I walked to the window and threw it open. Let his vines come. My own were more than a match. “You have changed, Osheen.”
He laughed ruefully. Another sound that I’d heard so rarely. “No. I am merely saying something you dislike.”
And I was reacting exactly as I’d accused Veyka of doing—selfishly.
Fuck.
I forced myself back to the desk and down into the chair. I stared over Osheen’s shoulder at the door. “Report.”
“On what?” Osheen’s tone was wary.
My voice scratched out of my throat. “Everything.”
He began with the news that Arthur Pendragon was dead, beheaded by humans on the same night that he’d been poised to announce his betrothal to Guinevere. We’d been in the war camps on the northeastern edge of Wolf Bay, Osheen said.
I remembered none of it.
I did not let my gaze shift an inch while he spoke. I did not want to see the pity in his eyes.
He spoke of our arrival in Baylaur, waiting hours in the desert for admittance. The Offering, and the desire that burned in my eyes from the first time they found Veyka. Desire that every elemental and terrestrial in Baylaur had seen. He elaborated on Veyka’s description of the assassin who came for her in the night, how I had asked him to shore up the defenses around the goldstone palace. How he had seen the fondness growing between Veyka and I from a distance. He spoke of the Joining. Of Veyka being ripped away from me and the rage I’d felt, the twenty courtiers I’d killed when I lost control of my beast.
Finally, he recounted the journey from Baylaur to the caves of the mysterious Faeries of the Fen. The burned human village and Veyka’s dismay. Finding Percival. He described the joy in Veyka’s eyes when she’d finally begun to master her power, and the pride in mine.
He ended with our departure from the Faeries of the Fen. Before I had been injured—not just injured. Stabbed, by the legendary Excalibur. By Veyka.
It cannot stop you.That was what Veyka had said when I tried to remove her scabbard in the ice cave.You are the other half of my soul.
Realization barreled through me, cold and harsh. I had been wearing the scabbard. That was how Veyka knew that I could draw her blood even while wearing it. She had thought I was safe, because I wore the scabbard. And instead, I’d nearly died.
I stared into the wood grain of the door. My eyes traced the ancient knots, as old as the castle itself. If I looked away, I did not know what would happen.
“The Battle of Avalon. Tell me how it happened,” I said.
“I was not there.”
My eyes tried to move away, to search Osheen’s face. But I held resolute. “Why?”
“The vision the faerie priestess gave to Veyka promised bloodshed on the shores of Avalon. We all agreed not to take Maisri into known danger,” he explained.
“Maisri…” I searched my mind.
“My niece. My ward.” From the periphery of my vision, still fixed on that blasted door, I saw him shaking his head side to side. “You remember nothing? Truly?”
A low growl rolled up inside of me, through my chest. I knew Osheen could not hear it. Would Veyka? “My beast remembers her,” I said. “But I do not.”
Osheen did not speak for several moments. Once he did, I realized he’d been weighing his words—and should have kept them to himself.
“Maybe there is less of a difference between you and your beast than you imagine,” he said.
“You are flora-gifted. You cannot understand,” I snapped back.
An insult.
Not a jest. I rarely made those. I had just insulted my most faithful lieutenant. More—my friend. There were some terrestrials—many terrestrials—who believed the fauna-gifted shifters among us more powerful than our flora-gifted counterparts. It was nonsense. I’d seen Osheen put his trees and vines to better use than nearly every other shifter I’d encountered.
Of all the terrestrials, I was the only one who’d ever been born with both gifts. I, above all others, had the ability to understand that one was not intrinsically more powerful than the other, that it all depended upon the individual who wielded them.
Osheen had never complained. Never shown a hint of resentment toward the power he’d been given or the gift he had not.
