I’m not sure what the silent communication between them means, but Graviter seems to capitulate, sighing softly as his anger appears to dissolve.
“Milena,” Torva says softly, nudging her side. “Please let us take you inside, where you can be warm.”
“No!” Milena’s protest is sharp.
Her eyes fly open and her hand darts out to wrap around my wrist.
I could easily shake her off, but she grits her teeth as she looks at me. “I’m dying. I know it. I can feel my life waning. I can feel the final rush of energy within me before death will claim me. There are things I need to say while I can.”
Her strength wanes and her hand slips away from me. “You will allow me say them,” she says. “And then you will let me die here in the snow.”
Chapter 51
Milena’s voice softens as she gazes up at me. “You look so much like your father.”
“How did you know him?” I can’t keep the growl from my voice. “How do you know my name?”
A tear trickles down her cheek. “I met your father in these mountains soon after he first arrived here. You see, this forest was my particular playground.”
My brow furrows at the description she uses. “‘Playground’?”
“Yes, Erik,” she whispers, fully fixated on me in the same way she was fixated on Asha. “I was responsible for the monstrous leopards and the malformed butterflies and all the other vicious creatures that ran and crawled and flew in this forest. I did not have my brother’s special power over living things, but I found other ways to manipulate life.”
I narrow my eyes at her because if it’s true that she knew about us, then I can’t see how she wouldn’t have told her brother. “But Malak didn’t know we were here.”
He was surprised on that day when he tracked us to our home, I’m sure of it.
“I didn’t tell anyone.” Milena sighs. “In my hunger for power and my determination to push the limits of what I could create,I had destroyed so much of this place. Your father, when I first came upon him, had just killed a leopard. He was kneeling to it, speaking words of respect for its strong spirit.”
She closes her eyes and repeats the blessing that I, too, gave the beasts I killed. “’You have a strong spirit and you fought well’,” she whispers. “’May you fill your belly in the Hall of Warriors and sleep by the warmth of the eternal light.’”
She opens her eyes. “That’s what he said to that wretched creature. Then he rose up and turned to me, and I will never forget the fury in his eyes as he gripped his sword and asked me if he would soon need to speak a blessing over my dead body, too.” The faintest smile crosses her lips. “It was clear he thought he could kill me.”
Near to me, Asha has fallen silent. When I look at her, she’s contemplating me with an expression I can’t decipher. Her heartbeat is steady. Her hand has remained on Milena’s chest. But there’s a tension in her posture that wasn’t there before.
No. Not tension.
Sadness.
I’ve told her very little about my family. She knows that I’m descended from the Einherjar and that, when my brother was born, our father left his people behind. She knows I didn’t grow up in the city. And she knows that my father’s creed was to protect the people he loved at all costs.
She knows that Blacksmiths killed my family.
“Nobody had ever challenged me like your father did,” Milena says to me, her voice fainter now. “And then, there you were, you and Thoren, both little children, clearly unaware of the danger I posed to you. You were both so full of life and completely unafraid of me.”
Her faint smile fades. “It was the first time in many years that any child had looked at me without fear in their eyes. Even Blacksmith children were taught to stay away from me.”
She takes a shallow breath and my heightened senses allow me to detect that the act of breathing is becoming more difficult for her now. “I told your father I would leave him be. I promised he would not be disturbed as long as he didn’t come anywhere near the city.”
Her focus slips away from me, lifting to the stars that are now appearing in the night sky. “This forest was mine. Nobody was allowed here except for me, and nobody would risk displeasing me. Not even my own brother.”
She’s silent for a long moment before she sighs.
With that exhalation, I hear the near-silence within her chest.
The slowing of her heart.
“My brother was broken,” she whispers. “I couldn’t allow another Ironmeld child to grow up unloved.”
