There’s a vise squeezing my lungs.
“Did you kill them the way you did the rebels?” I whisper.
Did Sura and Tumaas suffer? Or were their lives snuffed out in seconds?
“Some,” he admits, his voice thick. “But I couldn’t summon that much power for everyone. I called down lightning.” His gaze cuts away. “I still dream of that night sometimes. The screams. The smell.”
I don’t know what to say to this remorseful man before me. I swallow thickly, tears pricking my eyes.
“Did you regret it?”
“A little. But not truly, not until you told me your friends had been there. Now, I wish with every fragment of my broken soul that I could go back and spare you the pain I caused.”
My throat is tight, face wet with tears. I hate that he looks so broken. So anguished. I try to summon loathing—but it doesn’t come. He burned through my hatred ages ago. Now, grief rages in the hollow he’s dug.
“I can’t—I can’t look at you right now,” I rasp. I rise on shaky feet and walk away.
Behind me, our bags rustle as he scoops them up. His footsteps fall a few paces back, leaving enough space between us for my grief.
I don’t turn around.
We pass the day in utter silence. Zev lets me work through my feelings about his revelation—that he murdered my best friends in a rage-induced attack.
At first, it’s fury. Cold and unrelenting. Their faces haunt my thoughts—Sura’s lopsided grin, Tumaas’s warm eyes—then I blink, and their skin is blistered, scorched. Lifeless.
And I see Zevayr looming over them. Not the man I know now, but the Dark Commander—jaw set, brutal lightning heeding his call.
But the cruelest thing?
As much as I try to hate him, my heart melts the anger away before it crystallizes. Because he knows what it’s like, too. Heknows what it’s like to lose someone he loves. He’s not the monster I desperately want him to be.Needhim to be. He’s just like me. That’s what makes it so hard to hate him.
Because I can’t.
I don’t.
Now, we sit across the fire, the sky inky above us. There’s a gaping, hollow void in my chest. An aching sadness seeps through my numb limbs, and I realize it’s forhim. Forhisloss. For whathe’sendured. Alone.
What is wrong with me?
But my heart protests the haunted look in his eyes, the tightness lining his mouth. I’m overcome by the urge to soothe.
I’ve lost too much. So has he.
“Zev,” I say softly, and his eyes find mine like they’ve been waiting. The stiff line of his shoulders eases ever so slightly
“I should hate you.” The words rasp out of me. “Tides, Iwantto.”
He flinches.
“But I don’t,” I whisper. “I hate what this war has done to us. All of us. So much suffering. So much loss. It’s why—it’s why I have to do this. It’s why I need to marry your brother.”
It’s his turn to swallow hard, tension returning to his shoulders. He nods stiffly.
We sleep on separate sides of the blanket.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We’rehere.
