The General tilted her head to glance at him from the corner of her eye, and a flicker of a grin ghosted her mouth – sharp, amused, fleeting. “Not quite the vision I imagined when I first laid eyes on the Seer of Tirn’vahl,” she said, the words curling between them like wind through tall grass. “Bit less mystic, bit more goose-pimpled fisherman.”
Mathias gave a quiet, obliging huff and let the chill water wash over his shoulders, teeth gritted only slightly against the bite. “And here I thought I was disarming,” he murmured, half to her, half to the horizon.
For a while, they let the sea speak between them – the push and pull of waves, the creak of driftwood carried in from faraway shores. Then, softer, without turning toward her: “You don’t have to say anything.Not unless it wants out.”
She didn’t answer at first. Only floated there, shoulder-deep in the shifting light, her arms folded across herself as though bracing against more than the cold. And then she said, not looking at him, not quite looking anywhere, “I’ve never said it to anyone before. And I don’t quite know if I want to say it now.”
“Then don’t.” Mathias said, turning to her just in time to catch the shimmer of a single tear – a silver thread tracing the line of her cheek, bright against the sunlight and gone just as quickly.
She felt it then – the way his eyes held her a beat too long – and looked away sharply, brushing a hand across her cheek with a scoff that didn’t quite land. “Bloody salt in the wind,” she muttered, too quick, too practiced. But the humour faded as fast as it came, and for a moment she only swayed there, waves lapping at her shoulders, the water carrying the weight of the silence she didn’t fill. Then: “Of all the things she did… the years she stole, the stories she twisted – there’s one thing I still can’t put down. One thing that… that cuts deeper than the rest.” Her voice caught, not with tears but with the effort of choosing the right words and letting them live outside her chest.
Mathias didn’t press her. He only turned slightly in the water, just enough to face her more fully, though he kept his distance. No clever retort, no offer of comfort dulled by well-meaning platitudes – just the weight of his presence. Ara drew in a breath, as if testing if it would hold, then let it out in a long thread that seemed to ripple the space between them. Her fingers drifted beneath the surface, tracing slow circles in the foam.
“It wasn’t the lie itself,” she said finally, the words frayed like old cloth, thinned by too many recitations. “It’s that it made me hate myself more than I ever hated her.”
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on the water, on theway the light broke across the surface in thin, restless veins, as if somewhere beneath it there might be something cleaner, something untouched. Then, almost without breath: “You’ve heard of Captain Benjadir?”
Mathias gave a slow nod. “The name carries.”
A dry sound left her then – not quite a laugh. “I suppose it would. He’s always been good at that. At making people remember him. Even when he doesn’t want them to.”
Her expression shifted – not guarded, not sharp, just worn – and he caught it in the brief space between her looking away and looking back. “We grew up together. Trained together. Fought side by side through more campaigns than I care to remember. Before I ever carried a title, he was already helping me shoulder its weight – not by force, but by standing beside me. Holding the line when I couldn’t.”
Her voice softened, wrapped in something that sounded like grief dulled by time. “He made me laugh when nothing else could. There were moments when rage nearly overtook me – and somehow, without a word, he could pull me back. There were weeks, once, where I think we only spoke in glances. And he knew me – really knew me – better than anyone. He was the one person I never had to be anything with. Not the Queen’s heir. Not even a soldier. Just… who I was.”
She paused then, eyes on the horizon, as if the sea might carry the next part away if she didn’t say it quickly enough. “We were young. Not just in age. In the way we let the world feel simple, like it might let us have something of our own. And for a while, there was…more. Not long, and not loud. Just…” Her breath hitched, but she held it steady. “We shared something. Brief and quiet, like a fire started in the dark when no one’s watching. It was real. It was ours. And then I ended it.”
Now, finally, she looked at Mathias. There was no defence in her eyes. No shield lifted. Just the unvarnished honesty of someone who no longer had the strength to lie – not even to herself. “I didn’t tellhim why. Not then. Not ever. Just stepped back. Drew the line. Let him think it was me.”
“Was it?” Mathias whispered, acknowledging he was allowed in to something deep and painful. “Was it you?”
Ara blinked once, slow. Her mouth parted like she might answer, but the words didn’t come. She turned her face away again, toward the sea, and for a long moment the only sound between them was the waves drawing in and out, in and out—like breath steadied by force of will alone.
“No.” The word hung there between them, not as a confession but as a release – soft, frayed, exhausted. She dragged in a breath, deep and briny, and let it out slow.
“There was a man,” she said then. “Benni’s father. The General before me. Falkar.” She glanced sideways, as if to anchor herself in to Mathias’ presence to be able to continue. “He trained us both. Raised Benni in his own shadow. And me, because my mother told him to. He was ruthless. Gruelling. The kind of man who carved soldiers out of children, whether they broke in the process or not.”
She ran her hand through the water, stirring the surface. “Years later, when Benni and I wereclose, Mowgara told me something. That after Falkar’s wife died, he’d gone to her bed. And that it was possible… very possible… that I was born of his seed.”
She did not pause for reaction, nor did she flinch from the sound of it spoken aloud. Instead, she pressed forward, as if each word were a step through deep water – measured, unhurried, and necessary.
“She said it like it meant nothing. Like it was only a fact I ought to have known. It wasn’t a warning. Just a suggestion that I might be better off not bedding my own half-brother.”
Her jaw tightened then, not in anger, but in restraint – the kind that comes from holding something too long, too tightly, until it shapes itself into you. “And I believed her. Of course I did. There was enoughtruth in the timing, in the look she gave me, in the way she didn’t press. She never had to force the knife in—only leave it where I could take it up myself. And I did. I looked at Benni and saw not love, but something monstrous, something ruined before it had the chance to take root. So I ended it, stepped back. I told myself it was right. I told myself it was a mercy.”
The water lapped against her shoulders, and she lifted her hand, watching the droplets fall from her fingers. “But it wasn’t mercy. It wasshame. A shame so deep it made me recoil from my own skin. I let her make me afraid of the one person who ever saw me whole. I let her turn that light into something filthy. And worst of all,” she said, her voice low, raw now, but still holding, “I let her take it from me. And I hated myself more for how easily I gave it.”
Slowly, as if he was brushing his fingers over a flame and feared it might burn his skin, Mathias reached across to the General and closed his hand over her shoulder: “It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” She asked, her eyes gleaming with tears now, her breath shallow and sore. “I kept him at my side all these years and never told him because… because I was disgusted with myself.”
“If he’d wanted to be anywhere else, he would’ve been,” Mathias said softly, and in the stillness that followed, a memory surfaced – sharp as the day it happened – of his mother’s hand on his shoulder, her voice cold as she left him at Maeve’s door and walked away without looking back. Then, more to the water than to her: “When people don’t want to stay, they find a way to leave.”
Without him noticing, his thumb started circling Ara’s shoulder, gently coaxing comfort from his own broken soul into hers. He only stirred to it when she pressed against it, seeking the warmth and solace it offered. The cold water caressed them gently, but his blood was running hot in his veins. When she looked at him, tears dried and the fire again blazing around her pupils, he gently pushed a strandof wet hair off her shoulder and another off her face. “It wasn’t your fault.” He repeated in a quiet voice. “And whatever it was, it wasn’t monstrous, and you, Frejara, are not a monster.”
“I may not have bedded my brother, but I have burned and murdered my way through an entire continent.” She scoffed. “If I am not a monster, then what am I, Seer?” There was a bite to her words, cutting the air between them almost violently.
“I don’t know.” Mathias said. “I guess we have to find out.”
