I cast her a halfhearted glower. “No. But I don’t think he has to be our enemy.” She laughed, and I pressed on. “I’m serious. He doesn’t want to be his mother. He wants to be better.”
Ericen hadn’t told me those things from a place of self-pity; he’d told me because he intended to do something about it. He wanted to fix his broken pieces. I understood that, just like I understood his desire to be better than his mother. My mother had made mistakes, ones whose echoes now haunted me and Caliza both. We’d inherited the consequences of her decisions, and I would do better.
She set her half-eaten cake on the table. “You could never trust him.”
“I think I could, in time. I think even you could, if you let yourself try.”
“No thanks.”
I sighed, setting my empty plate beside hers. “Have you ever heard the story about how the crows were created? The one fromSaints and Sellas.”
“I never read those fairy tales. They’re a waste of time.”
I smiled. “It’s my favorite out of all of them. My mother told it to me one night with only a candle burning in my room. After that, I memorized it.”
Kiva shifted in her seat, leaning back against the armrest so she faced me, and I began to talk.
“When the Sellas made the crows, the night lasted for a year. They drew their power from the night and from it formed the crows. Its darkness became their feathers, its vastness their power, its tranquil silence their quiet wisdom. The night grew angry with the Sellas and refused to give way to the day. Time passed. Crops and people alike started to sicken from the lack of sunlight, withering as the night grew lush and full. The Sellas begged the night to end, but it refused.”
I remembered each moment of the night my mother had told me the story with stark clarity. I’d snuggled deep into my covers, my mother’s rich voice enveloping me. Outside, the night had been thick as velvet, as if waiting to be formed into something greater than itself.
“The Sellas went to the crows, born of night, and asked for their help as repayment for creating them. The crows agreed. The sun crow gave them light in ribbons of gold, the fire crow and storm crow, warmth in crackling fires and pleasant winds. The water crow and earth crow revived their crops, and the battle crow kept them safe from the creatures that haunted the night. The shadow crow challenged the night to a battle, and the night agreed. They dueled, battling at the speed of darkness, too fast and shadowed for the Sellas to see. The fight went on and on in silence, the only indication it raged wisps of black that escaped from the night like ink dispersing in water, until finally, the crow emerged from the dark, victorious.
“The night kept its word and ended, returning to its natural cycle with day. The Sellas thanked the crows and welcomed them into their homes. And so began the relationship between them.”
The firelight flickered, throwing shadows across the room. “When I asked what the speed of darkness was, my mother said, ‘Snuff out the only candle in a room. Watch how quickly the darkness comes.’ And she blew out the candle at my bedside, dousing us in night.”
“I’m guessing there’s a moral here?” Kiva asked.
“Darkness spreads quickly,” I replied. “Quicker than light. If we keep doing what we’re doing, if Rhodaire and Illucia keep retaliating against each other, it’s never going to end. The darkness will spread and spread until everything is consumed.”
She regarded me with heavy eyes. “Pain begets pain,” she whispered. “That’s what my mother said to me when she told me what happened to my father. I asked her why she didn’t destroy the people who did it, and that’s what she said.”
I nodded. “The only way to end the cycle, the only way to truly defeat Illucia, is to help them change. They need a better ruler. A better leader. And I think Ericen could be him.”
Kiva pulled a couch pillow over her face, groaning. “You want to ally with him too, don’t you?”
“I figured our job wasn’t hard enough already if you have time to flirt with Auma every day.”
She chucked the pillow at me, and I laughed, snatching her remaining cake and scurrying to the other side of the couch before she could stop me from eating it.
“What about you?” she demanded. “Falling for those green eyes of Caylus’s, are you?”
I scoffed, but she wasn’t wrong. They were pretty. I dropped onto the couch across from her, cake still in hand. “Talking to him is so easy. I love how curious he is about everything.”
“You just like having someone as nosy as you are.”
I smirked. “I just don’t understand how someone can be so observant and so oblivious at the same time. He doesn’t notice anything!”
She gave me a coy smile. “He notices you.”
My face heated, but she was right. Caylus didn’t notice a liquid boiling over above the fire, but he noticed which tea I liked, which muffin was my favorite, and had both ready and waiting when I arrived.
“You notice him too,” she added. “I think you’d live in that workshop if he’d let you.”
My blush deepened. “He’s easy to be around,” I muttered.
“Easy to look at too.”
