I had been too occupied with the campaign.
That was a mistake. I did not make many of them, and I did not repeat the ones I made, and I would not repeat this one.
I drew a line through the eastern flank notation and began to redraw the campaign entirely.
Chapter Fourteen
AVELINE
Icouldn’t go back in there. Maybe never. I’d rather starve first.
I stood in the doorway of the dining room for approximately three seconds, long enough to see the circle still glowing faintly at its cracked edges, and then I turned around and went back up the stairs without saying anything to either of them.
Thane caught up with me on the second landing.
“Aveline—”
“I’m not eating in there.” I kept moving. “I don’t care what the tower has prepared. I’m not sitting at that table.”
He didn’t argue. He fell into step behind me and that was the end of it.
By the time I reached the nest, I was steady enough on the outside and nowhere close to steady on the inside. I sat on the edge of the furs and pressed my hands between my knees. As I stared at the wall, I tried to do what the past two days had been teaching me, which was to breathe through the feeling rather than pretend everything was okay.
It was harder without the heat occupying all my attention. The heat had been immediate, physical, something my bodydemanded I deal with immediately. This was different. This was a violation. Something I had been subjected to over however many years I had been here, without my permission or knowledge, done to me by someone I should have been able to trust.
Thane stood there for a long moment, staring at me. Then he abruptly turned and went back downstairs. I heard murmuring faintly in the distance, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going back down there. Nothing they said could persuade me otherwise. Then I heard footsteps—Thane’s lighter, almost cautious movements, followed by Malric’s measured, deliberate ones—as they advanced up the stone stairs.
They appeared in the doorway of the nest with trays piled with food from the dining table—meat, cheese, bread. My stomach rumbled in response. I was grateful I didn’t have to test how far I would have to go to prove my point.
“We thought we could eat up here,” Thane said. “We brought what we could from the table.”
“Thank you.”
Thane shook out a thin blanket and laid it in the center of the floor. They set the food on the blanket and I gathered pillows around the outside for us to sit on. We settled in and began to eat. I didn’t expect to be so hungry, even though my stomach had been rumbling, and we ate quietly for a while until our hunger was satiated.
Then my thoughts, that had been circling inside my brain, taunting me with nightmares of what had been, came tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“I supplied him,” I said, my gaze fixed on my hands twisting in the robe I had slipped on after the bath.
Neither of them responded immediately. Thane’s hand found my knee, not squeezing, just resting. Malric looked at me, waiting quietly.
“Everything he did,” I continued. “Every terrible thing. I was above that floor, making him stronger while he did it.” I set the bread down. “The rebellion, the people he’s had killed, whatever he’s done to the provinces—I made that possible. My power. Running through that circle straight into him.”
“No,” Malric said.
His voice was flat. Not unkind, but without any softening in it, which was somehow more effective than gentleness would have been.
“You were a child when that circle was built. You had no knowledge of it. No access to it. No ability to prevent it.” He leaned forward and peered at me intently, as if willing me to listen to his words and believe them. “My father made choices that supported the king for years before I understood what I was watching. He believed he was maintaining stability. He was wrong, and those choices had consequences, but I have never once considered them my crimes to carry.” He paused. “Your father chose to build that array. Your father chose to stand in this tower and feed you a lie with every meal while the floor beneath your feet stripped what was yours. He chose to take all those actions against his own people. That is his accounting, his crime. Not yours.”
I looked at him, tears blurring my vision.
He held my gaze with the steadiness that I now understood was not coldness but was Malric being completely serious and honest. Thane would always support me and give me the comfort I needed, but Malric would give the truth, no matter how painful. Right now, I needed the truth.
“You weren’t a weapon,” Thane said quietly beside me. “You were a source. There’s a difference. Weapons choose to cut.”
I picked the bread back up and ate. Thought about the distinction and let it settle into the place where guilt had been gnawing at me. It didn’t resolve anything. It didn’t make thecircle in the floor disappear or return the years I’d spent above it. But it shifted the guilt, moved it from my chest to somewhere I could live with it, carry it, and that was enough for now.
“The crack in the circle,” I said. “What does that mean?”
