Almost.
“Thank you,” she finally whispered, the words low and hoarse and gravelly in her throat. She met the eyes of each of her Armature—those brave, selfless men who owed her nothing yet still gave her everything, even when she’d been nothing but a stranger. A naive little girl they found themselves bound to for the rest of their now very long lives, and not once had they shown her anything but gratitude.
Feran’s eyes flashed over their group. His brow tightened, his arm tensing beneath Mariah’s fingers.
“Where’s Andrian?”
Everything stalled.
Broke.
Shattered.
All that blubbering, thankful happiness was scraped away, grief and loss returning like a wickedness that couldn’t be shaken. Every painful memory swarmed into her mind, couching her firmly back into her self-loathing and misery.
Her Armature, captured and shackled.
Her mother, bleeding out over a cursed black stone.
A great black dragon bursting out from Enfara, blocking out the sun.
Andrian, a love she was warned would be her weakness, staying behind to be a dark god’s plaything so the rest of them could escape.
Mariah blinked and the room came back into focus. Even through the haze of her despair, she felt their expectancy.
“He’s…” She cleared her throat, clamping hard around her pain. Forcing up that comfortable numbness, that blessed dissociation, she tried again. “He didn’t come to Kreah with us. He stayed.”
Feran’s lip lifted in a snarl. “Oh, that little fuck. I’ll kill him?—”
“Feran.” Drystan’s interruption was firm. “It wasn’t his choice.”
Mariah could hardly listen as Drystan recounted the final events in Khento, telling Feran of all that happened after he was wounded and knocked unconscious. She sank into the void, her mind emptying of feeling until it was nothing but a shell.
Better than letting the pain drown her out and wash her away.
When Drystan finished, Feran turned back to her, dark-brown eyes soft once more. Delaynie, Kiira, and Rylla had joined them at the edge of the bed, Ciana still dabbing the corner of her eyes with her handkerchief, her expression devastated.
Mariah wondered distantly if she and the other girls had been told of all that had happened in Khento, or if they were learning of it right there with Feran.
Not that it mattered. They all knew now.
“Mariah?” Delaynie’s soft, fervent voice pulled her from the depths of her emptiness. “What’s the plan?”
Mariah blinked, finding everyone staring at her. Waiting. “What do you mean?”
“Your plan, Mariah,” Feran said gently. “To get Andrian back. How do you plan to do it? What can we do to help?”
The emptiness cracked. The void slipped. Grief wormed its way back in.
A part of Mariah’s soul splintered further as she mustered the words she’d been cowering from for days. “I don’t have a plan.”
Silence greeted her for a beat. “M.” Quentin gripped her shoulder. “I know it’s hard. I know you’re hurting. But we can’t just leave him there?—”
“Stop, Quentin.” She shrugged him off, shock and hurt flashing in his bottle-green eyes. “I can’t think about it. I can’t. Because I know—Iknowwe can’t leave him there. But I can’t… I can’t…”
The awful, shameful, devastating truth lurked right there, right on the tip of her tongue. Her heart caved in, reaching for that place deep within her, a place that once shone with so much beautiful, raging light.
“You can’t what, M? Tell us. Let us help you.” Sebastian’s earnestness finally pulled the truth from her throat.
