Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lia had barely held her own against the nightshriek. If Malum used the tears to send out his messenger birds, it was only a matter of time before he sent more lethal creatures— without her accidental assistance.
The nightshriek was gone, she reminded herself. There was no way of knowing it came from the sphere Malum had created. Same with the owls. And who’s to say the owl in Norenth was the same as the one in her papa’s yard?
Stop deluding yourself. It’s all connected. And you’re not equipped to handle it.
She struggled to continue onward in the woods.
Her training now seemed pointless. Her shoulders bowed inward as she held her elbows.
Norenth was in danger, but who was she to stand up against the darkness?
She could barely keep her own dark thoughts at bay.
And she didn’t exactly survive the nightshriek’s attack unscathed.
She wasn’t ready. And if no one knew about the tear, perhaps it could wait until she was. It was selfish, but she was so tired of being a disappointment. She couldn’t handle letting Kayce down again, having him ice her out further—
A sharp snort filled the air. “You aren’t hearing me.” Kayce’s voice was crisp.
Lia stopped, pressing against a pine’s rough trunk to listen.
“I can’t always be there when she freezes.” A beat, his voice straining. “She has to unlock the skills she already has by accepting all that she is.”
“You don’t think she does?” Fee replied. “She handled that nightshriek well enough.”
“Well enough? She’s limping! And her back—” His voice caught.
Lia was painfully aware of the mottled coloring over her back, the purples and blues and sickly yellows blooming along her shoulder blades down to her hips.
But when had Kayce seen that? She flushed, wondering if he had seen her as they readied for bed last night, her mom checking her back and fussing.
But if he was so concerned about her welfare, why ice her out?
Because you can’t handle this. You freeze every time—
“She’s a Flameheart…and a gentle soul.” His voice faltered a fraction before pushing on, forcing Lia’s thoughts to a halt.
“But she already is a Norenthian soldier. She’s trained with us all her life.
She knows what to do, her instincts are sharp.
But she hesitated—she wouldn’t have been hurt like that if she hadn’t. ”
“Maybe you underestimate how fearsome that nightshriek was,” Fee contended.
“Or maybe she’s holding herself back because she’s too caught up in pleasing everyone.”
Lia flinched. Did he really see right through her? Ignoring the sting, she peered around the tree to find him and Fee in the clearing, the latter crossing her arms and opening her mouth.
But Kayce held up a hand. “I’m not saying I want her entirely as a soldier. But her life is at risk in a way she’s never known. She needs to train so that it forces her to think of only herself—all of herself.”
A hum of thought came from the guardian.
“The Vilentian Sphere can help. These crumbling barriers won’t wait.
You saw her at the Forge—this runs deep inside her.
She’s processing. But this acceptance of all she is, I fear Lia won’t see it that way.
At least not soon. Unless—” Fee assessed him in that pragmatic way of hers.
“You know her better than anyone. Maybe even herself. She would listen to you more than I.”
There was a long pause. Even the gentle breeze stilled, holding its breath with Lia.
“Please, Fiducia, she won’t listen to me,” Kayce said in a soft, genuine plea. “You have to talk to her.”
Lia had never heard him speak like this. Not even when he first landed on Earth. Her earlier irritation waned completely, even her insecurities shrinking. All thoughts of Malum, the owl, a tear in Norenth—they rippled away, Kayce’s words a stone in the pool of her.
“She does what she believes others want. She thinks I’m this reckless, adventure-hungry boy to babysit. All she sees is me pushing her.” He shook his head. “It can’t be me. She’ll only push back.”
The words rocked Lia. Her cheeks heated, nails digging into the bark.
“She can’t change her thoughts if she doesn’t know they’re wrong,” Fee said. “You need to tell her. She’d never turn from you or retreat like she does with everyone else. So what if she pushes back? Push harder. Isn’t that what friends do?”
Lia strained to hear, to see, but only saw Kayce’s back, the muscles taut.
“Oh,” Fee breathed. Her nebulous eyes darted over his face, reacting to something there. The changed pitch in Fee’s tone, normally so controlled, had Lia leaning forward. In trying to determine the shift, she stepped on a twig, which cracked under her foot.
Both of them turned, and Lia stepped out from behind the tree.
Words fled when her gaze collided with Kayce’s, uncertain of the emotion she read there.
He looked like he was rooted where he stood, his skin pale, lips a firm, bloodless line.
A tremor ran through his hands. He fisted them, a muscle feathered along his neck. Then he turned on his heel and left.
Watching Kayce turn his back on her cleaved Lia’s chest in two. Her heart could have tumbled out right there. In trying to be who she thought he wanted, Lia had lost sight of who Kayce was. The irony made her sick.
Stricken, she turned to Fee. “I didn’t mean—I never wanted to hurt him.” Lia curled her hands. “Never him.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Fee was solemn in her assessment. After several heartbeats, she caught Lia’s eye and nodded to where Kayce had disappeared through the thicket. Her usual bluntness wasn’t needed—nor her encouragement.
It wasn’t difficult to follow his path to the creek.
Lia found Kayce splashing water over his face, which had returned to its tanned complexion.
“It seems like this is the place for deep conversations,” Lia said quietly, trying to ease the tension.
To deflect the pain. Anything to loosen the rigid set of his shoulders.
Kayce tilted his head to her. Water dripped from his clenched jaw. “You almost died.”
“But I didn’t. You and Terranth have been re-training me.
Besides, I thought you wanted me to hold my ground.
Help people.” Was this how they finally went about it?
Their fight after the dragon attack stewed inside her.
Lia pulled herself straighter. The practiced words bubbled up before she could stop them. “I’m fine.”
Liar.
She wasn’t fine. She was bleeding out, as Lioness Silva had forewarned. But Kayce was hurting, and she couldn’t drag in more of her mess. No matter how true his words to Fee were. How the exposure made her want to turn and run back to her bedroom.
Even though this was him.
“You aren’t fine.” He surged to stand, facing her. “That was too close. You shouldn’t have to work with Terranth and me. I’ve heard how fluid Flamehearts are with their pens, but you’re too busy fighting yourself.”
There it was again. He wasn’t going to let it go. But Lia shook her head, unwilling to face it. “I’m not fighting—”
“Stop lying to yourself!” he beseeched. “You are…so much. A warrior. A writer, a thinker. My best friend. You believe people expect you to always have it figured out. But you don’t—it’s okay to let go.
To stop thinking about how to act and just be you.
Thinking is making you hesitate—that is going to get you killed.
” His voice choked around that last word.
It broke something in Lia so fundamental, so intrinsic, that there was no holding back the emotional deluge.
“Let go? You don’t think I’m trying?” Lia stepped back.
The illusion of being fine was stripped, his words leaving her bare.
She held her hands to her chest as if to protect the fragile beat within.
“I am trying. Every. Single. Day. Do you realize that some days I have to fight to wake up? Or that I fight to go to sleep? To do even simple things like talk to the Order members?” She choked out a laugh, incredulous with the frustration.
“Just be me? I want friends, but I can’t stand socializing.
Sometimes, I want to be alone, but I can’t bear being lonely.
It’s like I feel everything at once and then I’m just…
numb. Paralyzed. But I can’t let anyone know, not when they depend on me. ”
Kayce moved in, towering over her. Lia’s eyes were made of glass as she flung out her hands, retreating again.
Flashes of her adolescence surged in her mind’s eye.
“They see the girl I give them, the one who can handle it all and she is thriving—but I’m not thriving!
I’m surviving—and I’m exhausted.” Her voice cracked, but the words didn’t stop.
“You’re right—all I do is fight for everyone else’s comfort.
But I can’t not do that. If I don’t—” Her throat seized.
The walls she had built to protect others had become her cell.
Kayce had hung on every word, eyes never straying as she bared her long-hidden soul.
What she’d revealed in the Forge had nothing on this.
Kayce inched closer, like she was a doe to bolt any moment.
His rough palms whispered over her skin when he took hold of her arms. He slid his hands down to hers.
The worn pad of his thumb ran back and forth across the torn skin beside her nail, in tandem with their breaths that filled the small space between them.
“If you stop trying to be there for everyone else,” he asked, “what will happen?”
Lia flinched, but Kayce held fast. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t expose that—
Leaning in to get her attention, Kayce’s words were soft. “The world would fall apart? Your brother wouldn’t be cared for? Your mother would falter?”
“I had to. When he left.” Heat burned her cheeks. It seemed so silly, years later. But she had never stopped. She couldn’t. Not even after the Forge.
“You stepped up when their world fell apart.” He tightened his hold. “But it’s not your role to be the backbone of your family. Not anymore. They can’t grow stronger if you won’t let them.”
Kayce will never understand—
No. He actually might.
The raging doubts had slowed under his touch. But one remained.
“Aurelia—”
“I just want to be good enough,” Lia rushed, finally giving those badgering thoughts a voice.
“A good sister, daughter—a good friend. I’m scared that if I truly accept Norenthian Aurelia as part of myself, I’m going to disappoint people.
Because Aurelia, she—I—wouldn’t be afraid to say no.
To do what I want for a change. But what do people do when they don’t get what they want?
When they’re unhappy or disappointed?” Tears blurred her vision.
But she forced the words out despite her closing throat, knowing if she didn’t say them now, she never would. “They leave.”
Her father. Papa. Even Kayce, every time she had woken up or closed the journal.
Everyone leaves.
“Aurelia—” His voice roughened over her name. Glancing up, Lia watched Kayce’s gaze dip over her face before speaking. “Are those really the relationships you want? Do you truly believe we will leave if you stop?”
Lia chewed her lip. What did she want? More than anything, she had wanted to be seen.
To be wholly understood and read like a book.
Not a single word skimmed over, each page of her being.
But what if no one liked the story they found inside.
What was a story if it cowered on a shelf?
Was it really a story—a world created—if no one opened it?
But…Kayce saw her, Lia realized. He had always seen her.
Looking at her now, the intensity of his gaze made her feel like he read all that she was. Like the spine of a treasured book, he had broken into her with tenderness. Spread open the very pages of her soul. Scoured the words written in her heart. Lia was open to him, and Kayce did not flinch.
He reached out, brushing a strand of her hair back into place. His fingertips lingered on her cheek. “If people leave because you stop putting them first, you don’t need them anyway. But you’re enough.” His voice shook. “You’re more than enough.”
Lia’s breath hitched. She was tired of being shoved away, unread. Unseen.
Their gazes locked, their bodies pulling together by a magnetism Lia couldn’t ignore any more. They moved in the same instant—Kayce cupping the back of her head as Lia ducked under his chin. The wind’s salted-pine clung to Kayce as she buried her face in his chest.
“How?” Lia whispered, her voice a vulnerable tremor. “How do I do it?”
He took a deep breath, his body bowing over her own, pressing his face to her curls as though he found her scent as steadying as she did his. Several heartbeats passed until he slid his hand from her hair, down her back.
“Fee and I have an idea,” Kayce murmured.
She sank into the surety of his tone, its strength there in the arms holding her, the heart pumping beneath her cheek. The Norenthian soil at her feet.
This is real.
And Lia gave into it at last.