“But you didn’t go,” I guessed softly, my chest twisting with realization. And Aina had been assassinated on Pe’ji. “Oh, Kythel.”
“The master architect on Cron’yu wished to meet with me, to discuss an apprenticeship. I was eighteen years old then,” he said, his tone wistful. “The call came in a couple days before we were set to leave for Pe’ji…and I chose to go to Cron’yu instead. Aina was disappointed in me. That’s what still cuts me the deepest—remembering her face when I told her that day. I’d been excited. Now it makes me sick. Because she was leaving to help an entire race of people reclaim a fraction of the home that had been stripped away…and I’d never even given a single thought to them. Going to Pe’ji had been a burden to me. I had been so consumed in what I wanted that I couldn’t see what was happening. I never got the chance to apologize to Aina for that. Our last meeting had been tense. Her last words to me…”
Kythel shook his head, his voice drawing tight. Catching his hand when he paced in front of me, I pulled him down to sit next to me on the bench, turning my body to face him.
“She told me that the Kaalium was built through loyalty and sacrifice and blood but that I was too selfish to see that,” he finished quietly. “I had just made it to Cron’yu, had just landed at the ship depot when Azur called me to tell me about Aina. That she was missing. That no one knew what happened to her.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, tears pooling along my lash line.
“But my mother knew that Aina was dead. They were twins, like Azur and me. You can…you can feel it. Your souls will always be connected. I would know if something happened to Azur,” he told me. “My mother was a different person after that. So consumed in her grief, it ate at her. During one of those uglier moments, she blamed me for what happened to Aina.”
I squeezed his hand tighter.
“Just like Aina had, my mother called me selfish. She called me heartless to turn my back on my family. She said if I had been on Pe’ji like I’d promised, I could have protected Aina. That she was dead because of me.”
“Kythel,” I breathed, hardly able to process what I was hearing. What mother would lay that kind of guilt and blame on her child? Even in her grief? It was shocking. It was unfathomable to me, and I didn’t even have a mother. “You know that’s not true.”
“Later, she was horrified about what she said,” Kythel added, meeting my gaze. “She begged for my forgiveness, said that she didn’t mean it…but I knew the truth. I knew that at least some part of her believed it. And I had already made my decision. That I would put the Kaalium first, my family first. My duty. My responsibility. Because if I had done that, Aina might still be alive.
“My mother died eight years later of blood sickness, but I think it was the loss and the grief and the obsession with finding her sister that really killed her in the end. We didn’t even find Aina’s body until Rye Hara, Gemma’s father, confessed to the crime, only a few months ago. For eighteen years, her soul wandered in Zyos. For eighteen years, we didn’t have closure. My family finally has that now, but…I could never forget. I never forgave myself.”
“You punished yourself,” I said softly, processing the words with something that resembled horror and sympathy and sorrow. “You threw yourself into Erzos, into serving the territory and the people you hadn’t asked for, working yourself to the bone because you thought it was how you could repay Aina? Your mother? You were punishing yourself, Kythel, for something that was a tragedy—but not one that you caused.”
“Punishment and duty were one in the same to me,” he confessed, and that nearly broke my heart all over again. “I couldn’t have one without the other.”
My brows drew together. “And now? Do you still feel like Erzos is your punishment?”
“No,” he answered. “No, I’ve made this place my own. I’ve come to terms with my birthright, Millie. I accepted it a long time ago. I’m not the child I was then. Icareabout Erzos. Deeply. I care about its citizens. I want to prevent war. I only want peace. I want to make Erzos greater than it’s ever been before—thatis my purpose now. I was born into this family with my future already mapped out for me…and that is my fate. But it’s a fate I’ve embraced.”
“It was your sacrifice,” I said, my voice strained and quiet, looking between us at our clasped hands. His gray skin gleamed against mine. “The sacrifice you believed you had to make.”
“No,” he said. “That sacrifice would have been you.”
I jolted.
“Azur had married Gemma of House Hara, a human noble from a New Earth colony. Though it hadn’t begun that way, in the end he married for love,” Kythel said. “As the second eldest, I knew I would have to marry for purpose. A war bond was made between the Thryki and the Dyaar—Zyre told us at our meeting, and I believe he is telling the truth.”
“What?” I breathed.
“War is closer than we think.Dravais a valuable resource in war. I saw it as my duty to marry Lyris so that House Kaalium could gain back a little control over its production and its export.”
My heart was pounding, quick in my chest. I’d known all this…and yet I hadn’t truly understood, had I? I hadn’t understood the guilt, the pain, this driving need with Kythel, had I?
Now that I did, ithurt. It hurt me to think of the pressure that he’d placed on himself, the overwhelming burden.
“You were in an impossible position,” I said softly. “You had to choose me or what you believed was best for the Kaalium.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice guttural and harsh. “When I came to you after the meeting with Zyre…itwasthe ultimate sacrifice, Millie. There was a part of me that believed if I gave you up, mykyrana, the female I’d fallen in love with, then I could finally be free of that memory of Aina. I could finally stop hearing her words in my head. My mother’s words. I could finally befreeof that sickening guilt.”
“And did it?” I asked. “Did it help?”
“No,” he rasped. “It made me furious.”
“Why?”
“I asked myself…when would it beenough? What else would I have to give? Did I have to bleed out on the streets of Erzan, give my life blood to the Kaalium for it to be enough? Because that’s what it felt like when I didn’t have you anymore. It felt like I was bleeding out, Millie. I was furious because you were everything I wanted. And I didn’t think I could have you. I wouldn’tallowmyself to have you because I didn’t think I deserved you.”
My breath whooshed out of me, tears dripping down my cheeks at the ugly truth I heard in his voice.
