He turned on his heels, eyes bright with anger. “What were you thinking? To make them go alone. To send them into the forest without telling me. What did you hope to achieve, Evana?”
“What did I hope to achieve?” I asked sharply. “To save a life, Adrik.”
“By risking four more?”
I reeled, hot with anger. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“You should have come to me. You should have let me handle it.”
“You were gone!”
“Then you should have waited,” he snarled. There was something dark in his eyes, something wild that belonged wholly to a faerie. He kept it well-hidden in the brighter times, but now it slipped through the composure worn thin by exhaustion and sorrow. “No one else must risk their life for this town. No one else must wear this burden, Evana. It ismine. It ismine.”
He was shaking. I came close, taking his ice-cold hands between mine. He did not flinch. No, he melted like ice in my warmth. The wildness softened.
“Please, Adrik,” I breathed. “You cannot shoulder these dangers alone. I cannot bear—” I sobbed a little, so frightened was I by the depth of the shadows on his face. “Please. I cannot lose you.”
His lips parted as if struck. “You were worried about me.” I could not deny it. It was true, painfully, and it seemed to soften his sorrow a touch. He pulled me against him and wrapped me tightly in his arms. His chest pulsed frantically beneath my cheek. He whispered into my hair, “Forgive me. I was not in my right senses. The storm—”
“It feeds on the mind.”
Adrik nodded, slack and worn. “We tried to cut her from the tree. She screamed all the while as if we were severing her limbs.”
I stifled a shudder. “Here,” I said, untangling myself from his arms to draw the last ripe peach I’d saved for him from the pocket of my coat.
He eyed it suspiciously. “That is a peach.”
“Yes?” I sighed with irritation. “Is something wrong with it? Do not tell me that you like only a special kind grown on faerie-trees.”
“No,” Adrik said with pursed lips and took it gingerly from me. “It looks perfect. It’s just… they are my favorite fruit.”
I stared at him, quite concerned that the storm had affected his mind worse than I’d thought. “Iknow. That is why I kept it for you.”
“You brought me my favorite fruit.”
I remembered how astounded he’d been about the tea I’d made him and that I’d treated his wounds, and I realized… I realized that he never asked for something in return for his utter devotion.
“I will grow you a hundred more once I’ve learned how,” I said while I traced an absentminded finger over his collection of knick-knacks set carefully on a shelf. “You have a castle, no?” I asked with amusement. “You could fill entire galleries with these keepsakes.”
A quiet chuckle. “These are gifts. I like to keep them close.” He added, quietly and distantly, “It reminds me that I’ve done good.”
“You do more good than anyone I’ve met.”
Adrik went stiffly to the hearth, poking with an iron at the embers, and he did not look at me as he said, “There was a time I did morebadthan anyone you’ve met.”
“The war?”
He drew a shuddering breath and braced his arms, back turned to me, on the mantle. His voice wore a veil of shame as he said, “I did not fight that war because I believed my side was good or kind. I fought it just to prove my worth to the princeling.Hewas neither good nor kind, but I loved him as one loves an older brother; blindly and utterly. I wore his mark on my back with pride.”I imagined Adrik, just nineteen winters old, desperate to prove himself. A half-faerie in human lands, a half-human in faerie lands. He’d never quite belonged. The faeries knew well to abuse such wounds.“One dark night, after a battle so terrible the wind tasted of blood, I came to his tent and I begged him to let us go home. Fool that I was, I thought for a moment that he understood. Then… Then, I remember not much at all save blood and mud and screams—endlessly. When they rid him of his head at last, it felt like waking from a dream. I do not know at what point his will became mine. Perhaps he’d sent his glamour magic to break into my mind that very night, or perhaps it had been a slow conquest done over the winters we’d spent together.” His grief swept like a flood through the room. It became so alive and real, I felt its teeth like the bite of a hound. I knew this anguish better than I knew my own hands. I had lived it. I had spent the past decade running from it. “I will never know which of the thousands of stains on my soul are mine to bear. I still look at myself sometimes and I see the monster that walked the battlefields shrouded in blood.”
I understood only then that he still believed he had not earned his place in this town. That he thought something rotten lived within him that he could redeem only by sacrificing himself wholly. I closed the paces between us and traced a cautious finger over the rigid lines of his back.
“You need not hide from me, Adrik. I will not look at you differently.” I drew a shaking breath. “I see you. I see you as you are now.” I cupped his jaw and I urged him gently to look at me—to brush the tears from his cheek and to soothe him. “The kindest hearts always bear the heaviest guilt. I have seen the absence of it, the rot and vileness. You are not rotten nor vile, Adrik. I see your guilt. I see it. It is proof of your goodness. Do not burden yourself with the crimes of others.”
There shattered something in his eyes—a barrier, a wall—and from within came a flood of sorrow. It spilled over his face and into his voice.
“When I first came to these lands, I was hunted. I had the blood of three faerie princes on my hands, and their allies wished to spill mine. The wind carried me past the wastes and through this alive forest, and the hunters followed. I made camp on the far hills, where the eldest tree watches over the forest. I was prepared to take a final stand, and to die. I welcomed it, even.” He drew a sharp breath. “I did not know there was a town in the vale. It was not on any map. Had I known… I would not have come. I would not have led the hunters here. I saw from that hilltop that they neared the town. I knew—I knew as I looked down at them that this was a crossroads. I had one final chance to prove there lived a kernel of goodness within me.” He sank to his knees before the hearth, as if he had not the strength to stand. The flame flickered low, painting his features dark with anguish. “I saved the town only from my own carelessness. Had I not come… Had I not brought them here—”
I traced the dancing firelight over the edge of his jaw. “Come, Adrik, such questions serve no one. Can you not see the brightness you cast over this town? The light you have woven into its tales? Had you not come here these people would never have known you and I cannot imagine any of them would prefer that.” A tide of feeling stole my voice and I whispered, “Had you not come here, I would have died in the wasteland. I would have never known this warmth and this gladness.”
