Gwyneth walked over and sat on the side of Rafe’s chair, slinging her arm around his shoulder. “You may not be able to hear him, but he can he
ar you. That’s the way these things work. You should talk to him. Say what you need to say. That’s what he’s waiting for.” Tears filled her eyes. “You understand? We’re all going to leave now, so you two can talk alone.”
Rafe nodded.
We all left the room.
I went to check on him an hour later.
Rafe sat on the floor asleep, his head tilted back against the side of Sven’s bed. Sven was still unconscious, but I noticed his hand lay limp on Rafe’s shoulder as if it had slipped from the bedcovers. Or maybe Rafe had placed it there.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
I watched from the upper gallery, hidden from view because I couldn’t bear for my mother to see me, to catch my eye. To know that I knew too. She and my aunts played their zitaraes, the haunting music plucking at my ribs, my mother’s wordless song a mourning dirge drifting, skimming, seeping into every cold vein of the citadelle. It was a song as old as Venda’s, as old as evening mist and faraway valleys soaked in blood, a refrain as old as the earth itself.
I hadn’t forgotten my vision, the swirl of blood, the cry of battle, the whir of an arrow. More death lurked. I saw it in the deadness of my mother’s eyes. She’d had the same vision as mine. My brothers’ squads. I leaned against the pillar. The citadelle already overflowed with grief, the funeral pyres just behind us yesterday. In two days we would leave for Sentinel Valley. Nurse the rage. I tried to with a blinding zeal, but the sorrow crept back in.
The Dragon will conspire,
Wielding might like a god, unstoppable.
Unstoppable.
How much more was there still to lose?
The truth sank in, the gluttony, the grip, the reach. The Komizar was winning.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall, and I turned to see Rafe finally returning from Piers Camp. Yesterday he’d gone straight there after the funeral pyres had burned out, his eyes fierce again, attending to preparations with vengeance. He’d been there all day today too. I’d only just gotten back myself. It was late. Dinner would be waiting in my room. But when I heard the zitaraes—
I looked back at my mother. This was another reason she hadn’t nurtured my gift. Truth had sharp edges that could gut us whole.
The footsteps paused at the gallery. I was tucked in the shadow of the pillars but Rafe had spotted me anyway. He walked over, his stride slow, tired, and he stopped at my side, looking down into the hall below us. “What’s wrong?”
I looked at him uncertainly, not sure what he meant.
“I haven’t seen you idle since we got here,” he explained. His voice held a weariness I had never heard.
I didn’t want to explain my fears about my brothers. Not now, when Sven barely clung to life. The physician hadn’t given much hope for his recovery. Whatever last words Rafe had whispered to Sven, he had to trust Gwyneth’s claim that Sven had heard them.
“Just taking a moment,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
He nodded, then updated me on troops, weapons, wagons, all the things I had already checked on, but this was the language between us now. We had changed. The world was beating us down into something we had never been before, molding us day by day into two people who had no room for each other.
I watched him, the smoothness of his brow, the stubble of his cheek, watched his lips moving, and I pretended he wasn’t talking about supplies. He was talking about Terravin. He was laughing about melons and promising to grow one for me. He was licking his thumb and smudging the dirt on my chin. He was telling me that some things last, the things that matter. And when he said we’ll find a way, he wasn’t talking about battles, he was talking about us.
He finished with his updates and rubbed his eyes, and we were back to our world as it really was. I saw the numbing grief that gripped him and felt the hollowness it left behind. Regroup. Move forward. And we did, because there was nothing else to do. He said he was going to bed. “You should do the same.”
I nodded, and we walked down the hall to our rooms, the walls of the citadelle closing in, my chest squeezing with the pluck of the zitaraes and what I knew tomorrow could bring.
We reached my door, and the emptiness twisted tighter. I wanted only to bury my face in my bed and block the world out. I turned to him to say good night, but instead my eyes became locked on his and words I hadn’t even allowed myself to think were suddenly there, despairing and raw.
“So much has been stolen. Have you ever wished we could steal some of it back? Just one night? Just for a few hours?”
He looked at me, a crease deepening between his brows.
“I know you don’t plan to marry,” I blurted out. “Tavish told me.” My eyes stung. It was too late to hold the rest back. “I don’t want to be alone tonight Rafe.”
His lips parted, his eyes glassy. A storm raged behind them.