You couldn’t have.
You lived, Fleurie. All this time.
I did. We did.
But you were alone. I left you alone.
I had your memory. I was never alone.
I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Forgive me.
Shhh, sweet Alexi. Shhh. I’m here now.
More words are spoken in hushed Elikesh too soft and fluid to understand. But the melancholy is there, moving between them like the sweetest sorrow.
Hel and Rhonin look my way. Their faces are doleful from the same immense sadness clenching my heart and constricting my throat. How much loss, heartache, and guilt can one man endure?
Fleurie draws back, a soft, sad smile on her face. Affectionately, she tucks his hair behind his ear. “We need to talk,” she says with a rasp. Her voice is battered and rough, yet somehow still smooth—gravel and silk. “I know where Raina is.”
At the sound of my sister’s name, my heart lurches with hope, but my head swims, the pulse in my ears as loud as raindrops on a tin roof. I’m not sure why, but I glance up at the wolf. He stares back with eyes like Fleurie’s, golden honey, watching me in that penetrating way of his. He’s trying so hard to read my thoughts through my shields which, thanks to the exhaustion trying to drown me, are beginning to weaken.
He grazes the back of my hand with his finger, a sensation I register but can’t make myself pull away from.
“Are you all right?” he whispers.
I’m not. But I only nod and turn my attention back to the moment at hand. Everything feels so much larger than me right now. Larger than a sick spell, larger than my anger and my hurt. Even larger than my situation with Neri. I sense a shift coming, as though Fleurie holds the power to change everything about our lives, even more than they’ve already changed.
Alexus sheds the heavy cloak of his grief and sets Fleurie on her feet. “How do you know about Raina at all? Did Colden tell you? The prince?”
“The prince,”Fleurie says wistfully. Her voice is so ragged and forlorn, her more ancient intonations unfamiliar, but it’s clear thatthe princeisn’t her answer. It’s a sadly pensive thought. “You truly cannot remember him, can you?”
Confusion twists Alexus’s face. “I remember him from a few decades past when Colden and I went to meet him after King Regner died, before Thamaos fully corrupted him.” He pauses, studying her as if reading her like an open book. “That isn’t what you mean, is it?”
Shaking her head, Fleurie leads Alexus to the chair I left vacant and guides him to sit. She then kneels at his feet, angled in a manner where I can see them clearly. She clasps his large, rugged hand between hers, running her fingertips admiringly over the calluses formed from so many years wielding a sword.
With a swipe at the tears streaking her dirty face, she looks at the three of us still standing. “You should sit.” She gestures toward the table and eyes me especially, as if she knows who I am. “Please.”
Fia, Neri, nor I move. Neri is still watching me, though, his gaze heavy and attentive on the side of my face.
A cold bead of sweat forms on my upper lip. “I’d rather stand.”
“Me too,” Neri says.
Fia arches her sharp brow and spears us both with a dark stare. I don’t know about Neri, but I’m not trying to be difficult or hold my ground this time. My ankle throbs, and I’m ill and dizzy, but though I wish I were already sitting, I feel like I might faint if I move. I don’t want to be a disruption, not when we’re so close to learning where Raina is, so I stay put.
Fia motions to her magi to take their seats, then she slides her hands behind her back, chin raised. “Go ahead, Fleurie. I don’t want to miss a word.”
After several more pregnant moments, Fleurie lifts Alexus’s hand, kisses his battered knuckles, and begins.
“A very long time ago, in the year before my father died, I met a young woman at the scholarada.” She clears her throat, clutching it where a red ring from the prince’s iron collar still marks her fair skin.
Rhonin, chivalrous as ever, gets up from his seat and pours a glass of lemon water from a ceramic pitcher that sits on a sideboard behind him. He offers the drink to Fleurie who graciously accepts, turning up the glass to wet her throat. When she sets the glass aside, she tries again.
“It all began when the woman arrived mysteriously in the ruins near Min-Thuret. Scared and cornered, she killed one of King Gherahn’s guards. The dungeons at Min-Thuret were full, and since it was clear she held the power of magick, she was taken to the scholarada and imprisoned in the cells where disobedient students were often held.” Fleurie rubs circles on the back of Alexus’s hand. “But, when you questioned her, something about that woman stopped you from turning her over to the king. And later, her charm saw her to freedom within the scholorada’s grounds, then even within the city and sometimes Min-Thuret, as long as she had an escort.”
Alexus frowns, blinking those darkly lashed, bloodshot eyes. “I don’t recall this person. But again, I don’t recall many things. From that year, especially.”
Fleurie continues rubbing his hand, tracing the long lines of his fingers as she holds his gaze, as though she knows the action will soothe him while she tells her story.
