Chapter 34 Eres
Eres
My harsh breathing fills the room as I tip up the pitcher, filling the bowl and yanking off my shirt. I feel covered in cold sweat. Sticky with the scent of my own fear, and I want it gone.
When the door opens, I stare into the water, I continue scrubbing at my arm. “Not now, Kae.”
Her hands wrap around my bare stomach. Pausing, I feel my jaw grow tight before I keep scrubbing. Lyra rests her cheek against my back. “I’m sorry.”
Dropping the rag, I brace my hands on the ends of the table. “No, you’re not.”
“I am.” Her lips press to my skin. “I need to tell you something.”
I wait, my head bowed as the words spill out against my spine. The prophecy. Her father. All of it, in soft, stumbling words as my head bows and I try not to let her feel my rising anger.
“Kaelen knows,” she says finally. “I told him earlier. But… I’m trained, Eres. Well trained. And I knew I could get him back.”
When I turn, Lyra tries to step back. My hand snaps out, wrapping around her wrist. My words feel like ice, cracked and cold and frozen. “Do you think knowing that makes any difference to me?”
I knew there was something. I knew when I found iskra leaves sewn into her dress, the small packet barely noticeable until I’d ripped it out. When she’d shown no fear, even in the face of Kaelen’s anger, and when she’d volunteered herself for torture to prove her innocence.
“You could have trained for a hundred years, Lyra, and I would have reacted the same way.” My thumb rubs against her skin as I hold her still.
“But you knew best, and you didn’t care to listen to anyone else.
Do you know how it felt to watch you walk out of that room? To know that you might not come back?”
Her eyes flicker in the low light, burning with flame. “Kaelen said you were… scared. For me.”
I could shake her. “Of course I was fucking scared!”
She swallows. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“Believe me when I say that this was not the way to prove that.” I let her go and run my hand over my face.
But she follows. Lyra steps into me, nudging my hands away and placing her palms against my cheek. “Nobody ever cared if I came back before.”
My breath rushes out, my brows lowering. “Look—”
“My father gave me the iskra leaves,” she says quietly. “He didn’t want me to come back, Eres. He didn’t care. Nobody ever cared, as long as I did what I was supposed to do.”
To kill Kaelen. “Well, I care.”
She breathes in, eyes tracing the lines on my face. “I won’t leave like that again. Without… saying anything. Talking about it.”
My hands slip over hers. “Good.”
I doubt that it matters much now. Not when the days are dwindling away. But her word matters to me. “My father was a healer, you know.”
When she nudges herself closer to me, hesitant, I pull her in and wrap my arms around her, resting my chin on her head. “I didn’t know that.”
“My mother was a soldier.” I run my hands over her hair. “I’d watch her every time she rode out, and so would he. The last time… she was part of a group sent to rescue a pinned-down patrol in the Veilspire, and he didn’t want her to go.”
She stills. “She didn’t listen.”
“No. She volunteered, because they needed help.” I swallow, remembering. “And when she didn’t come back, he wanted to ride out, but Kaelen’s father forbade it. He was the only healer we had left.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.” I blow out a breath. “I was still training. He waited every moment that he wasn’t working, watching the gates from the rampart. Waiting for her to come home, and she never did. We never knew what happened.”
Common enough. The Veilspire is large, and the Lightbringers don’t like to leave survivors.
“I’m sorry.” She looks up at me. “What happened to your father?”
“He did that for months.” My eyes feel wet. “I found him on the rampart. He’d been up there, and his heart had just… given out. Like he couldn’t live without her.”
Both of them had left me, and Kaelen had stepped in.
“Don’t make me wait,” I say hoarsely. “I can’t, Lyra. Let me come with you, or go instead of you, but don’t leave me behind to wonder if you’re coming home.”
Her lips touch my chest. “All right.”
It settles something in my chest, something twisted and painful. “Thank you.”