I flinch.
His jaw tightens, a muscle leaping in his cheek. “You were born extraordinary, then forced to live as less than ordinary. To camouflage at all costs. But you, Rhya Fleetwood…you were made to stand out. To rise above every convention, every average, every metric. There is not a single ordinary bone in your body.”
I want to retort, but I am too tongue-tied to speak. In my head, I hear a familiar refrain. My mentor’s voice whispering in the oldest of my memories.
Best keep your mark covered, Rhya.
Best not allow anyone too close, Rhya.
Best try to blend in, Rhya.
“I was not there with you, so I do not know when, exactly, you learned to cower and conceal,” Soren goes on. “I do not pretendto know what it was like to be raised as you were, a maegical being in a mortal land—”
“A halfling,” I correct coarsely.
“What?”
“I was not amaegical being.I was a halfling, marked for death from my first breath. My ears were bad enough. An anomaly, a disfigurement. My Remnant mark was the direst of secrets. An execution order carved into my very flesh, should the wrong person see it.” I clench my fists, nails scoring deeply into my palms. “You are right. You cannot understand. You will never understand. And if I was raised to hide…So what? My mentor, Eli, did that to keep me safe. He protected me without a second thought to his own fate. You may brand that secrecy as shame, but that shame is what kept me alive. That shame is what led me here, to this moment with you. I will not condemn Eli for inspiring it.”
“You can find fault without condemnation. My own father, gods rest him, was not a perfect man.” He blows out a breath, leaning more firmly against the trunk. “I worshipped him. And he in turn loved me tremendously. Yet that same love did not extend to my mother, whose heart he broke seemingly in slow motion, one ill-concealed affair at a time, until she was too bitter to love anyone at all. Even her children.”
I sit with that for a moment. Digesting his words. Feeling, not for the first time, that there are deep ocean currents running through the very heart of this man. Ones he rarely allows to reach the surface.
“I did not know your mentor,” he concedes. “Eli, was it?”
I nod.
“I am sorry you lost him. More, I’m sorry I will not ever get the chance to meet him. To thank him, for keeping you alive all those years. And for shaping you into the rather miraculouscreature you’ve become.” He pauses for a beat, shoulder pressing against mine—a solid, supportive weight. “You say you cannot recognize the woman looking back at you in the mirror. That’s no surprise. A butterfly cannot ever recall how much it has changed since the cocoon, nor can she see the beauty of her own wings. Only those standing by watching, waiting, can appreciate her evolution.”
My heart convulses as though he’s wrapped his fist around it. No one has ever, in all my life, said something like that to me. Hearing it unlocks something deep inside. The gnawing sense of self-doubt I have been too scared to face head-on; the growing shame that has indeed been festering inside me for months now—not just since the Frostlander battle but since Fyremas. His words spiral through me, deeper and deeper, until they reach that pit of doubt and self-disgust, dislodging them and settling in their place. Filling me with something warm and strong and sure instead.
I breathe deeply until the emotions he’s stirred are subdued enough to speak. “I just don’t want…” I swallow hard, voice clogged with unshed tears. “I don’t want Eli looking down at me from the aether with disappointment.”
“Impossible.” His shoulder presses harder, underscoring his words. “No one is perfect, Rhya. Not even the dead, who we all have a nasty habit of placing on pedestals and enshrining in heavenly light. If he is worthy of your descriptions, he will not find fault in your choices. For he will know, even up there in the skies, that they are guided by your heart.”
“He loved me,” I say, my voice breaking as a single tear rolls down my cheek. “He is the only one who ever loved…me.”
Soren is silent. But I feel something through the bond—something I am too overwhelmed to process—as he reaches overand brushes the teardrop away with the pad of his thumb. A second later, he is on his feet, one hand extended down to me.
“Enough heaviness for one afternoon. Debauchery awaits.”
The moment our boots hit the crystalline bathhouse floor, Soren’s entire demeanor shifts—frame stilling with tension, jaw locking tight.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s here,” he mutters, moving soundlessly toward the exit.
I trail after him as quietly as I can manage, not daring to ask anything else as we move across the stone bridge into the gardens where the night-blooming flowers pinch their white petals closed against the late afternoon sunshine. I strain my ears, trying to pick up on whatever so alarmed Soren, but can detect nothing unusual. It is not until we round the bend in the path that leads up to the terrace that I hear something banging from the vicinity of the kitchen. It sounds like…
Pots and pans?
Soren shoots me a look as we cross the terrace toward the archway that leads inside, lifting his finger to his mouth to indicate I should keep quiet. I roll my eyes in response.
Does he think I’m about to start caterwauling?
His lips twitch, but flatten into a severe frown as we step over the threshold and prepare to confront the intruder. All at once, the tension bleeds out of him.
“Vaughn!”