A stinging breeze blew around the cottage, sending potato skins whirling. “That was you, on the Scathmore Barrens? It was you I struck with my zephyrs?”
“It was me,” he replied quietly.
It was as though Valenna stood on a frozen lake and someone had brought down a sledgehammer between her feet. “So all ofthis—the headaches, and the bleeding, and the powder, it’s all because of me? I did this?”
“Well, it’s partially my fault.” He was trying to soften it, make it less horrible, but he couldn’t.
Valenna’s stomach turned, and she thought she might be sick. “How?” she demanded. “How is it your fault that I pummeled you …”
“I wouldn’t say pummeled …”
Irrationally, his evasions irritated her. She wanted him to be realistic, to recognize the crime that stood between them. To rain down on her the wrath she deserved.
But he held out his hand. “Come to me, Val.”
“No.” She backed away from him, a profusion of thorns sprouting around her ankles. “I can’t. I don’t understand. We can’t … Is this why you left Largotia? Did you know?”
“I knew the powder was running out, and I knew what that … meant.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “You mean you knew you were dying, and so you left so you could do it alone?”
He nodded. “And I did want to be dragon master. Make changes toward ending the war, leave a legacy, and most likely go out in a blaze of glory. Not ideal goals for a man in a relationship with a woman.”
He was trying to distract her, but she would not be so easily put off.
“Evander, we tried to kill one another! And I … look at what I did to you!” Her voice startled a family of rumor wrens outside in the thatch, and they flapped away indignantly.
Evander, unperturbed as ever, shrugged. “I don’t care about that.”
“You should! We both should,” she cried. “You nearly eviscerated me, and I nearly split open your head!”
He stood and waded through the thorns, unheeding as they snagged on his pant legs. “But we didn’t kill one another. We had the chance, and we both chose mercy. We went against our parents, our countries, and our upbringing, and spared one another.”
“Yes, you spared me, and I healed. But you …” Her lip quivered, the horror swamping her. She covered her face with her hands. “I need to sit down. I think I’m going to vomit.”
Evander looped his arm around her waist and led her to the cot, then sat beside her. She leaned forward, gripping her stomach, and Evander rubbed circles on her back.
She was being punished. She’d let her father manipulate her for years, and then she struck down the man she loved with her own hand. Her future unfurled before her, a bog of grief and guilt and regret. Evander was right not to tell her the truth; already, it ate at her heart, like moths on a neglected gown.
Evander touched her cheek, trying to make her look at him. “Val, for six months in Largotia, you took care of me. You made me take my medicine, you made sure I was drinking enough water, you checked on me every day, and spoke to physicians when I was too lazy to do it myself. I don’t think of you as the woman who struck me, but the woman who saved me. And you’ve more than made up for Scathmore.”
“I can never make up for that,” she said firmly. “I thought it was unforgivable before I knew it was you. Now …”
“Like you said, I sliced open your stomach.”
“Oh, barely,” she snapped, standing. “Your heart wasn’t in it. It was hardly a scratch.”
He suppressed a smile. “I thought I nearly eviscerated you.”
“Stop it.” She rounded the table, putting space between them again, and sank into a chair. A patch of ire iris grew around Evander, framing him in a blue cloud. “Do you really love me,Vander? Even now? I took so much from you. I took everything from you.”
“But you also gave me more love, more joy, more hope than anyone in over twenty summers before I met you.” He sat across from her, leaning forward and cupping his hands over hers. “We’re different people now. The past has no hold on us.”
Tenderly, she lifted his hand in both hers and pressed it to her lips.
“Valenna, listen to me,” Evander said. “You’ve got a good position in Largotia, a good life, prospects. What’s the point of putting all that aside for me?”
Valenna dropped his hand, exasperated. “What’s the point? What’s the point? I love you.”
