Chapter Twenty-Two
We’ll reach the Arbinji base tomorrow. Leaves crunch underfoot as I walk, and my legs ache, but for once, I ignore the dull soreness.
I don’t want to waste my reserves healing them.
I need to be prepared in case we encounter more rebels—or if the Arbinji soldiers don’t greet me as warmly as Zev expects.
Zev.
My eyes find his silhouette, walking ahead of me. Since the night we danced beneath the moonlight, he’s been closed off and distant.
I can’t blame him.
It’s cinched around me, too, this tether between us, but I suspect it has a tighter hold on him. He’s wise to guard his heart. I need to do the same.
My purpose is my armor, and I can’t let whatever this is—what I feel for him—be the crack that shatters it. Peace for Tundrayn must come first. We’ve suffered too much. My fingers clamp around my mother’s teardrop pendant.
I’ve suffered too much.
When we stop to eat and rest, Zev won’t meet my eyes. His silence shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I should let him be, but I can’t cage my words or the annoyance that coats them. I don’t know if I’m more annoyed with him or myself for caring.
“Are you going to ignore me the rest of the way?”
He looses a deep sigh, his mouth twisting with displeasure.
“Look, the other night. The dance. It—” The words die on my tongue. It didn’t mean anything, I almost said, but it’s a lie.
And he deserves more than that.
“We can still be friends?” I offer instead. His shoulders stiffen. “After the wedding. We’ll be … family.”
That’s why he’s upset, isn’t it?
Because I’m going to marry his brother.
In my heart, I know he doesn’t want me to.
Tides, I don’t want to.
But I must.
I didn’t risk everything, leave my home and my people behind, only to fail them now.
“I need to tell you something,” he says, his voice low, eyes riveted to the ground. “And you’ll hate me for it.”
“Bold of you to assume I don’t already hate you.” I smile brightly, but my teasing words don’t have the effect I hoped.
He doesn’t smile back.
Instead, he takes a deep breath and shatters my heart.
“Your friends. Sura and Tumaas. I killed them.”
I blink.
For a minute, I just stare at him, mouth parted.
Then, the ground shifts beneath my feet. No—it’s my legs buckling. My knees hit the cold earth. Nausea churns in my stomach like the roiling sea. My powers flicker inside me, wanting to hurt, wanting to heal.
I killed them.
I killed them.
I killed them.
His words bludgeon my conscience, rattling in my skull.
I don’t know why I’m shocked. I’ve already blamed him for the death of every Tundrayni in the war—the faceless, infamous Dark Commander, bringer of storms and blood and death.
But now that I’ve grown to care for him, to hear him say the words—I killed them—it’s as if he’s rent my soul in half. And the way he’s looking at me now, anguished gray eyes shadowed with remorse, somehow makes it hurt worse.
He’s not the cold, ruthless killer I always imagined.
He’s known loss, too.
My eyes fall to his hands—steady, strong, careful—and imagine them wreathed in lightning, raised against my friends.
Soft-hearted Tumaas.
Radiant, kind Sura.
I want to lash out. I want to scream.
But I do neither.
“How?” My voice is a low rasp.
He swallows hard. “It was after the battle where Lev was killed. I remained at his side until he died, and … Mayah, it broke me. I had never felt such fury. I never did again until…” He inhales shakily as if gathering strength.
“I—I went alone. Followed that battalion back to their camp. And I obliterated it.”
There’s a vise squeezing my lungs.
“Did you kill them the way you did the rebels?” I whisper.
Did Sura and Tumaas suffer? Or were their lives snuffed out in seconds?
“Some,” he admits, his voice thick. “But I couldn’t summon that much power for everyone. I called down lightning.” His gaze cuts away. “I still dream of that night sometimes. The screams. The smell.”
I don’t know what to say to this remorseful man before me. I swallow thickly, tears pricking my eyes.
“Did you regret it?”
“A little. But not truly, not until you told me your friends had been there. Now, I wish with every fragment of my broken soul that I could go back and spare you the pain I caused.”
My throat is tight, face wet with tears. I hate that he looks so broken. So anguished. I try to summon loathing—but it doesn’t come. He burned through my hatred ages ago. Now, grief rages in the hollow he’s dug.
“I can’t—I can’t look at you right now,” I rasp. I rise on shaky feet and walk away.
Behind me, our bags rustle as he scoops them up. His footsteps fall a few paces back, leaving enough space between us for my grief.
I don’t turn around.
We pass the day in utter silence. Zev lets me work through my feelings about his revelation—that he murdered my best friends in a rage-induced attack.
At first, it’s fury. Cold and unrelenting. Their faces haunt my thoughts—Sura’s lopsided grin, Tumaas’s warm eyes—then I blink, and their skin is blistered, scorched. Lifeless.
And I see Zevayr looming over them. Not the man I know now, but the Dark Commander—jaw set, brutal lightning heeding his call.
But the cruelest thing?
As much as I try to hate him, my heart melts the anger away before it crystallizes. Because he knows what it’s like, too. He knows what it’s like to lose someone he loves. He’s not the monster I desperately want him to be. Need him to be. He’s just like me. That’s what makes it so hard to hate him.
Because I can’t.
I don’t.
Now, we sit across the fire, the sky inky above us. There’s a gaping, hollow void in my chest. An aching sadness seeps through my numb limbs, and I realize it’s for him. For his loss. For what he’s endured. Alone.
What is wrong with me?
But my heart protests the haunted look in his eyes, the tightness lining his mouth. I’m overcome by the urge to soothe.
I’ve lost too much. So has he.
“Zev,” I say softly, and his eyes find mine like they’ve been waiting. The stiff line of his shoulders eases ever so slightly
“I should hate you.” The words rasp out of me. “Tides, I want to.”
He flinches.
“But I don’t,” I whisper. “I hate what this war has done to us. All of us. So much suffering. So much loss. It’s why—it’s why I have to do this. It’s why I need to marry your brother.”
It’s his turn to swallow hard, tension returning to his shoulders. He nods stiffly.
We sleep on separate sides of the blanket.