“It’s all…Amaris…not again,” he muttered.
“Theo, what’s going on with you? You’re panicking. You haven’t done this since…”
He couldn’t do it. He knew if he told Esaias the truth, it’d rip an entire hole in his chest. But his body defied him. His hand trembled as he found his dagger and dragged it over the wooden floor. His thumb found its comforting place along the crest.
“Is this really about Amaris or—”
“Esaias,” Theo cried, too ashamed to even look at him. He forced his eyes to stare at a loose nail pried from the floorboard as a tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I can’t let anyone else die. Not on my watch, not because I failed.”
“Theo, it wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know that,” Theo snapped. “You weren’t there.”
“No, but I read the reports, and I was on the team that extracted you.” Esaias sighed, and Theo met his solemn expression. “I saw you hanging there, nearly dead. My best friend, my brother.” It was Esaias now who fought tears. “I was forced to guard the door while Sephardi and Gris cut you down and dragged you through the chamber. I could barely watch my post whenall I saw was your blood covering every tool, every crevice, the floor.”
Theo sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You were the one who was captured. You were tortured, while we were forced to wait. It killed me every day not knowing if you were alive, but I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
There weren’t words to describe what Theo had experienced. He doubted the cracks in the realm had torture like what Mosfelkov was capable of.
“They gutted Nate in front of me,” Theo began, hiccuping between his panting breaths. “They strung him up, and I was bound and forced to watch as they cut him open, bit by bit, bleeding him.” A wave of nausea rippled through him as the words slipped from his tongue. “Our friend…Nate was mutilated.”
“Theo—”
“Nate is dead because of me. They killed him, not me,” Theo cried. “When Nate couldn’t take it anymore, they beat me and made me feel so much pain I wanted to die. I wish I’d died that night in Oystein Castle or in Rongstad Prison, because I don’t deserve to live. They’re all gone, because I failed as a leader. I failed to bring them home.”
“You didn’t fail. You were betrayed.”
“I should’ve seen it, been smarter. We were ambushed from the start,” Theo yelled, grasping his dagger and attempting to bring himself back to reality, to wash away the tint of red.
“You may not believe it now, but you did what you had to. You didn’t give in, and Nate knew that too. Nate didn’t die in vain. You both didn’t break,” Esaias said.
“They did break me! They didn’t want information. They wanted me to suffer. Nate is dead, and now someone tried to kill Amaris.” His body shook with his lament.
“No one else is going to die.” Esaias let out an agonizing exhale as he placed a hand on Theo’s shoulder.
Everything welling within Theo was overflowing, and he couldn’t stop it. Amaris had told him to feel, not to bottle it up, but he couldn’t contain it, no matter what he did. Why had he opened himself up to it, to feel the burden and agony of the loss of his friend?
“Nothing we do will bring them back or make ourselves forget, but we can honor them and remember them. You can honor Nate by fighting for Amaris,” Esaias said. “What you went through made you a stronger leader.”
“It made me a monster.” The stitch in his mind frayed, the slithering creature of who he became seeping into his bones.
“You survived. Don’t be ashamed of becoming the person you needed to be.”
“But I am ashamed,” Theo breathed.
“You have to forgive yourself.”
Forgive myself?Theo had survived while every member of his squad had been slaughtered. “How can I? I still breathe, unable to make it a few days without a nightmare or a moment of panic.”
“You have to learn. Remind yourself it wasn’t your fault. No matter who led your squad, their fates would’ve been the same.”
Esaias was right, but it didn’t stop the wave after wave of emotion as it hit him harder. But as the sobs filled the tower and all of him was exposed for Esaias to see, Theo found himself not wanting to stop it. For once, he didn’t want to push it away or restitch his mind. He wanted the pain to seep through his blood.
Could he learn to forgive himself? To ask the question was a weight lifted from his shoulders. A burden so heavy he’d allowed it to crush him. The rope around his chest loosened, and a natural cadence of breaths resumed. He could breathe, truly breathe. His back rippled as another wave of tears streaked his face.
Esaias stood and reached out his hand. Theo gazed up at him, the man who’d always been by his side.
