Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
My head was spinning when I returned to my bedchamber. I was grateful that no one was there waiting for me, and that the guard who escorted me left immediately after. I needed to be alone.
I went to the windows and threw them open, savoring the rush of frigid air.
It smelled like ice and smoke outside. A warm glow surrounded the city, and though I was too far away to see or hear people below, the alive-ness of it all drifted up from the streets like mist over a lake.
A reminder that many people still made their homes here—vampires or no.
Even though the paint was chipped and the buildings crumbling.
Gods help me. Here I was, romanticizing a vampire city.
I let out a frosty puff of air and turned. Zefiah lay across the bed, where I’d placed her when I returned. Her glow now pulsed faintly from the gaps in the leather’s stitching.
I grabbed her and placed her across my lap, sliding her free of the sheath. Gold light illuminated the shadows of the room.
Zefiah.
Silence. Her light pulsed rhythmically.
Zefiah!
I was beginning to think something was actually wrong with her. Maybe Kajmar or Ix had somehow damaged her. But I inspected her blade carefully and found nothing amiss. Even her glow was steady, unlike in the wake of Shiket’s death, when it had flickered like a candle in a windstorm.
Which meant that she was fucking ignoring me.
What the ever-living hell is your—
{What is my problem?}
The coldness of her voice slid down my spine like ice.
{What is my problem?} she repeated. {I should ask you this question, Kyrene. What is your problem? The Tainted Mother was within our reach. She showed her back to us! One strike and we would have pierced her heart.}
I scoffed—more casually than I felt. You’re so confident, Zef. You don’t know that we—
{I. Do. Know.} Each word was a stabbing accusation.
{She was close enough. We had our shot at her.
Perhaps the only one we will ever get. And you .
. .} Zefiah did not have to breathe, and yet, she paused, the tension drawing taut, giving the effect of a person so furious that they had to take a deep breath.
{You LET HER GO. You let her go because HE told you to. }
Defensiveness leaped up in my chest.
And yet, in equal measure, shame.
I dumped Zefiah onto the bed and stood.
And here I was concerned that something was wrong with you. Turned out you were just saving your energy for another lecture.
{This is no lecture, Kyrene. This is a reckoning. Tell me, why did you choose not to kill Nyaxia? Tell me there is some other reason.}
I turned to the window, even though there was no hiding from Zefiah. She saw my soul itself.
It wasn’t the right time.
It was the best I could give her. I couldn’t say, We wouldn’t have made it, because I knew we would have.
{Tell me why it was not the right time.}
My lips parted, then closed. I wrapped my arms around my chest.
I could not lie to her, and I could not tell her the truth.
Finally, I said, You saw what I did. That he wants to kill Nyaxia as much as we do. Perhaps he’s right.
Zefiah did not appreciate this response. Her burst of displeasure sent green-tinted light bursting into the darkest corners of the room.
{You have many flaws, Kyrene. But stupidity is not one of them.}
How kind of—
{You like him.} The accusation was pointed.
It made me stop in my tracks. {You like him, and you like him more now that you know that he hates Nyaxia as much as you do.
You look at his mission and you see a noble quest. You look at the future he shows you and you wish with your deepest soul that you can be the one to bring it about.
Perhaps, you tell yourself, he is right about all of it.
Perhaps you can summon the power of my siblings to kill Nyaxia, as he claims. Perhaps you can create a world in which the sun is restored and the gods no longer play games with their mortal subjects.
He says such beautiful words to you, shows you such a beautiful future, and you drink it all down.
You have spent ten years denying that you are a hero.
But a handsome vampire calls you one, and you want to believe it. }
None of these were questions. They were all statements, painful in their factuality. Because she knew she was right about every one of them, and I knew it, too.
Once, when I was very small, my uncle caught me pretending to be a princess and laughed at me for it. What I now understood was harmless ribbing had seemed like crippling cruelty then, and I had been ashamed. I felt the same way now.
Enough with your fucking theatrics, I snapped.
So what if I do want to be the person he thinks I am?
Why is that such a terrible thing? You’ve spent a gods-damned decade lecturing me for being such a shameless sell sword.
Now when I want to actually do something that matters, to actually believe in something, you act like I’ve committed some grave betrayal.
It wasn’t until those words left me—actually believe in something—that I realized they might in fact be true. That perhaps I did believe in Septimus’s mission, and for something more than revenge.
I’ll tell you what I think, Zefiah, since you’re being so free with your opinions, I went on. I think you’re jealous.
She let out a vicious scoff. {Jealous! I do not like the way you look at the fallen one, nor the way he looks at you. But I have already told you that it is not my business who is in your bed.}
You hate vampires so much that you can’t see anything else, I shot back. Maybe you’re not jealous over him. But you’re jealous that maybe I might be taking a path other than the one you want me to.
{I wish for you to take a path that goes somewhere.}
What if this one does?
The words came out more pleading than I had meant them to. Weaker. An actual question.
I looked at Zefiah lying over the bedspread and thought of the first night I met her. I had been so young. So weak. No one at all. And I had always known who I was in the years since, no matter what other people saw when they looked at me—no, when they looked at Zefiah. Only now did I question it.
What if I can do this? I said. What if this path does lead somewhere?
It felt so raw, so terrifying, to state that dream. Believing that I was capable of anything like this, even so tentatively, would have been impossible mere months ago.
But I thought of Marko, someone I had been so certain was incapable of anything but selfishness, dying in his attempt to save Valentina.
I thought of Mirie and her insistence of my goodness. Val and her belief that the world could be better.
And maybe it could. Maybe I could.
A beat of silence stretched.
Zefiah said softly, {Kyrene. You know it will not.}
It was perhaps the first time I had ever heard that tone in her voice. Pity.
That hurt more than any harsh word she had ever said to me. Like she was just now seeing some ugly, weak part of myself that I had managed to hide for a decade, and the very sight of it broke her heart.
For all the biting sarcasm we hurled at each other over the years, she always knew my truth.
And the truth was, I was nothing without her.
If there was any part of me who could fantasize about heroics, it was only because of the way her hilt fit in my hands.
I would never be a hero, but it was only because of Zefiah that I was anything at all. Neither of us ever forgot it.
So when, after a long moment, she said, {I cannot help you with this task,} there was no doubt between us exactly what that meant.
My heart lurched.
You cannot be serious.
{I do this to protect you,} she said. {You are destined to die by my blade one day. But death is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. My former bearer—}
Yes, yes, I snapped. Ferdinan was so very noble. Nothing like me.
{Ferdinan’s nobility was his downfall,} she hissed. {For nearly a year, he lay in a broken state, body decaying without ever truly dying. Everyone believed that his mind was gone. But it never was. I know this, because I heard him pleading for me that entire year. Pleading for his death.}
Through our connection, I heard the echoes of his cries. A great warrior reduced to a terrified child, last breaths stretching out in an endless torture. And for the first time, I felt just how much this had affected Zefiah.
{I will not listen to you plead that way, Kyrene,} she said. {I refuse to. If you will not heed me tonight, then let me conserve my energy, so that I might be able to guarantee you a quick death when the time comes.}
You’re being so ridiculously melodramatic.
A beat of silence, and then, {Mirie did not die quickly. She died slow. And every second that she lived, she was in agony, and she was praying you would return. Begging the gods to bring you back to save her, and save Valentina, whom she did not know had died.}
I sucked in a sharp inhale through my teeth.
One day, Zefiah would slide into my heart and take my life. And I knew right now, with fleeting certainty, that it would not hurt as much as those words just did.
{I spared you that knowledge,} she said. {But you are not willing to do the same for me.}
Fuck you. Petulant, I knew. But sometimes, they were the only words that suited.
You are such a coward. You want to abandon me just as, for the first time, I’m trying to do something real?
Fine. If you were hoping I would just leave you behind, you’re wrong.
You’ll still have to come along and watch, and I hope you never taste the vampire blood that spills on your blade.
{I know you too well to dream of such a thing.} I was caught off-guard by the note of compassion in her words. {My steel is yours to wield. I cannot control what you do with it. My magic, however, is another matter.}
Reducing Zefiah to merely a big piece of metal.
Fine, I snapped. Do what you want. Perhaps I’ll prefer wielding your siblings, anyway.