No one followed them outside, leaving the two of them alone beneath the night sky with only distant stars to keep them company. The flowers and vines that hung from the surrounding balconies were only half in bloom, summer a season on its way out. The heady floral scent still lingered in the air, and Vanya thought he could taste it when he licked his lips as he turned to face Soren.
“Who are you?” Vanya demanded, voicing a question that had seeped through his thoughts like a poison for days on end.
“You know who I am,” Soren said in a low voice.
Vanya closed the distance between them, hand snapping out to curl around the collar of Soren’s shirt, tangling in the gold chain hidden there beneath the fabric. Soren balled his fists, rocking forward as Vanya yanked on the necklace, pulling out the vow, but he didn’t try to break free.
“No, Idon’t. There were marks of starfire in the crypt when I went below to examine it, and you used starfire in the palace. You’re awarden. They don’t allow people who can cast starfire as tithes. It goes against the Poison Accords.”
The hypocrisy made Vanya want to laugh, but it wouldn’t have held any humor in it. He kept his teeth clenched together, glaring into Soren’s eyes, their faces so close together their breath mingled.
Soren swallowed, the click of his throat loud between them. “The wardens don’t know.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“It’s the truth, princeling.”
“It’snot.” Vanya tightened his grip on the necklace, gold biting into his fingers. “Tell me who you really are.”
Soren raised his chin, gray eyes dark like a storm. “No one of any worth, just like every other tithe sent as payment. The wardens neverknewbecause the Dawn Star made it so.”
Vanya jerked back at that confession, still keeping hold of the vow. He stared at Soren, the rush of blood in his ears sounding like drums as a thought formed, clarion crystal sharp, cutting through everything—how Callisto had said to keep the warden close. How their roads were always meant to cross.
Had they truly, when Soren had been keeping secret such a devastating ability?
Did they now, after he’d learned such truth?
Looking at Soren in the gaslight, standing there in the aftermath of everything they’d survived, Vanya realized he didn’t know the warden.
He quite possibly never had.
And thathurt.
“I’m a warden, and that’s all I’ll ever be. Wherever I came from, I can’t go back. I can never go home,” Soren said, voice cracking, the gold chain still digging into his throat, held in place by Vanya’s grip, but he never fought to get free. “I never lied about that.”
“But you lied about the quarry. About escaping the crypt. You never used bombs to escape, did you? It was never some new-fangled warden weapon primed with alchemy, was it? Every time, it was starfire.”
Soren said nothing for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice came out low and tight. “Would you rather I be dead?”
“I’d rather you had never lied to me at all.” Vanya’s fingers slid down the chain until he could wrap them around the vow, the face of the engraved lion pressing hard against his skin. “Ask me for what you want.”
Soren’s expression twisted, something pained and haunted crossing his face. “No.”
“Ask me.”
Soren planted his hands against Vanya’s chest but didn’t push him away, merely clenched his fingers around the soft summer weave of his robe. The chain of the vow was stretched taut between them, glinting in the gaslight. “I never wanted your vow, but you gave it to me anyway. I can do what I want with it.”
“You’ve asked for nothing over the years.”
“Because if I ever did, I’d have toleave.” The words were snarled out, bitter and aching, and Vanya reflexively jerked on the vow, dragging Soren ever closer. “Is that what you want, princeling? Me banished from your road? Would that make you happy?”
It would fix so much, he knew, if he forced Soren to ask for something—anything—to let him fulfill a debt owed, to keep his vow. A life for a heart’s desire. But it wasn’t that simple. Vows like this never were. For Vanya knew an excruciating truth he’d learned as a child, when Iosiv had died.
The one thing you couldn’t trade for your heart’s desire was your heart.
“I never wanted you to betray me the way everyone else has,” Vanya ground out.
Soren’s expressiontwisted, devastation in his eyes that didn’t comfort Vanya at all. The warden opened his mouth to speak, but Vanya was tired of whatever lies the warden might give voice to. Vanya leaned in to slot his mouth over Soren’s, sliding his tongue past teeth to taste him, to breathe him in. He kept hold of the vow as he kissed him so hard their teeth scraped together, all fury and hurt in the motion. Soren raised a hand, hooking it over the back of Vanya’s neck to tug him impossibly closer, to keep him there.
