He stilled for only a moment before his hand was dropping from the stone to my shoulder, the touch light and gentle as he pulled me towards him. My eyes fluttered shut as strong arms wrapped around me, my chest cracking open with the simple gesture. They burned as a hand moved to my hair, gentle soothing strokes as my body began to shake. His arms tightened as the tears began, rivers of grief and pain soaking into his shirt. His hold was so steady, as though he thought he could put all the broken pieces of me back together if he only held me tight enough.
After a few minutes, I felt his sigh against my hair. “Do you want me to kill him?”
I choked on a shocked laugh, thick and cracked with the sob half-cried. “If I said yes, would you really do it?”
He pulled back as he searched my eyes. Hands cupping my face as his thumbs caressed away the tears that stained my skin. “I’d drown this entire desert if you asked me to.”
“You don’t even really know me, Roan.”
His head tilted, lips pursing as his shoulder lifted and he said, “The secrets you keep don’t change anything for me.”
My confusion must have been evident because his lips curved, his eyes softening in the moonlight that encased us. “Your secrets don’t change the way you care for those in the Old Quarter.” He continued, voice soft, “They don’t change how you care so fiercely for the people you love. Or the way you helped that little Luanthian boy who was accused of stealing silver coins. Nor do they change how you saved that girl's father in yoursecond trial when they could have had you whipped bloody for such an act.”
His breath ghosted across my lips as he leaned closer, gaze so intense it left my head spinning. “They don’t change the freckles I’ve counted a hundred times. Or the storm cloud eyes that haunt my dreams, nor the lips I’ve wished to taste for months now. None of those things would be any different if you told me whatever it is that you’re so scared to reveal, would they?”
His head rested against mine, hands cradling my face as I softly, quietly responded, “No.”
“Then I don’t care what secrets you guard so closely, little menace. Tell me eventually or never at all, it won’t change anything. All I ask of you is that you don’t allow your secrets to keep pushing me away every time I try to get close.”
We stayed like that, deep into the night. Stayed until my tears were nothing but dried salt upon his skin. Two people tangled together so closely, you couldn’t decipher where one shadow ended and the next began. His words and strong arms a balm for my weary heart, his comfort a warmth that I wished so desperately to burrow within and never leave.
The night had always been my reprieve, my place of safety, but Roan Delmar? He was my salvation.
“Have you ever been in love?”
I sat cross legged on the bed of the little room Rena and I shared. Her face was one of exasperation and amusement, lit by the golden light encasing her hands. As though the sun itself was hers andhers alone, shimmering and winding its way to her wrist. She laid that light over a cut on my lip, the heat warm and delicious as it stole away the stinging.
“Yes, once.”
After Roan had brought me back, I’d refused the potion Rena had torn from my pack and shoved towards me, her golden curls practically vibrating with the anger she exuded. After a tongue-lashing for the ages, I’d conceded to at least allowing her to heal my injuries, the drink still burning through my veins.
“What happened?”
Her blue eyes grew distant, almost hauntingly sad as she focused her light over a cut above my brow. I knew that look, knew it down to the marrow of my bones.Loss.Plain and devastating, painted across her face.
“Her name is Emryn,” her voice said softly, a reverence for the memories she still held close, “and I loved her very much.”
“You lost her?”
I uncrossed my legs, rolling as Rena gestured for me to lay on my stomach. A hiss escaping when her golden light touched my back.
“Not to death.“ Her sigh came heavily, so unlike the bubbly woman I had grown accustomed to. “She was a soldier as well. One of the best, actually. Her and Roan trained often together, if that gives you any clue to what her skill level was. I always admired the way she could move with a blade, as if they were one and the same.”
I stayed silent as her healing hands travelled over my back. “My uncle is many things. A king, a father, perhaps a tyrant depending who you ask, but kind is not something I would attribute to him. He’s spent too many years upon that cursed throne won in blood and deceit. It’s done things to him, I think. The death of my aunt was the final crack in his sanity.”
“Emryn was fair and compassionate, she saw injustices in the world and could not turn from them. I don’t know when it happened or how, she never spoke of it to me. I didn’t know until she was dragged into the barracks training fields with bound hands and torn clothes.” Tears hit my shirt as her voice grew strained, “They cut through each of her blessings, drained every tattoo until they were leeched of their golden hue and black painted her skin. They called her a traitor and whipped her—thirty lashes for conspiring with rebel forces.”
A rebel. A traitor. My heart strained, tugging and breaking with every word she spoke.
“My uncle knew I loved her and still he sent her into exile, so injured she could not even walk properly. Roan and Kairen took her somewhere, I do not know where. I was not allowed to go.” The heat from her palms flared brighter for a moment, a burst of golden rays so potent it stung my eyes. “He said that I had a choice in that moment. To continue my duty as blood to the throne of Tavari, or to follow a traitor of the kingdom into exile. He swore that if I picked the second he would send men to hunt us down for the rest of our lives, that he would sendRoanto slit our throats and bring back our hearts. He said I should begratefulhe had not tied her to the stake to cleanse her of her crimes.”
My inhale was sharp, her grief vast as an ocean laid bare for me to sink within as she continued. “Sometimes I wonder where we would be now if I had made a different choice. If I had followed my heart rather than allowed fear to rule my decision. I still wonder if she’s out there thinking of me the way I think of her.”
“I’m so sorry, Rena.” My whisper was strained, tears of my own unshed and pooling within my eyes. She gave a small, tired laugh as she gently patted my healed back.
“Do not be sorry.” I turned to look at her, her gaze wistful. “I have loved and have been loved in a way some can only dream of. I search for her in others even when I know I will not find anything close to what she was to me. Our ending was horrific, but if I could go back, I wouldn’t trade a single precious moment of what we shared.”
The light died from her hands, casting us into moonlight and shadows. Her head tilted, a coy smile curving her mouth.
