I will make my bones remember how to stand while they do it.
I meant what I said earlier, Cursed One whispers.I am sorry.
Why?I talk back. Playing along in the absence of other choices.
Because…perhaps in these months, as I have watched you, I realize that we are more alike than you care to admit. And you do not deserve the pain.
My eyes begin to burn. I open my mouth, as if to whisper an answer aloud.
And then, my door opens, and a light flares above me.
I thrash in my covers, then sit up to see Thorne.
For a long moment, I just stare at him. I search his smooth, angular face. Memorize the way his hair spikes out around him.
“I will probably die without the Fuegorra,” I say softly. “I die, you die. Remember?”
He looks at me with his eyes full of pity. His mouth opens, then closes, and I swear, I see regret etched across the lines of his face.
Instead of apologizing, he holds up the box with my herbs.
“We can’t miss a single night.”
Chapter 19
ARLET
Thorne had brought a small, cast-iron pot to heat the water for my tea. While he waited for it to warm, he crouched before my fireplace, and I sat on the bed, sinking into the layers of comfort and watching him.
He, the only other soul in this entire place who truly knows what it means for my Fuegorra to be gone. He is the only other one who knows what it was like under the mountain, in that beautiful city with those beautiful people.
Emotion strikes me in that moment. Everything around me is cold and numb, and yet tears slip down my cheeks, swift and silent, like a tongue being cut from a mouth.
When he finally turns around, still crouched, he pauses when he takes in my expression.
I don’t attempt to wipe away the tears.
Slowly, he stands. Then he fumbles through one of his pockets, producing a small cloth—a handkerchief—and he holds it out to me.
I continue to stare at his face, wanting him to see the slow unraveling of my being. I want him to witness the pain that he has caused, knowing full and well that the greater pain was carried out by Arion.
My soul needs someone else to know how I bleed.
“I am sorry it came to that,” he murmurs, his hand slowly falling back to his side.
That. To my Fuegorra being taken away.
When I still don’t respond, he crosses the room, placing the tea and the cloth on the table at my bed. And then he waits.
“I will need to see you drink that.” He breaks the silence again, this time his voice tinged with noticeably more frustration.
Finally, I stop staring.
“Arlet, I know?—”
“Do you know what it is to want something with your entire soul—to the point of being consumed by the fire of want—only for all of it to be taken away?” I begin. My vision blurs. “I know that I belong to the elven crown now. I know the choice I have made, but my dreams…they were all supposed to come true in Enduvida.”
“You chose to come here.”