CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There was one good thing that came of Evylin’s time with the Relic: It seemed to give her a new resolve.
Despite her descent back into the well of depression, she’d gained a strength that wasn’t there before.
And Deckard was proud of her for that, even if she did exercise it by facing away from him in her sleep without his arms around her.
She’d made her request when he’d returned from that absurd conversation with Thom.
Ilain and Ethenn were already at their post for the night, while Auden and Rafferty were bedding down in separate alcoves for safety from the rain.
When Deckard moved to take his place at Evylin’s side, she set a hand on his arm before he could get settled.
“Could you—” She paused then, taking a deep breath to steel herself. “Could you let me sleep on my own?”
The rejection twisted Deckard’s gut. “If that’s what you want,” he whispered back. “But . . . do you mean you’d like me not to hold you or that you’d like me to sleep elsewhere?”
Evylin considered that. “The others will be suspicious if we sleep separately,” she concluded. “You can lie next to me, but . . . I need space.”
Though Deckard doubted her ability to rest well without his warmth or the closeness they’d grown used to, he would honor her request. “Of course,” he said, then lay down facing away from her.
He wrapped his cloak tightly around himself, knowing it could only provide so much comfort on the rain-soaked ground.
And while he hadn’t expected her to lie awake all night, he heard more than felt Evylin’s breathing steady into sleep long before him. In fact, though she managed to capture her rest within half an hour, he stared into the darkness for half the night.
But he could only attribute her shutting him out to part of his restlessness.
In the course of his day, Deckard had been so focused on Evylin that he’d altogether forgotten about the nagging sensation of the other day.
The one that told him something was wrong in his conversation with his vision of Hewitt.
Once he bedded down, the solitude of the night provided ample time for consideration.
And as he lay there for what felt like endless hours, Deckard finally figured out the truth that whispered in the back of his brain. A truth he wasn’t entirely sure how to process.
The following day passed in the same plodding through rain and mud.
The troop’s usually cheerful mood was fully tempered by the torrent of bead-sized hail that journeyed with them.
It wasn’t dangerous enough for them to stop, but the horses snorted unhappily as they were pelted over and over, and the troop huddled, grimacing with each stinging strike of solid ice.
The weather put everyone on edge. When they arrived to make camp, several disgruntled arguments broke out. Deckard managed to set them all to rights, but Ethenn sulked as he prepared the meal, and Ilain refused to assist Auden with the fire on the grounds that he was “being a tedious crag-hag.”
Deckard wasn’t sure what a crag-hag was, but after every impossible thing the Mages had brought into their lives, he decided he didn’t care to find out.
While Thom and Ilain sat side by side, passing flirtatious insults at one another, Deckard decided he’d had enough. “I’m going for a walk,” he said, not caring that they’d all agreed to avoid going out alone.
Gratefully, no one questioned him. Rafferty and Evylin sat together under the boughs of a hazel; he appeared to be teaching her how to make a coin disappear. She wasn’t smiling, but she wore a faintly amused expression. It gave Deckard enough security to leave her for an extended period.
Deckard moved through the trees, his hood as far over his head as it would reach.
The hail that made it through the thick tree cover pecked at his shoulders like a hen at its feed.
With the heavy, charcoal gray clouds that filled the sky, the forest was already dark, as somber as the mood in his heart.
Satisfied that he’d gone far enough, he came to an unceremonious stop between two pines. Hewitt was there, his burly frame filling the enclosed space. His iron-gray eyes scanned Deckard, mouth pulled taut in a disgruntled manner.
“Something’s wrong,” he surmised.
Deckard allowed several seconds to pass as he surveyed the man.
His dark brown hair and beard were as unruly as ever, silver streaks showing the early signs of aging at fifty-five, according to his army contract.
He still wore the gray coat given to them by King Ephren, marking them as members of the Order of the King.
Weapons hung from his thick belt, and a hand rested on the sword there.
“This is exactly how you looked before you died,” Deckard noted.
Hewitt’s brow creased. “Is that important?” he asked.
Deckard shook his head. “Not particularly.”
“Then why mention it?”
Hewitt’s gruff growl struck Deckard differently now. It was a sound he’d never thought he’d hear again. A sound he’d thought he’d imagined over the last several weeks.
“I couldn’t have known that you told Evylin to consummate our marriage,” Deckard said.
Hewitt lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “I didn’t expect you would.”
“You also told me that it took a month after Ryen’s death for her to smile. I couldn’t have known that either.”
“Believe it or not,” Hewitt quipped, “I know many things that you don’t.”
“That’s just it,” Deckard replied. “You shouldn’t be able to tell me anything I didn’t already know.”
“How arrogant of you.”
Deckard took a step closer. “You’re real.”
Hewitt’s left eyebrow rose derisively. “Of course, I’m real. What, did you think you were talking to yourself this whole time?”
“Yes!” Deckard exclaimed. “But you’re a real ghost.”
“Seems that way,” he said casually. “One minute I was dead, and the next I was in those woods, talking to you. Which, might I add, if given the choice of people I’d like to spend my afterlife with, you would be at the bottom of the list.”
Deckard laughed at the ridiculous comfort of having Hewitt insult him. “How are you here?” he asked in bafflement.
“How should I know? In a world of Warriors and Mages, it seems that ghosthood isn’t as far-fetched as one would like to believe.”
“This is incredible,” Deckard muttered. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. “You can help me care for Evylin and win her back.”
“Win her back?” Hewitt scoffed. “I thought we’d already determined that she was in love with you.”
Deckard grimaced. “We were wrong. Now that I realize you aren’t a figment of my imagination, I suppose I have some things to explain to you.
” He went through the past several days, the discovery of Evylin’s dependence on the Day Relic, his insistence that she gave it up, how strongly she fought against it (though he kept out the bit about her offering herself to him), her breakdown the previous day, and her newly established separation from him.
Hewitt took it all in with a bland expression as he stroked his unruly beard. “She was self-medicating with a Relic?” he commented, a layer of incredulity in his tone. “Just when I thought I couldn’t hate magic more.”
“It appears there’s a great deal we don’t understand about magic,” Deckard replied, gesturing to the ghost himself as proof.
Hewitt grunted. “While it would give me no greater pleasure than to help Evylin out of this mess, I fail to see what I can do. It isn’t as though I can chat with her to convince her how wonderful you are. You’re the only one who can see or hear me.”
“I did consider that, but that’s not the help I need.”
“Then what assistance are you hoping for?”
“She needs to heal,” Deckard said. “Your death broke Evylin, as Ryen’s did thirteen years ago. You helped her through that time. You helped her to heal. Tell me how to help her now.”
A cool breeze cut through the trees, and the hail lightened, returning to a regular rainstorm. Despite his seeming corporeality, none of the weather affected Hewitt. He stood there, his clothes and hair as dry as on a sunny day.
“I don’t know how to help you with that,” Hewitt said regretfully.
Deckard frowned. “You did it before.”
“I was with her before,” the ghost said.
“She didn’t heal from Ryen’s death. Neither did I.
We remained broken in our mutual grief, finding solace in one another because it felt like being with him.
I imagined Evylin to be mine because she was the closest thing I could get to having my son back.
She attached herself to me, trusting me more than anyone else on Terraeus because I was the closest thing she could get to her best friend.
We didn’t move on. We only pretended to. ”
Deckard’s instinct was to apologize. The grief they both must have felt and the way they’d let it linger for over a decade must have tainted even their happiest memories together.
He thought back through all the times when Evylin chose Hewitt over him, the jealousy and rejection he’d felt.
He now realized that it wasn’t Hewitt she was choosing. It was the past. It was Ryen.
“I beg your forgiveness if this is insensitive,” Deckard began, desperate to understand. “But why was Ryen so important to her? I know they were like siblings, but . . . even if one of my siblings died, I can’t fathom it so irrevocably ending my happiness.”
“Ryen wasn’t just like her brother,” Hewitt replied.
“It was as if he were her twin. They were born barely a month apart. She didn’t remember a day without him.
And he was the only one who understood her.
While her sisters played house with their dolls, she played pirates with Ryen by the stream.
They built up dreams together. They made a vow to travel the world, experiencing one adventure after the next. ”
Sorrowful clarity came to Deckard at his words. “It wasn’t only her dream you were fulfilling with our marriage. It was Ryen’s too.”