Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I sit cross-legged on the cliffs, facing the sea.
The sun is warm on my face, even if the autumn air has the kind of chill in it that whispers of winter coming.
Salt clings to the breeze, and the ocean rolls and breaks far below.
I try to match my breath to that roll and break—inhaling as the water draws back, exhaling as it crashes forward.
The wind is gentle, unusual for this spot on the cliffs, where it normally howls.
Today, as if Zepharion, god of the skies, is trying to help me meditate, it only hums.
It should be easy to find stillness, to find peace in this.
But the stillness only makes the unrest inside even louder.
While nothing but a cloudless sky stretches beyond my closed eyelids, a storm rages under my skin.
My fingers tap, restless, against my knees.
My eyes twitch behind my eyelids. The days are slipping by too hard and too fast, each grinding me down a little more than the one before.
The training is a beating, but even that, I know, is only preparing me for the battles that will come. I’m not ready.
Like the others, I’m just lucky the Kher’zenn haven’t attacked again. It’s been eerily quiet even on the islands, though we still have a few weeks before winter will settle across the ragged cliffs of Faraengard.
And the nights … The nights bring no rest, not with my thoughts circling like carrion birds, hungry and restless— Broken shards.
The Cradle Below. Daughter of Selencia. Every night I’m with the Elder in the Reckoning Hall, pouring over maps and scrolls, but every supposed answer we find brings more questions.
And when I finally cave to exhaustion and sleep follows me, my dreams are even worse.
The darkness drags me under. It doesn’t soothe; it drowns.
A silent voice calls to me— Strider , it says from somewhere in that suffocating darkness, but I can never reach it before something—a creature?
—chases me away. And that’s the easiest dream.
The hard ones are worse than faceless monsters and shadows.
They’re my father’s and mother’s eyes, wide and empty.
They’re hundreds of other eyes, lifeless and glassy, surrounding theirs.
Faces I don’t know, but I’m somehow responsible for.
Sometimes it’s Irielle, screaming herself raw, even after the flames subside to ashes.
Sometimes it’s Alden, crumpling dead to the ground.
My dreams are caught in a loop I can’t break.
No matter what I do, I’m always too late—to my mother and father, to the voice that needs me, to Irielle, to Alden. I wake up gasping, sweat cold on my skin, heart pounding.
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Ryot says. His voice is calm, but I can still sense the judgment in it. We’ve been at this for hours.
I scrunch my nose and squeeze my fists, as if force alone could make the thoughts stop. My fingers tremble, so I dig them into my palms. My breath hitches.
I am trying. Gods, I’m always trying.
But trying isn’t good enough.
“Actually…” Ryot mutters, his voice lower now, almost tired, “…maybe you’re trying too hard.”
I crack one eye open and glance at him. He’s standing a few paces behind me, arms crossed over his chest. Einarr shifts, flicking one massive wing with quiet irritation.
Why Einarr is here today, I can’t say, but he’s been finding Ryot and me no matter where we’re training.
There’s an urgency in him, too. Like we’re running out of time.
I unclench my hands to find my palms bleeding from my nails.
Trying too hard. Not trying enough. Trying the wrong way.
I let out a breath through my nose and straighten my spine, to reset. Trying. Again.
It lasts all of ten seconds.
Then my right knee starts bouncing. Then the left. My shoulders inch higher with every breath. My jaw locks.
Einarr lets out a low, drawn-out chuff as if to say you’re not doing it right, and I snap.
“I’m not good at this!” I shout, lurching to my feet like I can physically throw off the frustration clawing at my chest.
The words echo over the cliffs, swallowed by the ocean breeze. Ryot doesn’t flinch. He watches me, unruffled. I pace a few steps, dragging my hands down my face.
This is supposed to be the easy part. Sitting.
Breathing. But I’d rather be bruised and bleeding from the sparring ring than try to wrestle with this silence, than give my thoughts space to wander.
I turn toward Ryot again, expecting more correction, a lecture on the importance of control.
Instead, Ryot sighs, rolls his shoulders back, and lowers himself to the ground.
“Watch,” he says, voice softer now. He closes his eyes.
Breathes in. Breathes out. Something in the air around him settles.
Einarr, too, settles. He lowers to his knees, wings tucked against his sides, and lowers his head, eyes closed.
Despite everything, despite the ache and the noise and the weight in my chest, I sit again, next to Ryot this time. Our knees brush.
“It’s not about perfection,” Ryot says. “It’s not even about letting go.
It’s about staying . Right here, with yourself, wherever that might be.
It’s about meeting yourself where you already are—nowhere else.
If it’s somewhere loud, then it’s loud. If it’s somewhere broken, then it’s broken.
You don’t fix it by forcing silence. You heal by being willing to listen—even when all you hear is the storm. ”
His eyes stay closed, but he must know I’m watching him. He breathes like it’s the only thing that matters. I close my eyes and inhale. Even with my eyes closed, I feel his smile.
“I used to fight it, too. I thought if I wasn’t fighting with my fists or my sword that I was failing or wasting time,” he says. I peek open one eye to look at him, barely, enough to see him through my eyelashes.
“Aren’t we?”
“No. Any Altor can fight with a blade, but if you can’t control your mind—if fear rules you in the quiet—then it’ll own you in the battle.
This. This is the training that counts.” He opens his eyes then and they meet mine, steady and unflinching.
“This is how you win before the fight even starts. You have to learn to hold your ground when everything turns unfamiliar. When the world shifts and nothing feels real. You don’t slash through that with a blade.
You breathe through it. Anchor to something—your breath, your body, your name.
That’s how you stay you, even when the dark tries to take that from you. ”
He closes his eyes again and exhales, soft and even. “Don’t wait until you're lost to start learning how to stay.”
Why does that feel more like an omen than a warning?
His chest rises, falls. Intentionally. I match his rhythm without meaning to.
Inhale as the waves roll back. Exhale as they crash forward.
I close my eyes again and focus on my breath.
My body softens by the tiniest margin. I manage to uncurl my fingers, to rest them gently on my knees.
I roll my neck back and forth, and the tension that lives there goes sharp and then softer.
The storm inside doesn’t vanish, but I float on the waves instead of fighting them. Suddenly, I’m drowning.
When we both finally open our eyes, the sun has dropped lower in the sky, casting gold across the water. My breath feels deeper. My shoulders lighter.
“You’re getting it,” he says eventually, his voice quiet. I glance down at my hands, curled gently in my lap. We sit in silence for a while. The kind that doesn't ask to be filled. Einarr is still nearby, wings tucked in, his watchful eyes half-lidded.
Ryot is the one who breaks the peace. “What was your family like?”
I let out a tired laugh. “Didn’t we swear to forsake all that?”
He nods. I expect him to tell me never mind, that it’s time for weapons training or survival training or field medic training. Instead, he says, “I must have missed the part where we swore to forget it.”
That’s dangerously close to blasphemy. Not quite crossing the line, maybe, but straddling it. “You really don’t care about the rules, do you?”
He gives me a half-smile. “I care about what matters.”
“I don’t want to talk about them.” I’ve curled my fingers back into my palms without thinking about it.
“I get that. It’s hard to think about what you’ve lost.” He says it like he understands.
He lets it be, looking out over the horizon.
I study him, the way the fading sunlight has softened the sharp lines of his face, the way the wind brushes through his hair, leaving it tangled and messy.
He’s so often all hard edges and order, but right now, under a sky fading to pinks and purples, he looks almost human. Breakable, even.
“Tell me about your family. Before you were an Altor.”
He answers without hesitation. “I had six sisters,” he says, with a wry grin. “They ruled me, like queens in our own little kingdom.”
My eyebrows lift. “Six?”
He huffs out a laugh. “It was chaos. Braids and ribbons and squeals and secrets. I barely made it out alive.”
That makes me laugh. “Were you close to them?”
He nods. “The older two were like second mothers to me. Fierce. Loud. Gods, they could fight.” He lets out a breath, almost wistful. “I used to think if I could survive dinner with them, I could survive anything. The younger ones would follow me everywhere. I loved to pretend to hate it.”
“But you didn’t,” I whisper, because I can see it all so clearly.
“No,” a sad smile ghosts over his mouth.
I imagine a younger Ryot running through a house filled with laughter and little girls tugging at his sleeves. I imagine him happy. It’s a strange picture, but not an unwelcome one.
It’s what makes me start talking.
“My father used to play the recorder,” I say, turning my face toward the horizon, too, and closing my eyes.
“Badly, but we’d dance anyway. My brother Levvi would twirl in the moonlight with his beau, my friend Irielle, until they collapsed from exhaustion.
In the spring, my mother would make these honey cakes with lavender—the whole house would smell like sunshine.
There was so much to hate—the soldiers, the work, the Collection that hung over us like a noose.
But I loved home. Gods, I loved it so much. ”
He nods once, an acknowledgement that loving is the sharpest ache of all.
“You can carry them with you,” he says.
“Is that what you do?”
“Every battle I fight—every swing of my sword, every bruise I earn, every bone that breaks, every drop of blood I lose—is for them.”
I search his eyes now, the color of blue right before the world goes black. They’re a dangerous swirl of banked emotion.
“Not for the gods?”
He looks to Einarr, who hasn’t moved but is watching us with those sharp, sharp eyes. The setting sun brushes over his wings, and they catch the light, as if they’re drinking in the colors around them. They’re a shade darker than shadow, with hints of indigo and violet when he shifts.
“The gods get the victory,” Ryot finally says. “The glory. The temples built in their names, the people singing hymns in the streets, the priests on their knees. But my sisters? My sisters get what’s left of me. Even if only I know it.”
Ryot jumps to his feet, all lithe movement and grace. “It’s time for evening meal.”
Just like that, this moment between us is folded away, tucked behind that shield he wears so well.
His mask is back in place, his blue eyes have gone hard, like black ice.
Gone is the boy who ran from his sisters; the man before me is a weapon.
He’s once again the Ryot the gods and the Synod shaped in their image—a warrior, through and through.
But now I know. Ryot of Stormriven doesn’t fight for duty—he fights for love.