Then he broke her gaze and left.
Cyara dropped to her knees before the fire. She had no tears left to cry, but she pressed her face into her palms nonetheless.
She did not move when she heard the door open—the one that connected Veyka and Arran’s bedchamber to the main sitting room. The one that had been ajar when she first led Percival into the room.
“You heard everything,” she said between her fingers.
“Yes,” Osheen said, coming to stand beside her. His boots were black leather. “It might not be the right chalice. And even if Veyka bears all three, it might not be enough. It is a guess, and a tenuous one at that. This could change nothing.”
“Or everything,” she said softly.
Osheen did not argue. She let her hands fall away. One of the legs of his trousers was torn at the edge. The loose fabric had been dragged through mud that had dried to a thick brown slash.
“Was it worth it?”
Cyara bit her lip. She knew precisely what he meant.
The cost to her soul, to do such things—to poison someone who had done her no harm? Her answer was unequivocal. With careful movements learned from a lifetime of counterbalancing her heavy wings, she rose to stand. She looked directly into Osheen’s eyes as she answered. “If she lives, then yes.”
Face to face, they were much closer than she’d realized. Mere inches separated them. If she were to light a fire with herfingertips, it would surely incinerate the charged air between them.
Osheen’s gaze slid from her eyes, down the column of copper plait that hung over her shoulder. “You stopped braiding pearls into your hair.”
“I try not to look too long in mirrors these days.” She swallowed. “I am afraid of who might look back at me.”
“War changes everyone. Those that survive it.”
Osheen lifted his hand as if he would touch the end of her braid. When his eyes came back to her face, she knew that touch would be just the beginning.
She wanted to let him. More than anything in that desperate moment, Cyara wanted to tilt her cheek into his palm, to let the caress she’d imagined a hundred times in her dreams finally become reality.
But war changed everyone, as he’d said. And she had already been changed irrevocably by her part in it. How that fit with another being, Cyara was not sure. She did not know if she would ever be ready to find out.
She stepped back. “I must go.”
There were a thousand excuses she could have offered. Tending to Veyka’s belongings. Assisting Lady Elayne, who was busy rearranging the castle to provide long-term accommodations to the elemental refugees. The Ancestors knew she ought to look in on her mother, who despite her endless strength was still grieving.
But Cyara gave none of them. None were sufficient to ease the ache or longing. So instead she walked out without another word.
13
VEYKA
I longed to linger in the void, to reach for one of those realms that I’d begun to sense just beyond. Beyond what, I could not exactly say. Only that they felt as real to me as the cutlery on the table at a meal. All I had to do was reach out and I could touch them. But exploring those other realms was a dream for another time. Maybe no time.
Instead, I landed beside my husband where he stood barking orders in Eilean Gayl’s outer bailey. With Osheen and Elora’s help, he’d assembled a combined force of terrestrial and elemental warriors. For now, they were divided into two units, each commanded by their own lieutenant. I knew it rankled him; he’d spent three hundred years learning how to balance powers to create the strongest possible fighting force, and splitting the elementals and terrestrials apart went against every instinct he had.
My Talisman swallowed up the weak sunlight. I was the only elemental who’d ever borne one. We were still a kingdom divided.
“Are they in place?” Arran asked without looking at me.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I am going to scout the survivors’ camp now. Will you be ready when I return?”
I felt Arran’s tension at the same time that the low rumble reverberated in my chest. His chest, actually. But we might as well have been one.
Do not engage,his beast growled.
They are my subjects.That did not mean they were harmless. They could not be to have survived this long. But I would not allow myself to fear them.
