness paired with an alarming lack of common sense.” His mouth twists in a shy grin and I find that I like it so much more than the one he normally arms himself with. I feel myself wanting to smile back, but I purse my lips instead. Waiting.
Shaw huffs a resigned sigh. “My father caught me once, afterward, during my…my episode,” his jaw tightens and he clears his throat, “And let’s just say, I learned quickly that my aversion to violence was a weakness. And if I was going to survive, I needed to hide it at any cost. I was never what he wanted. Never ruthless enough, never cruel enough. But I tried for so long. Until I turned all that vileness inward. Until I was poisoned with enough self-hatred that I could have died without caring. Maybe even tried to, inadvertently.”
I picture Shaw younger and angrier; the one person who by right was supposed to protect him, instead wielding his hurt and trauma as a weapon for his own gain. I want to reach out to that Shaw, to hold him and tell him he isn’t alone. I want to do the same with the version sitting next to me.
“And then I met Max. She’s from a wealthy family in the southern isles and they had sold her into a marriage alliance to some foreignlegatus.He brought her to dinner at my father’s home and was showing her off like some prized horse. She was only a year older, but she was already so much braver than I was. Thelegatushad her hands and feet shackled and her mouth gagged because he couldn’t control her. At thirteen, after everything she’d seen, she still refused to give in to them. Refused to be broken. Watching her was like waking up after years of sleeping. Whoever I was between missions, when shame and loneliness poured into me, that’s who woke up. The boy who could stillfeel, even after his soul had been shattered into a million pieces. And I knew then, that boy would die if I stayed with my father any longer.”
“Later that night, I went to my father’s study. Like there was some naïve chance of reasoning with him, of convincing him I couldn’t do it anymore.” Shaw laughs bitterly. “When I got there, I heard furniture crashing and muffled screaming. I ran into the study without being invited, something I’d been beaten for before and my father was…he was holding Max by her hair. The pathetic dress she’d worn was ripped and her eyes were watering.”
Suddenly, the look on Shaw’s face when he arrived at Shivhai’s tent makes sense. To him, history was repeating itself before his eyes.
“My father didn’t even look at me. Just ordered me to leave so he could enjoy thepresentthelegatushad given him. Like she wasn’t even human. And something snapped in me.” Shaw’s eyes shine, but his cheeks are dry. “He didn’t see Max as a person, and he’d never see me as one. And as long as I was with him, I had no hope for learning to see myself as one either. He’d forced me to give up pieces of my soul, but it took a thirteen-year-old stranger for me to realize that I would never matter to him. I grabbed a dagger and I plunged it into his heart. I still remember the shock in his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite believe the weapon he’d created had turned against him. But the emotion of the moment kept me from thinking strategically. Kept me from remembering that my father was always prepared and most definitely always armed. He had a dagger in my chest before I could even move off him. But it didn’t matter. I grabbed Max and we ran until I collapsed.”
Max’s fierce protectiveness of Shaw, borne of terror and survival. Shaw granted her freedom; of course, she would love him for it.
Shaw swirls his feet in the water, an oddly restless gesture for him. The preternatural control Shaw has over his body—a result of what he was trained to be. An apex predator. A deadly weapon. “I don’t remember a lot of the journey. Max got the knife out and stitched the wound, but I lost a lot of blood and infection set in. I was in and out of consciousness for most of it.”
“That’s when we found Denver. Or he found us. Either way, it seemed like the will of whatever dead magic still lived in the world for us to be together.”
Denver’s name clangs through me, harsh and prodding. Myfather’sname. Or the one he’s gone by since he was Outcast. It seems impossible that they can be the same person. How can the man who gave Shaw a place in the world, be the same one who took Easton’s and mine?
Shaw doesn’t notice me stiffen beside him at the mention of his mentor’s name. His gaze is on the sea in the distance, the white caps of waves foaming on top of the sparkling water. “Denver took me in. He educated me beyond military strategy and weapons. He was the first person in my life to show me kindness, even when I didn’t deserve it. He never gave up, even when I was hateful and stubborn. He proved to me over and over that the world isn’t all dark. That it can be good and so can the people in it,” Shaw’s voice trails off, thick with emotion.
My heart breaks open at his confession and I see him clearly for what he is—a boy trying desperately to be good in a world that has not been good to him. A man who tries to earn love through self-sacrifice, even when he doesn’t think he deserves it. And Denver—my father—is the first one who made him believe his life is worth something.
I hate my father for it in the same breath that I love him for it, the lines of both emotions crossing so fiercely they fuse together in a hot riot. Of course Denver is my father; how was I so blind to it before? It could only be him, with his passion for life and dreams for a better world that are so vivid, they’re contagious. I know those same dreams Shaw speaks of, whispered to me in a quarterage a world away. “He loved you,” I finish for Shaw, my throat thick.
He swallows roughly and nods. It costs Shaw something to admit that he is loved, in spite of all his faults, and as surely as I know Denver is my father, I also know I can’t tell Shaw now. It would feel wrong, like taking a scrap of bread from a starving man. He’s had so little love in his life, I can’t bear to take away the small amount he’s been offered. Can’t bear to be the one to twist it or warp it in any way, to cause him to question its scope and validity.Another time,I promise silently.
“I’d never known love before. He forgave me for all the horrible things I’d done. He believes so fiercely that I could,” he clears his throat and corrects himself, “canbe a good person that I almost believe it, too, sometimes. When I was 14, I vowed never to take anyone else’s life. It will never be enough, never repay what I’ve already unleashed upon the world, but it felt like something. And I haven’t wavered from it. Not once.”
The Boundary hunters who pointed guns at us; all those soldiers, the guards, even Shivhai—Shaw never gravely injured any of them. It struck me as odd then, but now I see it is his act of contrition.
“It isn’t your fault what you were forced to do as a child. But I think it’s brave, to uphold that vow in a world like this.”
He shakes his head and meets my eyes. “It’s not brave. It’s necessary. Not even because I may actually lose my soul if I take another life, but because I can’t bear it. When I told you I couldn’t have the responsibility of your blood on my hands, I meant it. Mirren, I can’t… Any more blood and I will lose myself completely. I’m just selfishly trying to hang on to what little is left.”
I struggle for the words to explain how his soul, bare and battered, creates an aching whirlwind within me that feels decidedlyunselfish,but the emotions are lost on my tongue. Encapsulating feelings into words, or even deciphering them into something I can define and hold, isn’t something I was allowed the luxury of practicing. When it comes to expressing anything, the Similian rigor in me still freezes my tongue.
