“I know.” Orion’s shoulders drop. Just slightly. “I knew it then, too. Didn’t help.”
“No. It didn’t.”
More silence. But different now. Less frozen.
“Finnian was the buffer,” Orion says. “When he left?—”
“When we encouraged him to leave. To answer the summons. Because it was our best chance to get someone inside.”
“When he left,” Orion repeats, “I didn’t know how to talk to you anymore. Without him translating. Without him smoothing the edges.”
I understand that more than I want to admit. Finnian has always been the one who could speak both our languages. Fire and ice. Action and strategy. Without him, Orion and I are just two men who love the same woman and have no idea how to exist in the same space.
“I never blamed you for the trial,” I say. “For trying to break the barriers. For the wards that nearly killed you.”
“I know.”
“I blamed you for the month after. For making me watch you fall apart while I was falling apart, too. For not letting me help.”
Orion meets my eyes. Really meets them, for the first time in weeks.
“I blamed you for being right,” he says. “About waiting. About the Academy. About all of it. I blamed you for being right while I was burning alive with guilt and couldn’t do anything except try to die in her direction.”
“I blamed you a little,” I admit. “For the guilt itself. For carrying it so loudly that there wasn’t room for anyone else’s.”
“Yeah.” His mouth curves. Not quite a smile. “I know.”
“I was wrong.”
“I know that, too.”
It’s not forgiveness. It’s not resolution. It’s two exhausted men about to walk into a death forest, acknowledging that they’d rather do it together than alone.
I’ll take it.
“How touching,” Whispen says, ruining the moment with practiced precision. “Shall I compose a ballad?Two Lords and Their Feelings: A Tragedy in Three Parts?”
“Walk,” I say.
“Walking! Yes! Into the forest of nightmares and almost-certain death! How delightful!” He flutters ahead, form shifting between shapes. “Do try to keep up. The path doesn’t wait for emotional breakthroughs.”
Orion falls into step beside me. His shoulder brushes mine. Accident or intention, I don’t know.
I don’t move away.
The forest swallows us whole.
16
Ash
The plan?Hope we don’t get caught where we shouldn’t be.
Easier said than done.
I could leave. Right now. Slip out through the passage Kestra showed me, find the borderlands, disappear into the human world where no one knows my name.
I don’t move toward the door.
