“So, your days of fighting are over?” she asks, those brilliant blue eyes of hers impossible to look away from.
I stare at her. “As long as the fae don’t begin to fight amongst themselves again.”
“So, you’re done being a warrior?” There’s something gentle in her expression.
“It doesn’t feel like they’re over.”
She smiles, small and sad. “But they are. You’ve got to teach your mind and your body that when you get back, it’s time to relax. To stop fighting everything. I mean, you’re going to be pretty miserable if all you ever do is fight. Right?”
I open my mouth, then shut it.
“He’s speechless,” Sylvian teases.
“Thank the gods,” Ashton mumbles, but he’s teasing me.
Cassius tilts his head slightly. “There’s some truth to that,” he says. “I read a book once on how the body responds to prolonged danger. It talked about how the mind doesn’t always recognize when the threat is gone. The body stays… primed. Muscles tight. Breathing shallow. Ready for something that isn’t there anymore.”
His gaze flicks briefly to me, then back to Alette.
“It said it can take a long time to retrain that. To convince yourself you’re safe.”
“See?” Alette says softly.
“You too,” Cassius responds, gesturing toward Alette. “I don’t think you know how to not live in fear either.”
She looks surprised, but I feel even more connected to her.How has a warrior who has never known peace experience the same fear as a little human who has rarely known kindness in her life?I don’t know, but we do, and maybe in that way our souls dance together.
The others settle back, a little looser now, as if some invisible rope around us has gone slack.
I feel lighter. Not much, but enough. And for the first time, I let myself think about what I might want after all this. I don’t have an answer, just that I want Alette around me, all the time. But maybe that’s fine. Maybe, for once, it’s enough just to have the question and the one thing that I know will make me happy.
I stare at the little sliver of sky, the way it goes from black to blue so slow you could almost miss it, and I think aboutwhat Alette said. About the future, about wanting more than the old war, the endless games of power. The loneliness. The royals always end up fighting, dragging their people into it, and then there’s death and bloodshed in every direction for years until another tense truce comes again.
It’s suddenly hard to ignore how stupid we all are.
I clear my throat. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”
Nobody reacts, at first. Maybe they think it’s a joke, maybe they’re waiting for the punchline, but I just let the words hang there.
Sylvian is the first to bite. “You mean, ever?”
I nod. “I mean with you. With any of you. I’m done hating the other courts. Done being the sword for people who don’t care if I live or die.”
Cassius raises an eyebrow. “And your court? You think they’ll just go along with peace?”
I shake my head. “I don’t care what they want. I’m not their monster anymore.”
Alette smiles, small but bright enough to scorch the inside of my skull. “Does this mean you’ll try for peace?”
My answer comes strangely easily. “Yeah. I’ll try.”
Sylvian grins, wolf-bright. “If the four of us get along, the courts will fall in line.”
Ashton flicks a bit of hay at my face. “We could live forever in a world of peace.”
Cassius doesn’t smile, but the tension in his jaw relaxes, just a little. “It’ll be hard. We’ll have to talk. Compromise. Not overreact.”
Alette looks at us all, eyes wide, like she’s seeing something she never expected. “Just like that?”
