‘No more secrets. No more lies.’ My stomach drops, heavy as a stone.
Blayze releases his grip on my waist and snatches up my hand. ‘Swear it.’
I open my mouth to make the oath, but something holds me back. Several things, in fact. I’ll have to tell him. About the Sister-Stones – about Arden, too. Even if it means he hates me, even if it means he wants nothing more to do with me. I can’t swear another false oath. Blayze is right. Secrets and lies will only fester.
I take a deep breath, and tell him. I tell him everything.
Blayze stares at me. His face a shade paler, his mouth a taut line. He doesn’t say anything, and the longer he remains silent, the more my stomach hollows. He’s going to push me away. I’ve lied, betrayed him – betrayed them all. And while a lie might fester, sometimes nothing cuts deep as the truth.
‘Say something,’ I whisper.
‘You have to tell the others. You owe them that much.’
I nod. ‘When’s the time’s right, of course I will. But can you forgive me?’
He sighs. ‘If I’d been given a chance to save my mother, I’d have taken it. But that doesn’t mean I agree with what you did. You manipulated us. And as for Arden…’ He shakes his head. ‘There have been no sightings of her since the night she disappeared. Everyone agrees she must have died.’ His throat works. ‘My forefathers sacrificed many clansmen quashing rebellions by factions who remained loyal to her memory. Even now, there are those who would use Arden as a figurehead to unite the clansmen who call for war – for the invasion of the enemy realms. I can only hope my brother’s keeping the traitors at bay, not fanning the flames of sedition.’ Blayze is quiet, shuts his eyes for a moment. ‘And now you’re telling me that she – and the threat she represents – remains at large?’
I nod, wishing I still had the button to prove it.
‘Well, I said I wanted the truth.’ Blayze grimaces. ‘And that’s everything?’
I dip my head. ‘I swear it.’
‘A fresh start, then? A clean page.’ And he kisses me to seal that promise. Just barely brushes his lips to mine.
In the near distance, someone clears their throat.
Stars and Spheres! I whip my head around, praying that someone isn’t Maris – isn’t Astrophel.
By the Sister’s grace, it’s neither of them.
‘A word, please,’ Orthriel says, turning on their heel, motioning me to follow them.
*
MYGUARDIANLEADSme through the blossom-fields and down a narrow gorge. One of the island’s swirling cloud-towers coils at the far end of it. I assume we’re making our way towards it, though Orthriel hasn’t told me where we’re going. In fact, they’ve said nothing at all since discovering me in the Clanschief’s arms. Silence stretches between us, heavy with things unspoken, but the rigid set of Orthriel’s shoulders on the path ahead of me speaks volumes.
Searching behind me, I can’t see the Fade Falls anymore, can scarcely even hear them, though smaller cascades trickle down the steep sides of the valley. The further inland we move, the tighter my stomach knots. I miss the reassurance of Blayze’s arms, the surety I felt pressed close to his chest, the way my body hummed and thrilled at his touch.
For so long I’ve been numb, considered my body a flawed shell, a source of infinite shame, a thing I wanted to shed and punish. But with Blayze, from the very beginning, even a shared look ignited something in me, anchored me in my body in a way I’ve never experienced before. And when he kissed me, I was no longer an icy husk, but a bud in bloom. For a moment, a life of promise, of pleasure, hovered at my fingertips. But away from the attraction he exerts on me, that magnetic draw like he’s a burning sun I can’t help but orbit, I’m unmoored, less certain. Like that kiss was a dream, the idea of us together an impossible fantasy. That we haven’t a hope of making this work.
‘You’re playing a dangerous game. Resembling your ancestor more with every passing moonsrising,’ Orthriel says as we approach the tower.
I swallow the snide reference to Noelani’s ill-starred union with Zale, but the bitter undercurrent of my Guardian’s words is clear. Clear as crystal. How to make them understand?
‘He’s Branded, Orthriel. Like me, and when I’m with him I feel—’
My Guardian goes very still, then wheels around. ‘Abandoning duty for such selfish pursuits, for the sake of a whim, will have dire consequences. Look around you. Look at what’s become of the realms.’
I, too, stop in my tracks. I’ve never heard such venom in Orthriel’s voice before. But their words go over my head. I don’t see how Noelani’s choice of binding-partner has anything to do with current conditions in Arcelia. It was Arden who brought the Sickening to our shores.
Then dimly, like I’ve jarred a fading bruise, I remember something Blayze said at our first meeting, something I dismissed at the time as nothing more than bigoted slander: a tall story about a missing bracelet of enchanted tears, clan-rumours that it was Noelani who caused Arden to unleash the Sickening.
Dread hollows my stomach.
Orthriel rarely speaks of their former charge. I always assumed it was out of reverence, that they didn’t like to be reminded of Noelani’s loss. But the sour twist of my Guardian’s features as they stand in front of me makes me wonder if their silence is due to something else entirely.
Is it possible that there’s some truth to the Oralian whispers? Was my ancestor’s decision to bind herself to Zale to blame for all the horrors that came after?
