Chapter 12 Vaylen
Vaylen
Her mouth scorches mine, and for the first time in a year, the world rights itself.
All the long nights I spent convinced she was bone beneath the mountain, all the miserable days I carried duty like a shield to keep from breaking, washed away the instant she pressed her lips to mine.
It is as it was before, the same fire, the same reckless surrender.
Not once in those endless months did I fully permit myself the weakness of imagining a reencounter, yet here she is, alive, burning against me.
I tighten my arms around her, unwilling to yield even an inch. If I let go, I’m afraid the mountain might swallow her again. Her body trembles under my hold, thinner, weaker than before, but the force in that kiss promises her heart hasn’t changed. Oh, the relief!
“Rhealyn,” I breathe her name against her lips. My voice isn’t steady, and I don’t give a damn.
Her eyes lift to mine, wide, full of the heat I know—Goddess, that heat—still coils there.
“Whatever that year stole, it didn’t take this,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to hers.
Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t pull away. Not this time.
I let the silence stretch, my chest shuddering with the pressure breaking loose inside me. I don’t need her to speak. Her kiss said more than words.
For a year, I thought her lost. Now, her heartbeat thrums unyielding against mine. I thought grief made a hollow man of me. Instead, she returns, and I understand. Nothing filled that emptiness because nothing could.
She’s still mine. Even if memory has failed her, even if the kingdom rises against her. She’s still mine.
Her hands linger on my chest, then she pulls back just enough for her voice to slip through.
“I lied to Phoebe.”
Her head lowers, that black, hair falling between us like a curtain. Her shame hangs thick in the air.
“I know,” I answer, quiet but certain. “She told me what you said.”
Rhealyn lifts her gaze, tiny green flecks of fire searching mine.
I know what she’s hunting for: condemnation, judgement, the nail to seal her coffin.
I don’t give in. Her eyes aren’t filled with defiance now, not the stubborn blaze I remember, but something wearier. Something more dangerous. Doubt.
Her lips tighten a moment, then she releases a breath.
“After my mother, lying became easier than truth. A habit, like breathing.” The faintest tremor catches in her throat.
“But perhaps I should’ve waited before wrapping Phoebe in my web.
After all, the lie may not serve your plans.
You already carry my confession. I killed the bastard, and I would do it again. ”
A moment in time flashes before my eyes… her voice cracking on the confession just as the mountain tore itself open.
“Your lies did… hurt me,” I say. “I won’t deny it, but I understand why you avoided telling me the truth. You trusted no one with the full weight of your past.” I reach, brushing at the hair that shields her. “Not even me.”
I let the silence sit heavy between us, then force the words out. “I do hope there are no more lies between us.”
My voice comes steadier than I feel. This place still seems to pulse with the darkness that swallowed her, and I want none of it.
I want her to be truthful with me, to know that she can.
Because I must wonder why she's back now, and the question circles my mind like a raptor over a carcass.
For months, they held her captive. Yet now she returns, thin and worn, like discarded parchment.
Did she outlive her usefulness to them? Was she merely a tool, now broken and cast aside?
But what purpose could she have served? Does being a Weaver have anything to do with it?
The pragmatist in me wonders if the real trouble has only just begun.
My voice comes steadier than I feel. This place still seems to pulse with the darkness that swallowed her, and I want none of it. I want her to be truthful with me, to know that she can trust me.
She shakes her head, hair falling across her face again. “You know everything there is to know.”
Her tone doesn’t waver, yet I search her eyes like looking for gaps in storm clouds. I fear secrets live in her, coiled and sharp, stitched into her very blood, so I need her word, plain and spoken.
I hold her gaze. She knows what I ask without me saying it aloud. Not confessions of the past, not the sins she already laid bare, but the missing year she claims has been carved clean from her memory. Is she withholding something as she withheld everything else before?
“I swear,” her voice comes with the raw edge of oath, “I don’t remember what happened to me. I opened my eyes, and the world had turned a full year without me in it. There’s nothing between.”
The oath burns in her voice. Zephyros rumbles outside the tent, that deep rolling sound that judges truth as much as steel does. I nod, though unease remains for some reason. Still, can I fault her if she can’t speak what she doesn’t know?
“Then give me this,” I answer. “From this breath forward, no more lies. Whatever the truth, whatever the poison, you’ll tell me. Promise me, Rhealyn.”
Her expression tightens. She doesn’t look away. “I promise.”
Only then do I release the breath I have held since I found her alive.
After a moment, she says, “You kept my secrets. Zephyros told me you never shared them with anyone. Was it because I wasn’t there and there was no point?”
I don’t answer. Words feel inadequate, clumsy tools for the truth burning inside me. The flame that kindled when I first saw her defiance, that grew each time she challenged me, that blazed into an inferno when I thought her lost. How to tell her about such fire?
Her gaze remains fixed on mine, waiting. I reach for her face, my calloused thumb tracing the line of her jaw. A gesture I’ve imagined countless times during sleepless nights.
“I kept your secrets because they weren’t mine to give,” I finally say, my voice low. “Because duty sometimes bends before something greater.”
She stares, confusion crossing her features as she tries to interpret what she sees. I wonder if she recognizes the naked truth in my eyes, that I love her.
“But now I’m back, and you know my truths,” she says. Her voice is as steady as the determination in her eyes. “What do you plan to do with me now?”
A year ago, the question might have broken me in two. Then, I wrestled between duty and desire, oath and temptation, but not anymore. I see the hollowness left in her, and I know there is no choice to be made.
“I know you don’t want to run,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“In that case, my only duty is to bring you back for trial. Nothing else.”
“They’ll ask you to testify. What then?”
“I plan to keep you from going to prison,” I answer. My voice carries no doubt. “So… I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Rhealyn looks at me with uncertainty. She knows me well, knows lying won’t be easy for me.
“I’ll do what needs to be done,” I repeat.
Her mouth curves, faint and wary, as though she thinks my honor will betray me when the judge demands the truth, but she’s wrong. I’ll use my silence to shield her.
“I guess we’ll see,” she says, still doubtful.
Her words linger, bitter-sweet, and I tighten my hand around hers. “We shall.”
She studies me as though weighing the truth. The firelight paints her face in flickers, catching sharp angles where once there were gentle contours. She seems to have endured more than I can fathom. And yet, beneath it, the same woman looks back at me.
Still… that other truth remains. She’s a Weaver. A word fouler than treachery in Embernia, spoken in whispers and forbidden by law. I can’t easily dismiss it as I did her murder confession of a man who thoroughly deserved his fate.
The thought still gnaws at me. Has she been sifting through my mind these past hours? Have my failings, my longings, my shame, been laid bare like the pages of a book ready for her perusing? I’m afraid of the answer.
I keep my gaze steady as that fear twists inside me. “Tell me, Rhealyn… When you look at me, do you see only my face? Or is there more you take without asking?” I pause. “And no more lies, remember?”
Her eyes steady, unwavering, as if she can sense the mistrust hidden in my question. Yet, she doesn’t seem to blame me for it.
“I have never made a habit of listening to people’s thoughts,” she says, voice firm. “Not for a long time.”
The conviction in her tone feels like gravity. Still, I wait.
She draws in a slow breath, hand curling on her knee.
“I told you. When I was a child, I called them Whispers. At first, I thought everyone heard the fragments of other people’s musings, wants, fears.
I didn’t know it was forbidden. But my parents worried someone else would learn the truth, so they taught me that listening was rude. ”
Her gaze flickers toward the flames outside the tent. Old shards of memory sharpen her expression, and the faint furrow of shame marks her brow.
“So I smothered them,” she continues. “Every time a Whisper crept through, I forced it down, buried it until my mind was silent again, until discipline made it go away completely. I thought I’d gotten rid of them entirely. Until the Rite of Flight.”
I say nothing as she pauses, the line across her brow deepening.
“The test by the fountain brought it all back.” Her lips tighten.
“But I had no intention of letting that stupid ability ruin everything I’d worked so hard to achieve.
So I pushed it down again, harder than ever.
” She pauses. “Zephyros… he’s the only one I’ve ever allowed inside my mind.
It’s the bond. It makes our minds feel like one sometimes.
Keeping him out would be like denying my very self, so I don’t.
But that’s as far as I go, and I don’t intend to change that. ”