I didn’t think I could be thrown any more off-kilter or kicked any lower—but then we reached the main house. I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Destruction? Tumbled walls?
But whatever I had imagined, it hadn’t prepared me. Paxton and I didn’t speak as he escorted me in through an opening in a wall created by the blast. I heard the lonely trickle of water as we stepped into a hallway near the front foyer, but other than that, the house was unnaturally silent. Open books fluttered in the wind. The sky shone above us through a vicious gash in the roof. Water dripped from it like tears, soaking whatever lay below. The distinctive flowered washbasin from Priya’s third-floor chamber lay shattered in several pieces on the first-floor landing. The staircase was mostly intact except for a few crushed rails, and a tapestry still hung from a wall, untouched, while just across from it the enormous tower spindle from the roof lay atop a heap of stone, like the severed horn of a fallen beast.
I walked up the stairs, Paxton lagging somewhere far behind me. Every new broken thing carved away another piece of me, all the pieces in me that had come to care about Tor’s Watch as much as Jase did. But I wasn’t supposed to care. I couldn’t let Paxton know that every new piece of carnage gutted me. I stopped and stared at a white shirt hanging from a splintered rafter. The tattered fabric waved quietly in the breeze like a Ballenger flag of surrender.
At the second-floor landing, a pile of rubble was tangled with what might have once been a bed. Whose bed? Vairlyn’s? Gunner’s? Feathers swirled down the hallway like ghostly birds, sprung loose from quilts and pillows. And then I came across a lone shoe—the slipper I had borrowed from Jalaine. I stared at it. The emptiness closed in. It pressed on my chest as if I lay beneath the tons of rubble. A house that had been full of family was broken, scattered, destroyed. I reached for a wall, using it to steady myself. One misdirected blast had done all this.
I continued toward Jase’s room. That wing was still intact, though the force of the blast had sent rubble and splintered wood flying down hallways. I pushed open his chamber door, and a different kind of destruction greeted me. Bedding was knifed, drapes torn away, bookcases overturned. This wasn’t caused by a blast but by an invader. Every book that Jase had spent a lifetime transcribing had been stomped beneath careless feet.
Jase had been so full of expectation and plans. And now this—
I stared at the utter chaos of the room, spinning his too-large signet ring on my thumb. I had made a promise to him. It all seemed like folly now. Was my hubris greater than the king’s? What if I couldn’t keep my vow? What if I couldn’t even save Lydia and Nash? Panic rose in me. I gasped for breath, then turned and fled the room. I ran down the hallway, then up the stairs, heading for the solarium, where I had last seen Jalaine—somewhere she had escaped to that was far from everything else, a place where she could shut out the world.
Paxton called after me, ordering me to stop. I heard his footsteps pounding after mine. He was right on my heels as I burst through the double doors of the solarium, but in an instant my panic flared to blind rage, and I leapt upon him, slamming him against the wall. In the same motion, I whisked the stolen scalpel from my boot and pressed it to the tender skin of his neck where a vein pulsed wildly.
“Put it down now,” he ordered, but his eyes were sharp with fear. He licked his lips. “You won’t kill me. You can’t. Think about the children. You know the rules.”
“The rules?” I yelled, unafraid of anyone hearing me from the rooftop room. “The rules?” The scalpel trembled in my hand.
“He’ll do it. One nick on me, and he’ll kill them. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “Shut up, you miserable piece of horseshit! All that matters is what I’m capable of!” The scalpel shook in my hand. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I had never felt so out of control. The room pulsed with white-hot light. I hated that he was right. The cost of killing him was too great, and I knew I couldn’t do it. But the hunger to kill him was still crushing me, and I pressed the scalpel a little harder. A bright red line of blood glistened on his neck. “He was your kin,” I sobbed, “and you hunted him down like an animal!”
Paxton leaned his head back against the wall, trying to pull away from the blade. His fear only made me want to kill him more, and the burning hunger inside me surged brighter. I watched tiny droplets of blood spring up along the line I had cut, wetting the blade.
“He’s alive, Kazi,” he whispered. “Jase is alive.”
My loathing for him sprang into something wild and feral. “You lying coward. You’d say anything to save your worthless skin.”
“Please.” He swallowed carefully. “I was going to tell you when I was sure it was safe. When I was sure I could really trust you. It’s true. I swear. He was alive, at least. He was hanging on by a thread when I took him to Caemus at the settlement. They’re hiding him in the root cellar. He and Jurga were cutting out the arrows when I left.”
Caemus? Paxton knows Caemus? And Jurga? He knows about the root cellar? I stared at him in disbelief. It was impossible. How could he know these things? I eased back with the scalpel. “What about Jase’s hand? The ring?”
“I took the ring from his finger before I left him with Caemus. I had to produce a body—or part of one, one way or another, or they never would’ve stopped hunting for him. It was the hand of a soldier that I killed. Not Jase’s.”
My head swam.
I couldn’t think.
Alive? Jase was alive?
And Paxton had saved him? I lowered the scalpel. It made no sense. I searched Paxton’s face, thinking it was another cruel trick, but his eyes remained steady, looking back into mine.
Truth.
Truth.
I doubled over, unable to breathe, like I was still pinned
to the bottom of the deepest darkest sea, but I could see light shining on its surface and I was trying to reach it. My knees buckled, and Paxton grabbed me as I fell to the ground. Rasping noises jumped from my chest, and I shook as I tried to inhale.
Paxton knelt and held me. The room rocked. He brushed the hair from my face with his fingers. “Breathe, Kazi, take your time. I know it’s hard. Breathe.”
I coughed. I choked. A hoarse breath finally filled my lungs.
He tilted my chin upward, alarm in his eyes. “When I saw you fighting to save his life, I thought—” He winced. “But I wasn’t sure. You really do care for him.”
I didn’t answer. He had already read it in my face.