“I know.” His jaw tightens. “The revenant told me. The King thinks you’re the key to anchoring itself in the mortal world. If it claims you?—”
“Then the mass graves beneath every city in the Veillands will vomit forth their dead.” I finish the sentence for him. “Yes. The King made that very clear during my imprisonment. It wants me willing, but it’ll take me by force if it has to.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
TWENTY-TWO
ARADYA
The question catches me off guard. Not because it’s surprising, but because of the way he asks it—not mockingly, not dismissively, but with genuine bewilderment. As if fear is a language he understands, and my lack of it doesn’t translate.
“I’m terrified.” The admission comes easier than I expected. I meet his gaze, holding it even when the intensity makes my skin prickle. “Fear doesn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. It never has.”
He stares at me for a long moment. The witch-light flickers, casting shadows across the planes of his face, and I realize he’s looking at me differently than before. Not like a tool or a threat. Not like a condemned prisoner whose usefulness he needs to prove.
Like a person.
Like someone who has surprised him in ways he wasn’t prepared for.
“The mark.” He says the word like it costs him blood. “It’s not going away. I thought—hoped—it might fade if I kept my distance. Forty years dormant, and now...” He shakes his head. “It’s only getting stronger.”
“I know.” I feel it too. The pull between us, intensifying with each interaction, each touch, each moment spent in proximity. The mark doesn’t care about circumstance or timing or the fact that we should be enemies. It only knows that the universe has decided we belong to each other, and it will keep burning until we acknowledge what that means. “What do we do about it?”
“I don’t know.” He steps closer. Not deliberately, I think—his body moving toward me without conscious decision, obeying the pull neither of us can control. The mark on my collarbone responds, visible through my worn clothing, and I see an answering glow through the leather of his armor. “I’ve never wanted anything for myself. Never let myself want. Wanting is dangerous when your job is to burn what other people love.”
“And now?”
The question hangs between us. He’s close enough that I can see the individual threads of gray at his temples, can smell the smoke and ash that cling to his skin beneath the leather. Close enough that if I reached out, I could touch the mark through his armor the way I’m touching my own.
“Now I want you safe.” The admission seems to surprise him as much as it surprises me. His tone roughens, fractures around the edges. “I want you safe more than I want to follow orders. More than I want to do my duty. More than I want?—”
He stops himself. Shakes his head. Steps back, putting distance between us that the mark immediately protests.
“This is a terrible time for this.”
“The worst possible time.” I don’t move from the bench. Don’t reach for him, though everything in me wants to. “A king of corpses is rising beneath the city.”
“I know.”
“The Council wants me dead.”
“I know.”
“And all I can think about—” He turns away, runs a hand through his hair, the movement sharp with frustration. “All I can think about is whether your magic could calm my nightmares. Whether your voice could give me the closure I’ve been running from since Torval died. Whether holding you would make the faces stop.”
My breath catches.
The words are raw. Unguarded. The confession of a man who has spent his entire adult life building walls, and has suddenly found them crumbling beneath the weight of a magic he never asked for.
I rise from the bench.
He doesn’t turn around, but I see his shoulders stiffen. See the tension ripple through him as I cross the small space between us, my bare feet silent on the cold stone floor.
“The revenant spoke to you.” It’s not a question. I can read it in the grief pouring off him, in the way his hands have curled into fists at his sides. “It used your brother’s voice.”
A single nod. Tight. Controlled.
“What did it say?”