“What is it?” I asked, my throat raw and guttural from speaking so much when I’d barely spoken in the last few days.
“You need to forgive yourself,” he said, making me flinch. “For Aina’s death. Mother had no right to say what she said to you that night. She was grieving and angry. She had a broken heart. But you’ve taken those words and you’ve swallowed them so deep I don’t know if you’d ever be able to purge them from you now. They’re etched into your very bones, Kythel. You’ve punished yourself ever since.”
I dragged in a deep breath.
“You think you’re the only one who blames himself for what happened to Aina?” Azur asked. “For so long, I dreamed of her. Tortured myself over the image of her in Zyos, lost and wandering. It ate at me. Constantly.”
“ButIwas supposed to be there with her,” I said. “On Pe’ji.”
“And Aina was outnumbered,” Azur reasoned. “Would anything have changed if you were there? If any of us were? You weren’t going to be with her every waking moment. Stop blaming yourself. It’s been years. It’s past time you moved on. And what Father said today? Heisa bastard. He’ll see that with time, and he’ll regret his words, just like Mother regretted hers.”
I stared unseeing into the space that separated us.
“And since I am your elder brother and theKyzaireof Laras…” Azur started. I scoffed, but I caught his small grin. “I will not allow you to marry Lyris of House Arada. Not fordrava. Not for anything.”
“Since when do you have a right to tell others who to marry and who not to?” I asked, the question pointed, considering his own history with his wife.
Azur’s expression turned serious. “It would ruin you, Kythel. I’m sure you already feel the distance, the craving for yourkyrana. It only gets worse. Trust me. Knowing the happiness and peace I feel with Gemma now? It truly frightens me how close I was to losing her. I won’t let you do this. House Arada is still bound in duty to yield to our House. There are other ways to secure thedravathat don’t include you shackling yourself to a female who isn’t your mate.”
“You should have seen the way Millie looked at me that night. She won’t forgive me,” I told him, the truth ripped from my throat. “I was so cold to her. She told me she loved me, and I said I wassorry,Azur. I’ve never seen her like that before—the realization slowly coming onto her face. Whenever I close my eyes, it’s her face I see. I don’t deserve her. I don’t fucking deserve her.”
“Then tell her the truth and give her time,” my brother told me. “That’s all Gemma wanted from me.”
Would she look at me differently if she knew the truth?I wondered. Would she think me a coward? Selfish?
No. The answer came easily.
I needed to learn to restructure the way I thought about Aina. Azur was right. We hadallblamed ourselves in some way for what had happened, my mother more than anyone. But the truth was that it had been no one’s fault. Itwasa tragedy, a war crime.
But it was difficult to unlearn years of guilt and self-loathing. For Millie, though, I needed to try.
Azur and I both stood from our places on the debris-ridden floor.
He smirked as he looked around the office. “You’re more like me than you realize.”
“I’m not proud of this,” I informed him, though it had felt like a large weight had released itself from my shoulders. A start. I needed to speak with Millie. Immediately.
Azur rounded my desk and bent to right it, pushing it into the correct position, though the legs crunched on the broken shards of the vase I’d shattered. When he straightened, his gaze went out the window, toward Stellara. He stiffened, his eyes pinned on something in the distance.
“What is that?” he asked, rounding the desk.
I swung around to peer into the darkness of the night. A red glow was illuminating the tops of the bleeding trees. Something dark was winding up from the forest.
“Is that smoke?” Azur asked, incredulous, concerned.
I was leaping through the window, my wings scraping on jagged glass, before he could say another word.
Millie’s cottage was on fire.
CHAPTER37
MILLIE
When I opened my eyes, I thought it was morning. The orange glow of the sun was flickering along the walls of the bedroom. I thought that was strange, but then again, I had been tired lately. Perhaps I’d slept the entire night.
Then I smelled the acridness of smoke, funneling up my nostrils. When I gasped, shooting straight up in the bed, I choked on smoke and loud, hacking coughs racked my body. My eyes watered, stinging.
It wasn’t sunlight flickering on the walls. They were flames.
