27. It’s Okay to Change Your Mind #2
I stiffened. I didn’t want to tell him that, on the day I received my summons for our mission, Castor and Brom had come while I slept, pinned me down, and dragged me to an audience with Heris.
I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t fought back, that—when I wasn’t killing abominations and mouthing off—I was sickeningly obedient.
That, if I wanted my freedom and to keep my family safe, I had no choice but to comply. To know my place. To take the hit.
“What bruises?” I asked.
The look on his face was dark, dangerous, and unrelenting. “On your ribs.”
“How do you know it wasn’t a Morta?”
“Were you facing one without your armor?” He snorted dismissively. “I’ve seen you fight monsters. That was not the mark of a Morta.”
I tugged the cloak a little tighter around myself. “What does it matter?”
His gaze collided with mine, heavy and heated. “It matters to me.”
My skin prickled. I thought of that moment in the thicket, his hand on my jaw, the careful press of his fingertips drawing a tingling sensation up my spine.
He’d stared at my mouth with a look of startling greed, and my magic had ached with anticipation, both completely overwhelmed and desperately eager for what might come next.
I should’ve broken contact. I should’ve stabbed him.
It was one thing to trust him—but to want him?
That wasn’t just foolish, it was impossible.
It matters to me. Did he realize the danger in his statement? The senseless temptation it roused in me?
I looked away, painfully aware of what little clothing I wore. “I got bit by a swan as a child,” I said. “I had a blood blister on my arm for a month.”
His jaw ticked, as if he were weighing whether or not to accept my conversational diversion. Finally, he asked, “What did you do to it?”
“You’re taking the swan’s side?”
“Wild animals rarely bite for no reason.”
My sigh was exasperated, sheepish. “I tried to get a closer look at its young.”
“Ana,” Faren chided.
“Stupid, I know.” I wrapped the ends of my hair around my hand and wrung it out on the leaf-covered ground. “Of all the terrors I’ve faced, for some reason, that’s the one that stuck. A fucking bird.”
“You were young,” Faren said. “Some things stick with us. Get under our skin.”
There were, indeed, memories that had embedded themselves in me like splinters, nervy and painful.
My father reading to me on nights when hunger gnawed at my belly.
The underground tunnels in Castle Might, a book in my hands.
Dungeon rats nibbling at my toes while I tried to sleep.
Reciting my Valiant Oath. The foreign weight of Windthorn in my inexperienced hands.
The badger that bit my face. Grinnick, both in my tent and in death.
I wondered what events had stuck with Faren, the sweet and sore moments that had shaped the man beside me now. I wondered which ones he could shove down and ignore, and which ones were like the swans for me. Nonsensical. Visceral.
“Swans are also in my Mirror of Death,” I said. “Or, rather, their feathers. A cloud of white down and a spray of black blood. Perhaps that’s why I can’t control my jumpiness.”
That seemed to pique his interest. “What could that possibly mean?”
I shrugged. “Nothing, considering my charge. Remember what I told you in Yar: monsters warp Fate. It shouldn’t matter what the Mirrors show me, but the fear isn’t logical.”
“You live outside the rules of Fate.” He sounded solemn. “I imagine it’s destabilizing.”
“In honesty, I find it empowering,” I said. “Like I alone control my future. Considering my sentence, the malleability of my Fate is…a comfort.”
“Faren’s forehead creased. “How courageous.”
“Weren’t you just laughing at my fear of swans?”
He scooted closer, emphatic now. “Did you know that Mighty Knights over thirty are taught to find courage in their fixed Fates? To know how you die is seen as a gift, a compass. A knight won’t fear battle if their Mirror of Death shows an end by old age.
But you…you don’t have that luxury. Mariana, you… astound me.”
The intensity of his compliment made me squirm.
“What, then, is your source of comfort?” I asked him. “What’s in your Mirror of Death?”
“I die inside Castle Might,” he said. “A sword to the gut, right under my breastplate.”
His answer—the similarity to Grinnick—made me flinch. Emotion thickened in my throat. I coughed. “Fates, Faren.” I couldn’t look at him when I asked, “Do you know when? How old you are?”
“It’s hard to tell.” He offered me a sad smile. “Whenever that day comes…I die with purpose,” he said firmly, as if he was trying to convince himself, too. “I die doing my duty. It’s a noble death.”
Something clawed at the walls of my heart, angered by the injustice. “You die for the Lord.”
He looked up at me through the ends of his hair, grimacing. I did not have to tell him that I thought such a death would be ignoble for him to see it on my face.
“Better than death by swan,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I repeated, shoving his arm.
We both looked down at the point of contact, my fingers on his bicep. I could feel the vein that ran along the muscle, the pumping of his heart.