It’d been so much easier to deal with guilt by denying and deflecting the blame. Admitting it proved soul-crushing, as I knew it would. But in a way, it was also unexpectedly liberating. The guilt became slightly less oppressive somehow, now that my sins were fully exposed.
“The idea to send them?” She seemed confused.
“The idea to go to Sarnala and fight the big, scary werewolves in their most dangerous form.”
“But why?”
I exhaled a bitter laugh, then rubbed my forehead. How stupid it all looked now, a hundred years later? Back then, however, when I was that much younger, it all made sense.
“To prove how brave we were?” I scoffed. “For some fucking glory we foolishly believed we were owed? Olathana had enjoyed a long period of peace, thanks to my mother’s clever diplomacy in politics. The young hotheads like us thought we were robbed of wars, of an opportunity to kill and be killed. I said something stupid along those lines while drinking with my friends the night before my twenty-first birthday. We were fantasizing out loud about all the kingdoms we would conquer when I became king, and I boisterously declared that we didn’t need to wait until then. We could fight anyone anytime we wished. What was stopping us from going to Sarnala that night, for example? From showing those werewolves that they couldn’t intimidate us, noteven on the night they were at their strongest, most vicious, and monstrous?”
“So you went?”
“I personally did not,” I huffed. “I went to bed and fucked an hour away with a couple of court ladies.”
“A couple, huh?” She gave me a look. “One wasn’t enough?”
Did I hear a tight note in her voice to match her pursed lips and scrunched-up nose or did I imagine it?
“What exactly are you disapproving of, my dear? Of the act itself or the number?” I clarified.
“I have no reason either to approve or disapprove. You’re old enough to do as you please.” She waved me off, looking a bit sheepish after realizing how silly it was to feel jealous about an encounter that took place long before she was even born.
Seeing Maren jealous was new to me. And cute, I decided. She looked adorable like that with her cheeks flushed, her lips pursed, and her eyes darting away from mine in her struggle to look like she didn’t care. And it thrilled me to discover that she did care.
“Anyway,” she urged. “I still don’t understand how your talking about some dangerous things led to anyone’s death?”
“Sometimes talking is just as dangerous as doing,” I explained. “Sometimes, words are more lethal than a weapon, and they kill more effectively than a sword. I went to bed that night, but my friends went to Sarnala.”
“Without you?”
“Without me. Drunk on wine and the prospects of glory, they were too eager to jump into action without a delay. One of the two court ladies woke me up a couple of hours after my friends had left, and I went after them.”
“Did you go to join them?”
“To stop them, if I could, or to join them if I couldn’t. I swam as fast as the ocean would carry me. And when I arrived...”
I didn’t expect my voice to break. A hundred years had passed, and I’d been paying for my mistakes every second of each of those hundred years. I’d had plenty of time for my sense of loss to fade, for my guilt and shame to wear off, and for my pain to heal.
Yet a painful thud echoed through my chest with the memories of that day. Guilt proved to be an enduring emotion, and shame clearly was immortal.
“Almost all of them were dead already,” I found the strength to continue, but I couldn’t look Maren in the eye as I spoke. “Pieces of their dead bodies were strewn all over the beach, next to the werewolves they had killed. I saw there was no glory in dying like that. And what an impossibly high price that was to pay for that lesson. Their useless, senseless deaths accomplished nothing and didn’t prove anything. Elar, Zaren, Jasmar, Aeris...”
The names of the men I knew since we all were boys, the men I grew up with and who would never grow old now, burned my throat as I recited them all out loud for the first time in so many years. All twelve of them.
I ran a hand over my face, closing my eyes for a moment to find my composure. But that made it worse. The images of my friends’ bloody remains appeared behind my closed eyelids, as vivid as ever. Horror hollowed my chest all over again. Agony and regret squeezed my throat in an iron grip.
“I found only Delmar still alive,” I said in a hoarse voice. “He was pinned to the ground with a sword made of Nerifir iron, the only weapon capable of killing a fae. Werewolves don’t use weapons when they’re in their monstrous forms during the full moon. He must’ve been stabbed earlier that morning, after the werewolves who had survived the night sought revenge for the night’s massacre. I pulled the blade out of Delmar’s chest, then swam back to Lyrei, carrying him on my shoulders.”
Maren listened quietly, the blanket pulled up to her mouth, her eyes open wide. The story didn’t make me look good, no matter how it was told. There was no way to embellish it in my favor, unless I lied, which I didn’t want to do. Not to her.
“The sword had been left in Delmar’s body for too long before I found him. Pulling it out didn’t help. He died by the time I reached the reef on the morning of my twenty-first birthday,” I smirked bitterly. “Mother planned a lavish celebration with a ball and festivities throughout the day. And I showed up late, with a dead body in my arms...”
“What did she do?” The question fluttered like a sad, fragile butterfly from her lips.
“I believe that was the last straw for the queen, my dear Maren.” I gave her a smile, because the alternative would be breaking down into tears, and I was terrible at crying. “The royal court practically exploded with grief and fury. But Mother remained quiet. She didn’t say a word to me that time, just stared at me with so much sorrow and disappointment.”
A shudder crossed my shoulders. The memory of that stare was still as vivid as ever, even after all those years.
