36. Rahzlyn #2
I was so alone in this world, in this new environment, that I needed someone to believe the truth. Even if that person was him. Everything was too heavy to carry by myself.
Raithe regarded me carefully. “Because I’ve never met someone as impetuous as you.” Then, to my utter astonishment, he added, “And because I don’t know how.”
“How to what, believe me?”
His jaw worked before saying, “To trust.”
I caught the speckle of vulnerability in his eyes before it banked. He ran his tongue along his teeth, assessing me like some sort of strategic opponent, wondering what I would do with this kernel of information he dared to share. But there was no strategy here, only desperation.
“Trust isn’t studied or calculated,” I started softly. “It isn’t waiting to see if someone will betray you, or proving you were right. It’s given as a belief and a surrendering.”
Discomfort hardened his features. “And you freely give your trust to everything and everyone?”
“Until they give me a reason not to.”
“Many would say that’s a foolish way to live.”
He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t necessarily right either. “Yourself included?”
His eyes roamed my face with fascination. “You’re asking me to trust you despite the circumstances in which I found you. And your threat to go to Maryn.”
“That is generally how trust works—taking someone at their current word.”
“Trust is a valuable commodity and should be earned.”
“I can appreciate that. But when you have every intention of never trusting someone, you’ll never experience the solace of truly being known by another. And if it comes back to bite you in the ass, well, you’ll have to deal with it then. That’s life. You can’t control everything in it.”
“You should heed your own words,” Raithe said. “Your anxiety. It peaks when you feel out of control. Instead of fearing it, you need to accept it. Learn how to sit with discomfort. All feelings—big and small—will pass. Nothing can last forever.”
“Sounds like you’ve had your own struggles with anxiety,” I noted.
He shrugged.
I extended my hand. “See? We can help each other. It’s in your best interest to work with me instead of against me.”
“Is that so?”
I wiggled my fingers. “Trust me.” I knew I was asking a lot from him. But after the way he’d comforted me these past nights, it was impossible not to imagine a trusted partnership.
To my surprise—and delight—he wrapped his hand around mine. I was reminded of our first handshake in Gemini before we’d embarked on the journey that would change everything. This time felt substantially different.
A semblance of his strength seeped from his tight grip. A warning, but also a truce. Scorpions were not known for their forgiving nature. Somewhere inside me, I knew that I, too, could be reckoned with—especially when there was nothing left to lose.
“If you haven’t guessed by now, I take my handshakes very seriously,” I told him.
I should have stayed away from Kole as my brother wished.
Our time together was fun, but it wasn’t worth the silent betrayal.
I squeezed Raithe’s hand tightly, vowing to myself that I would never break the promise of a handshake again.
“I promise not to work against you, or against the interest of this queendom.”
His lips twitched as if he saw the renewed determination in my face. He tugged me closer. I gasped, tilting my head back to stare into his beautiful, intense eyes.
“Any final questions for me?” I asked breathlessly. “Or words of avowal?”
“You’re certain there was no one else in your life who could be an apostate, besides Jere or your brother? Friends, lovers?”
“No.” A little voice in my head protested this notion. My friends’ frequently aggressive opinions certainly aligned with what the apostai stood for. But for me to be surrounded by the apostai and not suspect a thing was too impossible. Too incomprehensible. Too frightening.
I couldn’t stomach being tricked by, quite literally, everyone in my life.
“I would have known,” I insisted despite Raithe’s dubious expression. “Ross, maybe. But Mel preferred knitting to politicking, and Kole…” I trailed off as I mentally traced the inconsistent patterns of our relationship. “He’s passionate, certainly. Too smart for his own good.”
Our hands remained clasped as I continued.
“I know them. They might not run with the best crowd, but deep down they are good people with good intentions. They wouldn’t deceive me like that after everything I’ve done for them. If they were involved in anything, it wasn’t of their own doing.”
“Done for them?”
“After their mother walked, they… relied on me. I was a shoulder for them to cry on, a partner to dance with, a lover to—”
“How did they help you in return? How did they serve you?”
“Relationships aren’t transactional—they’re more complex than that.
I loved my grandmother, but I resented her too.
” I fought the quiver in my voice. “She loved me, even though she couldn’t show it the way I needed her to.
To love someone is to trust them, to believe their intentions are good.
And even if I’m wrong about my family, my friends…
the pain—the regret—means it was all real. For me, at least.”
“Regret?”
“I was afraid to face my grandmother again, and now I wish I had one more chance to apologize. And maybe we were too different in the end to make amends, but love isn’t all or nothing.
It’s not black or white.” I gestured grandly with my free hand.
“It’s a myriad of colors, a blend of moments and feelings irreparably tethering you to another, for better or worse.
It’s messy. Like me. But that’s being human, Chosen or not. ”
Raithe looked at me as though I were a riddle he couldn’t figure out.
I angled my head inquisitively. “What about Hector? Did you love him?”
Pulling his hand back, Raithe put several feet between us. I was reminded of the cool breeze surrounding us. I let the soft musical notes caress my skin, even as Raithe said, “No.”
“Who was he?” I pressed. I sensed it might be a mistake to do so, but I couldn’t help it. I had a strange desire to understand more about this enigmatic man. “To you, not the queendom.”
“No one,” Raithe said, his tone warning enough. He turned his back to me, intending to resume his post in the hall.
“It’s a disservice to his memory to pretend he didn’t exist,” I called after him. “Would you have preferred that to be the case? For him to never have been born?”
“Of course not.”
“Then stop being afraid.”
He halted in his tracks.
“When my grandfather began to deteriorate, my grandmother refused to acknowledge it. Instead of facing her pain, she chose silence—and it kept us from healing together. There were many things we weren’t allowed to speak of, including my parents.
I live with the regret of pretending the best person I knew wasn’t slipping away.
” The truth of our family’s messed-up dynamic poured out of me.
“Trust me, Raithe. That kind of regret will tear you apart inside unless you set it free.”
Raithe flexed his hands at his sides. Then he cast a glare over his shoulder, but it wasn’t intended for me. “You want to know who Hector was?”
I couldn’t speak, too hopeful for his answer.
“He was the father I should have had.”
I tracked his silhouette through blurred eyes, wishing him to stay and talk with me about this—the weighty matters of the heart that we couldn’t seem to face alone.
“Oh, Raithe,” I murmured. Despite the single tear sliding down my cheek, my chest felt lighter for the first time in days.