“I killed him.” I let the words spill out. “I could have incapacitated him, stopped him a dozen of different ways. But when he sent the flames toward Freya, and burned Aofie, I lost myself. I wanted him tohurt. I wanted him to burn. To know that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Iwantedto kill him. Them. What kind of monster does that make me?”
“You arenota monster.” His voice was fierce and certain. “You are someone who protects the innocent. Even as it shatters your heart to do so.”
“How do you live with this?” I asked him softly, my voice breaking.
He took my shaking hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over my knuckles. The tremors slowly started to abate. “By knowing that you saved many people, yourself included, from the horrors he would have wrought. By remembering that if you show mercy to the cruel, you can damn the innocent to that cruelty.”
“Does it get easier?” I needed to know if I would live with thisfeeling forever. But even as I asked, I feared what it would mean. What type of person would I be if killing did become easier?
“You get used to it,” he said, years of weight behind those words. “But it never gets easier. The day it does, that is the day you should worry about your soul.”
Something broke inside me at those words. The tears I’d been holding back finally came pouring out.
Griff didn’t hesitate. He simply pulled me to him as I crumpled, one hand a band across my back, the other running over the back of my head. Those hands that knew killing, offering nothing but comfort.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against my hair, his voice thick with his own emotion, reminding me that he too had taken a life today. “Whatever happens, whatever it takes from you, you are not alone. I’ll carry it with you.”
He was talking about more than just tonight. He was talking about the war that was inevitable.
I buried my face in his chest and fell completely apart. My tears soaked his shirt. Tears for Aoife, who would carry scars from this night forever. Tears for Fiadh, lost to darkness. Tears for who I’d been not even a few hours ago, laughing and drinking with my friends. Tears for who I was now, blood on my hands.
And tears for Griff. For all the times that he’d had to make the choice, carry the weight, live with being both protector and destroyer. For the fact that he understood exactly what was breaking me, because it had broken him, too, over and over again.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Anamlae responds differently these days. As though she’s trying to tell me something. She’s burning brighter. Hotter. But not the controlled flames she started with. Something else entirely.
—From the journal of Violet Andrever
Unlike most nights, I knew this one was a dream.
A woman sat at a desk, writing, the light in the room dim, barely enough to see by. Her hair was the same shade of black as mine, but curly where mine was straight.
I approached her from behind, my footsteps silent. Coming alongside her, I glimpsed her face. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course it was Violet.
She didn’t know I was there, or maybe she just didn’t care. I looked down at what she was writing in the freshly bound leather journal. The sight of it was familiar, but I couldn’t place it, the memory dancing just out of reach.
She looked directly at me and jumped, before relaxing with “Oh, it’s you.” She put her quill down and folded her hands. “Figure it out yet, kiddo?”
When I wokein the morning, I was shocked to find Griff still next to me. He was on his side, hazel eyes warm with concern darting over my face.
“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice as soft as his eyes.
“Drained,” I answered honestly. Both physically and emotionally.
He reached out and toyed with the long tail of my braid. “I was supposed to be gone for most of today, back by this evening. But if you prefer?—”
“No, go. Do what you need to.” Although I was touched that he’d offer to change his plans for me.
With a long look, judging my sincerity, he started to get out of bed. Before he could, I flung my arms around him, squeezing him tightly. A silent thank you. He held me to him, hand running over my hair—a silent promise to always be there.
“I’ll be back by this evening,” he whispered into my hair.
As the door closed softly behind him, the dream came back to me. I could sit here and wallow, or I could try to figure out what Violet meant. The more I learned about her, the more convinced I was that she knew something that had been lost in the fifty years since she had been killed. If only I could have talked to her…
The image of the journal came back to me. This time it jogged my memory—Nana pressing a small leather-bound journal into my hands right before I departed into the unknown.
