“Tell Gwen it is not her fault,” he said instead of goodbye.
I smiled. “I already have.”
He grinned, and I tried to burn that image into my memory. He was exactly where he belonged. I could leave him here knowing that.
I pushed through the door to find who I was really looking for. Who I was really angry with, as Morgyn had so infuriatingly pointed out. The one who I’d been searching for all these months.
“I knew you’d come one day.”
Arthur.
I punched him.
67
VEYKA
“Parys gets tearful embraces, and I get a black eye,” Arthur groused, gingerly touching the eye in question.
Thank goodness he was solid and not some strange ephemeral spirit. That would not have been nearly as satisfying.
“Not much of an afterlife if I can hurt you here.” My own hand ached, a small split appearing in one of my knuckles. The tiniest line of blood rose to the surface. I was bleeding. The scabbards were still back on Avalon. And apparently, I could bleed in the after realm. Interesting.
“The living are not supposed to be here at all,” Arthur commented. He’d stepped back when I punched him in the face. Now he used the distance to look me over.
I stared right back at him, righteous anger overcoming more than a year’s worth of longing. “Yes, well. It turns out I am something of a special case.”
A soundless chuckle lifted his chest. “You always were.”
His chest led to his neck, which was firmly attached to his head. Thank the Ancestors. Though after seeing Parys fully intact, I’d expected as much. I inhaled every detail of him, fromthe top of his overgrown golden hair down to—was that an amorite earring in his ear lobe?
“You lied to me.”
“Veyka—”
“Every day of my Ancestors-damned life, you lied to me! And then you died. You died on purpose. You left me alone to—”
“To do what you were always destined to do, Veyka.”
“Fuck that, and fuck you, Arthur.” I spun on my heel, determined to get away from him. Then I remembered that he was the whole reason I’d been sneaking away from Arran in the dead of night to search the void. Morgyn was not the only irritating sibling I would be dealing with today.
“Would you like to hit me again?” he offered.
I did not answer.
“I deserve it. Every bit of your anger.”
That… deflated me a bit. I turned back to face him. Arthur extended a hand, and I accepted, letting him lead me to sit on a log at the center of the clearing.
We were in a—where were we?
It was a forest clearing, but I did not recognize it. Not anywhere near Baylaur, the trees were all wrong. Thick green leaves spread out in a canopy overhead so that the sunlight that did reach us was dappled. Wildflowers dotted the grass below our feet. Birds chirped. My brother had created quite the idyllic little paradise for himself.
He sat beside me on the log, stretching his long legs out alongside mine. Ancestors, even our legs were the same length. I’d never noticed that. I’d always been so busy cataloguing all the ways we were different—the ways I was less than.
I’d wasted precious time comparing myself to the one person who’d never judged me at all. Arthur, the source of all things good in my world for the first twenty-five years of my life. There were so many questions I yearned to ask, so much I wanted totell him. But all of it seemed inconsequential when I could justbewith him, soaking in his presence.
“Do you know what makes me the angriest?” I said after a while. “You chose Annwyn over yourself. Over staying with me.”
