“You’ve gotten too thin,” he said as if thinking aloud.
She smirked as she pulled an apple from the basket. “Put a couple of pizzas in front of me and I’ll gain it all back, I promise.”
“You don’t look healthy,” he said, stern.
The flesh of the apple was soft, but the sweet singing flavor remained. She slumped back against the wall, relishing the sugar buzzing over her tongue and the sticky juice on her lips. She chomped a few more bites before returning her attention to Kaelan. He had twisted around and was weaving the patch he’d constructed into a bare spot on the wall, where dirt and roots had poked through, mending the hut that clearly had not been tended with any real care for some time.
“How are you?” she asked.
He glanced over his shoulder. His face was somber, his eyes violet-shadowed, sleepless. He turned back to securing the patch into the wall.
“I’ve made a decision,” he stated.
“And that is?”
“I’m going with you. I will help you become Radiant.”
She took another bite of the apple, chewing slowly, before she asked, “And then?”
His hands stopped knotting the branches together. His jaw touched his shoulder as he looked at her. “Do you love him?”
Apple flesh lodged in her throat.
He turned those sharp green eyes back to the wall, weaving more slowly. “I know you miss him.”
“I don’t even know him.” Her stomach heaved as if it might push out all the bread and apple she’d just eaten.
He made an indistinct noise.
The juice of the apple dripped over her fingers.
“What do you think peace means, Kaelan?” she asked.
He finished the patch and shifted around, facing her again, hooking his arms around his knees. “Peace for Alfheim or peace for me?”
“Are they different?” she asked.
His head tilted. His gaze turned up towards the ceiling as he seemed to ponder the question. “I don’t know. I suppose the only way I’ll know peace now is if there’s peace in Alfheim.” His eyes fell back to her. “Now, that I am a Prince.”
“You’ve always been a Prince. You just didn’t know it.”
He ran his hand over his palm as if attempting to read his own future in the lines there. “And I am the Prince who is meant to bring war.” His smile was rueful. “To make the Elf King bow before me.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Do you want to be Radiant?”
“I want to go back to my tiny, messy trailer, live on take-out pizza and cheap wine, and spend my days idle on the beach.” She plunked the half-eaten apple on top of the basket. “But what I want doesn’t matter. I have a responsibility to the Lands and the small folk. When I was forced into exile, in shame, I thought my life was over. Now that I’ve returned, all I want is to go back.”
“Was it so much better there?”
She shrugged. “In the mortal world, I grew soft and weak and lazy. I was poor and selfish.” She fanned her fingers. The carved figures of her sheaths caught the growing light slipping through the hole in the ceiling. “For a time, I hated myself, what I had become, my failure. But now, I look back on who I was before, so hard and cold and driven and arrogant... I feel sorry for that girl, her self-righteousness, her pride. She thought that spilling blood was better than compromise, than showing weakness, than yielding. But now I am back and everything is the same. Here I am, turning hard and cold and... killing. I’m becoming her again and I hate it, and yet, I don’t know how to stop it.”
He leaned back against his patch. If the new branches hadn't been so much darker, fresher, it would’ve been impossible to tell where the patch started and the old weaving began.
“I keep telling myself that I won’t change,” he said. “That I can help you. That I can be a Prince, even an Elf, and still be who I always was.” A wavy swath of golden hair fell over his eyes as his head bowed. “But... my mother always told me that the things that do not grow are things that are dead. I would rather risk changing myself for a just cause, than cling to the past and serve no one.”
“That’s a noble thought,” she said. “But I can’t promise you that helping me is a just cause. You might be better served remaining with your family, with Honey, and defending them there, than coming with me to the Spire. The King will be hunting you, and Endreas...”—her chest hitched—“wants you dead. The oracles think that you will somehow bring about a war. Maybe helping me is how that happens.” Her voice lowered and hardened as she thought about Endreas. “Staying with me might put you in greater danger.”
