Chapter 39 #2
Like before, I felt the heartstone magic skim across my flesh—a whisper, a summoning. I felt it so much easier now, as if my entire body was tuned to it, anticipating it.
In a way, it felt like sinking into a hot bath after a long day. A comfort. A relief.
Alaryk had been right to bring me here.
Along one of the stone walkways, toward the center of the cavern, there was a series of crumbled pillars that appeared to have once made a ring around the landing.
Perhaps a pavilion. Alaryk brought me to one, toppled onto its side, the small slab a perfect bench.
The pillar was cool beneath me, and I gazed up at Alaryk, a thousand unspoken things between us that seemed dammed up in my throat.
Instead of untangling them, I remained silent.
It was strange being so close to him again. Strange and achingly familiar. So many hurts and so many apologies and so many wants jumbled in my brain.
He went to his knees before me so that he wasn’t looming, until our eyes were level with one another’s.
His hand came to my unmarred cheek as Syris’s words returned to me. I could almost hear his thoughts. He’d seen me like that too. Beaten so badly that my features weren’t familiar.
I said the only thing I could think to say.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he replied. His hand skimmed over my cheek.
“Alaryk—”
“I bonded our magic together.”
At first I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“What?” I whispered, my brow furrowing.
“You were dying,” he said. I felt the sharp cut of grief pierce my mind. His, I realized. “And I couldn’t lose you. So the choice became a simple thing.”
“You told me you never wanted to bond with anyone,” I said. “That it would…it would mark you forever.”
Because it was like a piece of your soul was willingly given to another. You would never be whole again. Always…fractured.
He…he’d saved my life? But he’d made that choice for the both of us. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
“We can still break it, can’t we?” I asked, remembering what he’d said once.
He shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, it’s latched itself and it’ll hold. Can’t you feel it?”
Even if he wanted to?
“What…what does this mean?”
His forehead came to my own. And he didn’t have to say anything. I felt it.
He wanted me to remain at his side.
Always.
I gasped.
“I know there’s much I have to make amends for,” he murmured to me, his brows drawn. “I’ve made so many mistakes with you. But I want to start new. With no secrets between us.”
My vision went blurry.
“Because there can’t be now,” I whispered, so incredibly torn and confused. My temple throbbed. “You’re in my head now. You’ll see everything, feel everything. I—I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” he growled, his grip tightening.
“And I’m sorry for forcing this on you. But Amaia, I saw you.
I felt you in that forest. I felt your resignation, your realization of your death.
Your grief for your family. I felt the pain.
I felt your magic, reaching for me. And I reached back because I couldn’t lose you. Ever.”
My lips parted, hearing the rawness in his voice. The turmoil.
“I made a choice,” he continued, voice guttural. “Perhaps a selfish one. But I made it only with the purest of intentions toward you. To save you. There wasn’t anything malicious about it. The answer was clear, and I chose it.”
I looked down at my palms spread open in my lap. Alaryk took them in his, his hands so big they completely enveloped mine. His lips brushed my cheek.
“You know what I did,” I found myself murmuring. “You know what I did, and you still choose this?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“Why?”
“Because I love you, Amaia.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, reeling back so I could look him in the eye. He said the words so casually, so matter-of-factly.
But I didn’t need to see his face to feel the truth of his words ringing through the bond. Molten and warm, they flowed through me like a river current, washing away my own doubts.
“You do,” I whispered. Not a question. An acknowledgment.
His smile was wry. “And I never thought I’d say those words.”
Except to his mother, who’d long passed, I knew. I could hear what went unspoken. And even then, she’d been a difficult female, one who’d rarely expressed her own emotions.
My lips parted, knowledge that I shouldn’t have had being recognized as truth. This was the power of the bond.
“There was a Hartan witch that my mother consulted, shortly before we left my birthland,” Alaryk told me. “The witch said that I’d become a king in my own right…but that I would forever be torn between three worlds—Harta, Karak, but the third… I know what she meant now.”
My heart squeezed. I heard his answer reverberate between us.
“Us,” I whispered.
“Our bond,” he said. “A world of our own making. One that will anger many, but one that will make us all stronger.”
“I don’t want to be your burden,” I told him. “I know what I’ve done, Alaryk. One of the highest crimes someone can commit in Karak. I’m not hiding from that. I know what your people will demand.”
“And you think I have it in me to kill you?” he asked, a spark of his temper igniting the bond. “How could you ever think that?”
“I didn’t say you would do it,” I amended. “I know you wouldn’t. But you are also a king to your people. You answer to them too. You would look weak if you let me stay. That’s why I have to go back. One reason of many.”
The refusal was in his mind.
“There’s no going back, Amaia,” he said. “For either of us.”
That was what I feared.
“My family—”
“Don’t worry about them,” he told me. “I’ve handled it.”
My brow furrowed. I didn’t even realize I did it, but I dove into his mind, trying to find the answers I sought. And most surprising of all, he let me.
His mind was a beautiful tangle, one like the chaos of Samryn’s curse, but one that was inherently him. Sharp but gentle, cutting enough that it bordered on ruthlessness, but driven to do right by his people. To make Grymia better, to keep the peace, even if it meant he had to be merciless.
He held himself to the highest standard. Unrelentingly. And I wanted to embrace him, because no one could sustain that for long. Though Alaryk had…for nearly all his life.
And in his thoughts, he projected what I wanted to know. That he’d sent Myzalla herself and proven, loyal riders of Grymia to fly to Dothik. To deliver Ryak’s body, a warning to the Dothikkar himself…but to also…
I gasped.
“You’re bringing them here?” I asked.
“And Brune’s family as well,” he said. “He told me everything. Their lives were at risk. Your Dothikkar has proven to be unpredictable. So until we can decide what needs to happen next, I thought it best that they come here. They’ll be safe here.”
I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that I might see my family soon. Here in Karak.
But what about our home? My mother’s friends? Their lives?
And Kiron…what would he have to say about all of this?
And what if something went wrong trying to get all of them out of the city?
“I have it all handled,” Alaryk assured me. “Don’t worry.”
My mind was spinning, but I felt his influence. Calming me down. I dragged in a deep breath…and let myself sink into him. Gently, hesitantly at first, until I just let go.
Alaryk’s arms came around me as he soothed me from the inside out. As Ny’am’s lost heartstone pulsed with life. Somewhere near. Somewhere hidden.
Which made me remember…
“You executed Dresnar,” I whispered. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”
He tensed. In my mind’s eye, the flash came. Of Dresnar’s bowed head, Grymia in attendance, his Elthika circling overhead. The flash of his own blade, black with blood.
My chest squeezed.
“He made his choice,” Alaryk murmured.
So did I, I couldn’t help but think.
His arms tightened. “No, it’s different.”
“Is it?” I wondered. I breathed him in. “I was trying to protect my family. Dresnar was trying to do the same.”
For a heartstone. To protect Grymia. To help the Elthika.
“And he was willing to murder you himself if it meant he could get away with it,” Alaryk finished. I flinched. Because that had been the difference. A pretty stark difference at that.
“You’re right,” I said.
“He’d wanted the mountain searched time and time again. But the heartstone doesn’t want to be found. And our Elthika need it here. He never understood that,” Alaryk said. “Even still…I never expected him to betray us like this.”
It had cut him—and his riders—deep. All of them had been in attendance at Dresnar’s execution, stone-faced. They’d been his friends, his allies.
“But you never really know someone,” he said.
That’s not true, I thought, deep in his mind. Because here, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.
He huffed out a small breath. “You’re right, mariss.”
Would I ever get used to this?
I wasn’t certain.
“This is a lot, Alaryk,” I whispered. “Too much.”
I pulled away, catching the way his lips pulled down. I pressed my hand to my forehead to keep the quiet cavern from spinning.
“You don’t want this,” he murmured. Because he could feel it.
“It’s not that,” I said. And because I didn’t know how to express all the thoughts fighting and pushing and pulling at each other in my mind, I imagined inviting him inside it so he could decipher it for himself. Letting go so everything could be revealed to him all at once.
It was because he’d told me he loved me. It was because I’d just woken after a guardsman had nearly beaten me to death—Alaryk huffed out a deep breath at that one.
It was because my family was in danger and that they were having to leave their entire lives behind because of me.
It was that Dresnar had been executed. It was that I’d been sent here to spy on the Karag, that I’d stolen eggs that I’d only ever wanted to protect, that I’d seen Brune bloodied and slumped against a wall, and that the cavern was whispering to me.
It was my raw guilt, the friends I’d hurt, the trust I’d broken.
It was that night.
The night Alaryk had used his magic as a weapon against me, a choice that he’d known would hurt me when I had been most vulnerable. And he hadn’t cared. He’d compared me to Kamora, one of the most vile people he’d ever known, who’d taken so much from him, who’d cursed Samryn.
“Amaia,” he growled. I felt the rise of his own grief when he discovered that.
It was just too much.
I just wanted it to stop.
Alaryk’s breath evened out. His head slumped down onto my shoulder, his forehead pressed to the exposed skin there.
“All right, mariss,” he murmured.
And just like that, I felt the connection sever, making me shiver.
I was…my own again. My mind was my own. Alaryk was gone.
“I can keep it controlled, for both of us,” he murmured. In assurance, I realized when I gazed at him wide-eyed. Relieved. “Until you decide what you want.”
“You’d do that?” I asked.
“Anything you ask,” he told me. “Because I know what I want. For the first time in my life, it’s a decision I want to make, not one that was chosen for me. But I realize that I’ve never given you the opportunity to decide the same for yourself.”
It was almost on instinct, me reaching out my magic toward him. But it was met by a cold wall, and I wondered if he could even feel it.
Oddly, it felt like a loss.
“Take the time you need,” he murmured. “I’ll be here when you decide. I promise.”