Willow clenches her jaw and looks away, her eyes again filling with tears. She shakes her head. When she finds Brielle’s gaze, her nostrils flare.
Brielle shifts her shoulders and says, “Willow?—”
“Brielle, you know how long it’s been,” Willow interrupts, settled in a chair in front of us, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “If he’s been within the darkness for all these years…” Another tear slips down her cheek. “We can’t help a man that doesn’t wish to be saved.”
Her words strike me in the chest like a blade piercing my heart. I can’t deny that the man we saw—the one who tried tokillus—didn’t look like someone who was begging to be helped.
If anything, he looked like heenjoyedthe damage he was inflicting on us. Daimon didn’t so much as blink that I was his daughter, and if that doesn’t bring an emotion out of someone, I don’t know what would.
“You know me, Willow,” Brielle pleads. “I have to dosomething—even if that something can’t be right now, I can’t ignore it forever.” She shakes her head and mumbles, “Likeyou twohave ignored the rest of the realm.”
Something in Willow’s expression shifts. “I don’t know where you’ve been these last hundred years, and as much as I want to believe I can still trust you, I have to be sure.”
Her eyes soften, a quiet plea in her voice for Brielle to understand. But Brielle’s gaze hardens, her mouth tilting into a frown. Aster leans back and crosses his arms, his forearms flexing.
These three warriors, who have been through more than I could probably imagine, have been ripped apart by grief. Brielle’s right—some people choose to flee from their heartache, while others choose to stay and fight.
“He was our leader, Brielle. Ourfamily,” Willow spits out, her tears now falling freely as she turns back to us. “No one can make Daimon do something he doesn’t want to do. He had to have chosen that. There was only one thing strong enough to push him over the edge like that.”
“Don’t,” Brielle warns, her voice sharpening like a blade against a stone.
Willow’s jaw clenches, and her eyes briefly flick to me. She shakes her head and looks back at Brielle, a silent conversation passing between them.
“We don’t know what happened,” Brielle whispers. “We owe him the benefit of the doubt—he’s saved us more times than any of us could count. At the very least, we owe him this; believing he had his reasons.”
Willow sniffles, and Aster slides his arm around her shoulders. He tugs her against his side, their chairs touching, and allows her to scoot a little closer to him.
I shift, tired of hearing about howadmirableDaimon once was. What we need to know is how to approachthisversion of him. Even if he had his reasons, it doesn’t change the man that he is now. Aster and Willow realize that, too. But that doesn’t answerwhythey have been on the border. Why leave Kauri atall? We told them why we were there, but they’ve yet to tell us their reason.
“What wereyou twodoing on the border?” I finally ask, breaking the silence.
Brielle may have known them during the war, but that was three hundred years ago. That’s more than one lifetime—plenty of time for people to change. I’ve seen people change in the blink of an eye, their true colors surfacing in the span of a few breaths.
I want to trust them—want to believe they’ll help share any knowledge they have about Daimon and Vidaris in the days to come. But I’m not entirely convinced. They gave us a place to sleep, fed us, and have been helping Brielle heal. Still, that doesn’t mean I trust them fully.
“You have had your battles to fight, and we have had ours,” Aster answers gruffly.
His vague answer causes the hair on my neck to stand, and I see Leda’s spine stiffen. We need more than generalized answers to help us fight back against Daimon and Vidaris.
“Things may have felt peaceful in the land, but that doesn’t mean darkness isn’t working to destroy that every hour of every day,” Willow rasps, her voice hoarse. Her eyes dart to Aster, face paling as she swallows slowly. “It was only a matter of time before Vidaris needed more than the split to sate her thirst for blood and chaos.”
Brielle nods, knowing the draw of the wyverns as deeply as they do.
Willow and Aster are skilled in war, having already lived through one. Now, when called by Eurydiceagain, even gifted these incredible beasts, they choose only to sit safely on their little island while the rest of us prepare for the worst.
No onewantsto die in a war, but we’ve all answered the call that’s been given. We don’t even know where the battle is or what we’re fighting, but we’rehere. We’re trying. Which is more than they can say.
I stand, my frustration rising at the two ex-warriors who seem to have forgotten what it means to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. “So, you all are just living here with your happy little livesknowingeverything is going to go to shit?”
Willow’s eyes snap to me, and she slowly gets to her feet, too. Aster remains seated, but there’s a shift in the air as he watches us closely.
“Do not pretend to know us,” she says carefully. “To know why we have done things the way that we have. Get to know us before you make assumptions.”
I don’t miss the way she doesn’t answer my question, the way her nostrils flare. It doesn’t add up that they would stay here, knowingly out of the fight, while the realm is launched into war. Especially regarding what Willow said earlier—that they saw us fighting with Daimon on theirpatrol.
Why leave the island at all if they only care about whathappens here? They could patrol the perimeter of Kauri instead of going all the way to the mainland. Why risk scouting along Zenovia—so close to the curse and the Shadow Lands—if their plan was to stay put?
“Come,” Willow relents. “If we have any hope of trusting one another, then you need to see how we live andwhywe’re here.”
