He reached out like he was going to cup my face but stopped short. “Nightmare?”
Screw it. I leaned into his almost-touch. “I thought it was.”
He raised an eyebrow but let it go. “You should be sleeping.”
“Hard to, without you by my side,” I quipped before thinking better of it.
He ran his thumb over my cheek. “I know the feeling, Princess. I’ll be there soon. Try to rest.”
I lay back down and stared up at the stars until sleep claimed me.
Sometime later—minutesor hours, I couldn’t tell—I felt Griff’s presence as he climbed into his bedroll beside me. I turned toward him and he wrapped his arms around me. The unspoken rules we’d been living by felt distant out here. Instead of maintaining our usual careful distance, I moved closer and rested my head on his chest. His fingers found my braid, drifting upward until he was cupping my head, stroking my hair. Between the gentle motion of his hand and listening to the steady beat of his heart, I drifted back to sleep.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
My father keeps pushing, so convinced that he knows what’s best. For me. For Thom. For Serentyn. He never knows when enough is enough. Never knows when to give in. Cannot imagine admitting he was wrong. He’s going to get someone killed someday.
—From the journal of Violet Andrever
The next morning, we said our goodbyes. I hesitated to leave but knew I had to return to Valdris. As Griff teleported us back, I thought about all of those people, how their lives had been destroyed in a single night. And then all thoughts vanished as I saw Zachariah standing under the archway that held the iron entrance gates to the castle, arms crossed, tapping his foot. There was a crowd of people behind him.
All clearly waiting for me.
Griff held on to me, as though he could protect me from whatever was about to happen—or was thinking about teleporting us elsewhere. My arms clung to him for a second longer, wishing he would. As my grandfather’s eyes narrowed, Griff slowly released me, although he stayed right by my side.
“So you are fully trained in your power, are you?” was Zachariah’s opening remark.
I looked at him cautiously. “I’ve been training, but I wouldn’t say fully trained.”
“Yet you’re apparently ready to go gallivanting across the realm, reversing the touch of a hufen. Playing the hero while ignoring problems here.”
How had he even heard about that? We’d just arrived. Griff stiffened beside me, ready to jump in and defend me.
“You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.” Finn appeared from nowhere. “Rather than the best hope we’ve seen in fifty years.”
Oh. Finn knew. Shit.
Zachariah’s face twisted with something like glee that made my stomach turn. “I’m just saying that if she can do that, she can fix the Veil. But instead, she cowers here, hoarding her power while people die.”
It always came back to the Veil with him.
“I don’t think those two things are equivalent—” I started.
“Of course you don’t think!” he snapped. “You’ve been biding your time for months, playing at being a student while entire villages are slaughtered. How many more children will die while you study? How many more mothers will watch sons turn into demons because the savior is too scared to try?”
Deep down, something in his words struck me. I did have all this power. And people were dying. I thought of the devastation I’d just left. How many more towns were like that? How many more young boys would be doomed to death because I wasn’t there to save them? Could I save them all by fixing the Veil?
Did I actually have what it took?
The prophecy seemed to think so, if I went with Zachariah’s interpretation of it. I shoved down the niggling thought that always appeared when I thought of the prophecy—the fact that it, and I, was missing something. Something big.
“I’ve been training?—”
“Training?” He laughed, a chilling sound. “Your aunt would have done something by now. She was half your age when she startedmaking the hard choices. She understood her duty. Your parents would have done something. They understood sacrifice. But you? You are hiding behind excuses while this realm burns.”
My hands clenched. How dare he mention my parents? How dare he mention Violet? Three people that he’d let sacrifice themselves while he sat there.
