I snarl. “There is nothing beautiful about what I am now.”
He tilts his head a little, a flicker of surprise in the rise of his eyebrows. “Your heart beats clear and true, Asha. I can hear it. You love just as fully as you did before. Your need to protect the ones you care about is as strong as ever. Nothing could destroy your heart, Asha Silverspun.”
“Only break it,” I whisper. “Why wouldn’t you come with me?”
His hand stills in the air, frozen there as his jaw clenches. “The only way you’d be free was if I wasn’t by your side.”
My lips purse. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I had years to work through every scenario. Years to watch my people plot and plan, to consider every move and countermove. To make sure you and your siblings were strong enough—to train your brother, to wait for your sister’s healing power to return. It took years for the way forward to become clear and when it did, I chose the path that would guarantee your freedom.”
My heart is slowly sinking, as heavy as a stone in water.
Before he sent me out of the city, he told me that we would never have a world where there were no moves or countermoves, no commands, no subterfuge, and no treachery.
He was always two steps ahead of everyone else.
Always planning. Always plotting. Always influencing outcomes.
When he set me free, I knew that he had arranged it meticulously, right down to the timing of my departure and the ruse he’d created to ensure my sister came with us.
He’d predicted everything before it had happened.
Everything.
“I made one mistake,” he says, his voice so low now that I can barely hear him. “I thought I’d pushed you away hard enough, treated you badly enough, that you wouldn’t turn back to fight the monster.”
A chill has taken hold of me and now it thrums through my body, beating into the medallion and rippling back from it. “I wasn’t supposed to come back for you. Was I?”
He doesn’t look away. Just as I never looked away from him.
He meets me eye to eye.
The expression on his face now is plain for me to see. It’s the same one he wore when I raced toward him across the ashen ground, running back to help him fight the monstrous wolf.
He glared at me and told me:“You shouldn’t be here.”
“My people had the weapons they needed to fight any monster,” he says. “You were free. I’d done what had been needed. It was over.”
My heart is pounding, the blood whooshing in my ears as I speak my fear aloud. “You knew the humans were going to kill you.”
Softly, he says, “You weren’t meant to see me die, Asha. For that, I’m sorry.”
Chapter21
Hot as a dragon’s fire, fury burns through me. “You accepted your death.”
“It was time for them to rule themselves. Mother Solas and Rachel were ready. Genova was mobilizing her followers. The Wasteland Warriors were in position. Whatever battle for control was about to play out, I did as much as I could to influence the outcome. My time was done. Now, it’s up to them.”
I close my left fist, my knuckles turning white where my hand hovers in the air, fighting the icy cold. I care about what happens to Mother Solas and Rachel, and particularly about Kedric and Maybelle—the humans who raised my siblings. But right now, my pain has another cause.
“In all your planning and preparedness, you didn’t once consider that your death might matter to me?”
His jaw clenches, but still, he responds quietly. “I hoped it wouldn’t.”
“You…hoped?” My voice rises. “YouhopedI wouldn’t care?”
With a scream of rage, I launch myself at him, my right hand thumping his chest.
