“Is that what you think of me?” he asks finally, voice stark. “That I require songs of glory to remind me of my place in the people’s hearts? Do you see me as so weak, so unsteady, I need heaps of hero worship to carry on in my responsibilities?”
“Just the opposite!” I cry, getting to my feet as well, ignoring the spasms of pain that seize my frame. “I think you are too strong. You shoulder too much of this burden alone, and will allow no one to help you carry it.” My voice drops lower. “I think you need to remember there are more reasons to live than revenge. There are still good things in this world, Pendefyre. Good people.”
“Most of them have fled.”
“Some remain. Others will come back in time.”
Or so I hope.
Only half the population remains by my count—some too sickly to make the journey, others simply too stubborn to cede their city to the violence of strangers. A mass exodus in the aftermath of the battle left the bustling capital but a skeleton of its former self. Citizens who once felt at ease in the warded shelter of the crater vanished seemingly overnight, piling their carts and wagons with as many belongings as they could, then setting their sights on distant reaches of the Dyvedi plateau, to live in isolation. And, perhaps, to try to forget the atrocities they witnessed. The friends they lost.
In my most spineless of moments, I have caught myself wishing I could join their ranks. That I, too, could flee under the cover of darkness and wake to a new vantage entirely—one where things like hope and joy and companionship do not feelso markedly out of reach. The urge arises, even knowing its futility.
There is no start fresh enough to erase what we have endured. There is no place remote enough to outrun the damage inflicted.
Wherever we go, we carry our scars.
I take a step toward Pendefyre, careful not to move too fast or push too far. He is still burning with anger, but I can see the effect my words are having on him. Some of the wrath is ebbing away, leaving in its wake a deep exhaustion from giving too much of himself these past months. He truly has run himself ragged. His reserves are empty. If I had not arrived when I did…
Just the thought of losing him makes my heart stumble.
“Pendefyre.”
His eyes press closed as I say his name, his expression a war of conflicting emotions. Taking another step into his space, I reach out to him—slowly, so achingly slowly—and twine his fingers with mine. They are strong and callused and quite warm. His whole body shudders beneath my touch, as though his effort to remain stock-still is wearing thin. But he does not shake me off. No, his hand grips mine like a drowning man grabbing hold of a lifeline amid the rolling swells. The raw need in his grip, the flagrant urgency in it, makes my eyes sting.
“Come with me now.” I squeeze his hand. At the same time, I send a pulse down the bond—a soothing shot of reassurance. “When was the last time you ate a proper meal? Or rested for more than a few stolen hours on a cot at the barracks?”
I do not wait for him to answer. I merely start walking, tugging him along with me as I make my way out of the chamber, to the lift, and activate the glyph that will bring us down into the throne room. He does not resist, shadowing my steps in silentcompliance. And though I know he may never admit it aloud, through the bond I can sense the faintest furl of relief that this choice—this one singular choice—has not fallen upon his shoulders.
For they bear far too much already.
Chapter
two
We wind a twisted path out of the ruined palace, a journey that once took only minutes lengthened to nearly an hour. Navigating the wreckage is no easy task. Hallways end abruptly in piles of ruptured stone. The remaining staircases are too structurally unsound to tread upon with any confidence. We use a mix of servants’ passages and debris-strewn corridors, following a series of lit torches from the throne room deep within the bowels of the earth back toward the surface.
The air grows somewhat less stale as we progress, tendrils of wind creeping in through cracks and crevasses in the keep’s battered fortifications. I breathe easier as the constricting bands of claustrophobia loosen their death grip around my chest.
Not much farther now.
We hasten our steps through the grand ballroom, scrambling over loose stone and exposed mortar. A narrow path was cleared during the desperate search for survivors—a mission of rescue that all too quickly became one of recovery, for there was no one left alive to dig out from beneath the rocks. Only corpses. The ceiling is concave, a gaping hole open to misty gray skies. The detritus of two collapsed turrets rests on the dance floor, where now only ghosts twirl and pirouette.
With the bridge felled, the front gates demolished, and the main courtyard impassable, a new point of entry was forged by necessity through a seldom-used side terrace. Once used exclusively for the queen’s garden parties and high teas, it now serves a far more pedestrian function. As we near it, we begin to pass burly soldiers in dusty brown uniforms, working to clear the rubble bit by bit. It is a grueling, monotonous task, one I do not envy as I examine their grime-caked faces and bloodied knuckles. Their muscles strain to lift gargantuan pieces of rock, often working in teams of two or three. They spare us no attention as we pass through their ranks.
I squint against the haze as we step out onto the terrace. It is eerily untouched by violence, its hedge topiaries green with new growth, its marble fountains still gurgling, its tile pathways unbroken. An aberrant sliver of normalcy amid the decay.
This section of the palace is the most intact. Its turret still stands, a lone sentinel piercing the sky high over our heads. From here, one could almost pretend that Fyremas had never happened. Even the lake looks almost normal. Almost. The illusion is marred somewhat by the pile of rubble that hashes a line down its center. That scar of tumbled rock and stone is all that remains of the fallen turrets, the bridge beneath. Thebodiesbeneath.
So many lost.
Mist from the nearby falls hovers close over the water’s surface, so thick it appears almost as fog. The familiar thunder of cascading water drowns out the grunts of the soldiers as they lug their heavy loads down a short incline, where a wooden access pier has been constructed atop an uneven pile of rubble. Several sleek wooden craft are tied there awaiting use, most bobbing low in the water as they are piled high with debris to be ferried across to the distant shore for removal.
As we make our way down the makeshift dock, Penn’s grip on my hand tightens, wordlessly steadying me whenever my soles lose purchase on the damp boards. This close to the falls, everything is slicked with a thick coat of moisture.
After helping me into one of the unoccupied wooden craft, he climbs nimbly in after me and casts off our dock lines. For a time, there is no sound but the smooth dip of his oars as he steers us swiftly across the lake, the occasional puff of exertion between tight-pressed lips. Our silence strains with the weight of words left unsaid.
I feel Penn’s eyes on me, but I keep mine fixed on the opposite bank as it nears. Teal waters lap gently at the sand. It is still strange to see the stretch of shore empty—no fishermen tossing weighted nets into the shallows or casting baited lines off the bridge. There are no fish left to catch. They perished along with the ice giants when the waters boiled. It will be generations before the lake teems with new schools. Even then, I doubt anyone will try their hand at luring them.