Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Nova
Ilanded in the rubble in front of Midna Palace with Lorien’s arms wrapped tightly around me.
He’d…saved me.
But he’d also taken me away from all the people I loved.
Forced me to abandon them in the middle of battle, and the gods only knew how the Order would retaliate to losing both me and Lorien.
I was safe, but numb. Beyond confused. I didn’t even have my sword; I’d dropped it when Lorien had essentially tackled me.
This was wrong.
All wrong.
Lorien shifted, his body pressing closer to mine. My reflexes took over—I kicked wildly, shoving him away and landing a boot just below his ribcage. He rolled out of my reach, cursing as he grabbed his stomach.
He watched me for a moment, eyes narrowed, before shaking his head and getting gingerly to his feet. “You’re welcome for saving you, by the way.”
“Why did you do it?” I demanded. “Why did you take me away from him?”
“Should I have let him kill you instead?”
“He wouldn’t have killed me.”
“You’re a fool if you really think that.”
“And you’re a bastard.”
“Yes, I am, but at least I’m not an idiot, unlike you.”
A sharp pain radiated through my chest, as if my heart was shrinking away, hiding rather than admitting the actual danger I’d been in.
I wouldn’t admit it.
But I couldn’t bring myself to keep arguing, either.
My vision blurred. I tucked my head toward my chest, trying to fight off my building nausea.
Lorien loomed over me. “If I’d been a second later, he would have ripped you in half. I could feel the strength of the magic he was wielding, even from a distance. He clearly intended to destroy you.”
I lifted my head, glaring at him until I found the energy to stagger to my feet.
Then I punched him, hitting him squarely in the face with as much strength as I could muster. Blood was streaming from my fist as I pulled it back, the wound Aleks had left aggravated by the strike.
Lorien opened his mouth to speak.
I swung again before he could get another word out.
He caught me by the wrist this time, gripping it so tightly I was certain his next move would be to snap my bones in half.
He brought his other hand up to cover my bloody fist. He glared at me the entire time he was doing it—as if some part of him did want to break my bones—but warmth flowed from his palm, soothing away the pain instead of making it worse. A soft glow and a tingling sensation followed.
When he let me go, the bleeding had ceased. My skin had knitted itself back together, leaving only dried blood and a faint scar across the back of my hand as evidence of what Aleks had done.
“Stop it.” I took a step away from Lorien, my entire body trembling. “Stop fucking helping me!”
He glanced at a few of the other scrapes and bruises I’d picked up during the night’s battles, as if he was considering healing those too, just to spite me.
“I will hit you again,” I hissed. “If you touch me again, I swear to the gods I will hit you hard enough to knock you back into Noctaris.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m going to give you a minute to deal with this.” He gestured to my clenched fists and the rest of my furious, trembling body. “Then we need to make a plan.”
“I’m not making any plans with you.”
“No? You already have everything all figured out, do you?”
I started to snap out a response, but the words died in my throat.
“That’s what I thought.”
He turned toward the palace, considering it for a moment before letting out a sigh and heading up the cracked and crumbling front steps.
I grabbed him and yanked him back. “We don’t have time to just sit around. We have to go back. My brother, my friends, Aleks—”
“They’ll survive long enough for us to figure some things out.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then it will be less we have to worry about, won’t it?” He pried my fingers from his arm and shoved my grip away with infuriatingly calm precision.
I just stared at him.
“I’m giving you a minute,” he repeated. And then he turned and continued up the steps.
My anger only grew as I watched him disappear into the palace. Grew and grew until it consumed me, blinded me, made me so hotheaded and delirious I didn’t even know what I was angry about anymore. So many things. I couldn’t have possibly picked one to focus on.
I thought about following Lorien, demanding him to take me back to the Below.
I thought about just trying to go back myself, even though I knew I was in no state to attempt it. Crossing the realms was dangerous even when I could focus—it would be asking for disaster in my current condition. More disaster.
And what was the point of going back if I didn’t know how to fix anything?
In the end, I simply collapsed on the steps.
I sat with my anger for far longer than a minute. Long enough that it had time to turn into grief, into regrets that wound so tightly around me I could barely breathe. I kept trying, though.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
I lasted only a few minutes more before finally breaking down, burying my face in my hands and letting sobs wrack my body. All my mistakes, all my losses, hit me in merciless waves, each one forcing my body to curl a little more tightly into my grief.
I should have tried harder to figure out what Aleks was truly fighting against. We’d buried too many things, avoided too many difficult conversations.
I’d convinced myself that I could fix everything if I just kept pushing forward, unflinching.
I loved him, and that was the beginning and end of everything, the truth that had carried me to this point, but now…
Now, I understood that love alone was not enough.
Whatever vows we’d made, whatever feelings we shared…none of it mattered without action. Without the courage to face what was broken, rather than just marching stubbornly forward. None of it counted if I couldn’t save him from the Order’s control.
And if I couldn’t save him, then what could I save?
I might have stayed there for hours, letting that question torment me into a comatose state, if not for the gnawing worry that eventually made me lift up my head.
I couldn’t just curl up here and weep forever.
I had to get back to Noctaris.
My body felt like it weighed ten times what it should, but I forced myself to stand. On shaky feet, I climbed the steps and walked through the ruins of the palace, trying to see it all with new eyes. Trying to understand more of what I’d missed.
The heaviness in my bones persisted, but I could learn to walk with it, just as I’d learned to walk with all the other heavy things I’d collected throughout my life.
I found Lorien sitting on the broken bridge that led into the Aetherstone’s chamber, staring at the mountains in the distance.
I hesitated before approaching him.
I was finally calm enough to truly look at him—to see a strange combination of the monster I’d first met, woven together with all the different memories I’d witnessed.
He still had an undeniably cruel, calculating look in his eyes, but they no longer burned with the same reddish tint as before; they were closer to his natural shade of deep brown.
His lips curved up in a way that almost looked thoughtful—yet I still shivered when I looked at them, knowing how readily that smile could turn feral.
I’d once heard a legend that the blood of gods ran in his veins. That he had been such a powerful Vaelora because he was already divinely-touched, even before the gods had granted him the dominion of Light.
Sitting there under the overcast sky, with the soft glow of magic warming his beige skin, highlighting every sharp and powerful line of his body, he almost looked the part.
But I could also see the toll the past centuries had taken on him.
The haunted expression that flickered over his face any time he started to let his guard down.
The way power radiated off him, yet he was still gripping the stone edge of the bridge like he was afraid of tumbling over.
Like a fallen god who had yet to figure out how to carry the weight of his broken wings.
Whatever he was, as I stared at him, I finally, truly admitted to myself that he was real, even if he was still a mystery I couldn’t make sense of. And I had revived him, somehow. Was that why he’d saved me? So that we were even?
And what the hell did he intend to do next?
We need to make a plan, he’d said.
As if it was really so simple.
As if I could just trust him now, after everything he’d done.
“I was beginning to wonder about you,” he called, without looking at me.
I steeled myself and walked forward, my steps echoing in the still air.
“You said you wanted to make plans.” I swept a hand toward the crumbling entrance to the chamber that had served as our battleground not so long ago. “But what happened to your plans to take control of the stone in there?” I demanded. “Your scheme to control all of its magic and destroy Noctaris?”
He kept his gaze on the distant peaks. “They were never my plans. Just lies I bought into because I wanted revenge against your realm. Because I didn’t realize what the Order had done to Calista. How they poisoned her and turned us against one another.”
I was silent for a long time, waiting for him to elaborate.
He didn’t. It almost seemed like he couldn’t, and it was unsettling to see him rendered into such a helpless state.
I folded my arms across my chest. Reconsidered the words I’d planned to say, the angry demands I’d planned to make of him.
Quietly, I said, “You truly did love her, didn’t you?”
He still didn’t look at me. “I killed her in the end. Nothing else really matters.”
Probably against my better judgment, I sat down beside him, keeping a careful distance. “Then you tried to kill me, because I carry her legacy.”
“And because Severin urged me to do it. To finish what I’d started. And because it was easier than admitting to myself that what I’d started might have been a mistake—especially after spending centuries trying to justify what I’d done.”