Chapter 19
LYRAE
Ifinished the last of my soup, restraining myself from licking the bottom of the bowl like I used to as a child, when food was scarce. Varian hadn’t said a single word, just watched my admittedly terrible table manners with a slight smile on his face.
“Sorry. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had a decent meal.”
“We expected there to be food at the tavern, but the pickings were slim, given Gavin hadn’t put the bottle down in more than a week. We should have brought more supplies.”
“Don’t feel bad. All I brought were weapons and an extra shirt.
” I wet the tip of my finger and picked up the last few breadcrumbs off the plate, Varian tracking me like a hawk as I popped them into my mouth.
“So it’s not like I pulled my weight in the food department.
Though, to be fair, I’m used to having supply wagons. ”
“You really fought in the war?” He leaned forward. “In the Solarys army?”
I shrugged. “The Shadow King expected death sentence grunts to serve on the front lines as cannon fodder. Especially when you’d been rotting in the dungeons for weeks and eating his food.
Frankly, I was glad for the fresh air.” I hid all those awful memories behind what I hoped was an insolent grin.
“Anyway, here I am to tell the tale, so…”
“Lyrae.” Varian reached for me, sandwiching my hand between his own, and for a moment all I could do was stare at my fingers, so pale against his tan ones. “That had to be frightening. None of us had combat training. How did you survive?”
Leave it to Varian to call me out on my bullshit right off the bat, but he’d never beat around the bush. No, you always knew exactly what you were getting with Varian, which had been one of the reasons I’d trusted him implicitly.
Until…
“One day at a time.” I stretched my bare feet out so they were closer to the fire, letting the heat sink into my blistered soles. “One fucking miserable day at a time.” I could tell from his expression he wanted more, so I took a breath.
I’d been running on nothing but hatred and rage in those days.
Certain Ryland had sold me out, abandoned me to that fate. And Varian…I didn’t know what I thought about Varian. Maybe that Ryland had convinced him to take one last job, but in those early days—until Ariel—the bulk of my hatred had been reserved for Ryland.
“War isn’t that different from living on the streets,” I reminded him gently.
“I kept my head down, stayed away from the other soldiers whenever I could. Tried to keep my belly full, always chose a protected position during battles, out of the direct line of attack. After two months, when I was still alive, I considered that a victory in itself.”
Not so much a victory, but a wound that left a host of scars behind.
Still, I had survived, through the skills I’d learned living on the streets, and a fair amount of luck.
“Ry and I were shipped off to Caladrius the same night we were captured at Maldrake’s. A prison wagon.” His voice went quiet as his hand tightened around mine. “Ten days, twenty-one prisoners, and only seven of us survived the trip. Lucky number seven.”
I held my breath, watching the light drain out of his eyes. “Then five years in the Citadelle dungeons, with Solok in charge.”
“Twelve years for me on the front lines.” My eyes pricked with tears at what he’d—we’d—endured. “By then, everyone else was long gone. Just me, and I was…” I swallowed, unable to describe that kind of loneliness.
“When Solok made the offer, we took the deal.” Varian traced something on his leg, eyes staring at nothing. “To track down the covens and kill witches. Neither of us wanted to, but when there’s only one choice…” His shoulders rose and fell. “Well, you know.”
“When the Oracle came to me and told me I could die in the mud as a grunt or live as a spy, I took the deal, too, Varian. There’s no shame in surviving. No shame at all.”
Except there was, and there were days I thought I’d die from it.
“We were on a break from the High Barrens when Ariel found me in Caladrius,” Varian whispered, slipping from the bed to tend the dying fire.
“She had this crazy idea to steal some famous sword, locked away in the Fae King’s quarters. Said it was made of solid gold, and she needed my help. She’d been offered the job by some mysterious employer, but needed me to find the hiding place.”
Varian shoved a fresh log into the fire, sending a shower of sparks across the floor. “Anyhow, the deal was, we deliver this sword to her employer and collect five thousand gilder. Ariel told me all I had to do was locate the thing, once she snuck us past the palace guards.”
He slanted me a look. “Of course, I helped her,” he muttered. “Of course, because I’d lost you, and I felt like I owed her after that night at Maldrake’s went wrong…” He looked away.
“Nothing mattered, Lyrae, after that night. I took a lot of risks that weren’t exactly…wise.”
Somehow, I wondered, all of this was connected, Ariel and Varian, me and Ryland. Three lives, spread across a century, where we’d been divided, and manipulated and squeezed, until here we were, enemies at each other’s throats.
“So,” I prompted gently. “After the night you stole the sword…”
“Almost stole the sword,” Varian corrected with a bitter smile.
“After the night you almost stole the sword and my sister was captured, I had a visitor. We were fighting in the flatlands, just north of Lake Moor. We had the whole eastern flank of the Caladrius army on the run. We thought we might actually win the war.”
“You got news…while you were fighting on the front lines?” Varian’s eyes narrowed. “Foot soldiers don’t get news, Lyrae; even I know that.”
“This soldier did.” My stomach was churning, threatening to reject the dinner I’d just wolfed down.
“The Oracle showed up in my tent that night. A grunt’s tent.
A nobody’s tent. I figured I was as good as dead the second I saw her, but she came to tell me my sister was scheduled to die the next morning in the Tempeste main square.
Hung as a thief for stealing from the king himself.
But I could save her, if only I agreed to her terms.”
She’d crept out of the darkness like a spider, every movement jerky and unnatural, with her blackened teeth and her whispered lies. In her hand was the ring on my finger and a lock of my sister’s pale hair, and that was all it took to bend me to her will.
So little, I thought.
So little it took to convince me of a lie. So little to turn me into her puppet. But then again, I was too broken to know what the truth even looked like any more, too full of hate to care.
“She blackmailed you into becoming her spy.” Varian quickly pieced the clues together, his face hardening into a mask of fury. “I knew none of what happened with that sword was right. Someone wanted to get their hands on Ariel the whole time.”
“That’s how I’m figuring it went down, too.
” I sagged against the pillows. “But weeks after the Oracle bound me with her mark, after she trapped me…she informed me Ariel had been taken to the gallows and hung. Claimed she tried to get Ariel released, but…my sister had stolen from the Fae King and even an Oracle couldn’t change his mind. ”
“Ariel’s alive, Lyrae,” Varian said quietly. “She has to be.”
“How can you be so sure?” I didn’t know what kind of twisted hope made me ask that, but I had to know why Varian had never given up hope, when I had.
“Because…” He stretched his neck, lined with rings of dirt, and that was when I realized he was still in his filthy coat, still soaked to the skin from where he dragged me from the icy water. Not only that, but the fire brought out the shadows under his eyes, the way exhaustion clung to him.
“Because someone saw her in that carriage. And because I refuse to believe she’s dead, Lyrae. And until I see Ariel’s body, I’ll keep refusing.”
“As much as I wish you were right, you can’t will someone alive, Varian,” I said gently. But this was so like Var, this unshakeable faith in an idea, and somehow, it made me feel better, knowing like me, he had a hard time accepting the truth.
Because if Ariel was alive, if the Oracle’s scheme was nothing but smoke and mirrors, my sister would have found me by now. And the fact that she hadn’t…well, I suppose the fact I hadn’t seen Ariel for a hundred years answered that question.
I reached out and rubbed my thumb from the corner of his mouth across his hollowed cheek, wiping off the smear of blood from Rooke’s fist, a fresh swell of anger rattling around in my chest.
“Take that soaking wet coat off and warm up.” I patted the bed, feeling weird, but not as weird as knowing my oldest friend was cold and wet and miserable.
“I hate being dirty,” he grumbled. “And wet.”
“Oh, I remember.” I grinned. “You were the cleanest street rat I ever knew.”
“No sense in wallowing in the very filth you’re trying to rise above.”
“And you always came up with the best sayings, too,” I teased, watching him drop the jacket, peeling off an equally filthy shirt before sitting down on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots.
Then he stretched himself out beside me with a grateful sigh, long and lean and muscled, jaw darkened by a few days of stubble.
“Fuck, that feels good.” Var slid me a sideways look. “I’m not meant for living rough anymore, either, just so you know. I still have a crick in my neck from that lumpy chair at the tavern.”
“Try sleeping on the hard-as-nails floor. What a nightmare.” I fluffed up a pillow and jammed it behind his head. “Be glad you didn’t end up with bedbugs.”
“I should have made that bastard get up, but I pretty much passed out the second you blew out the candle.” Varian’s gaze sharpened. “I should take a look at your shoulders, make sure you’re healing. Fuck knows what’s in that water.”
“You really are a worrywart, aren’t you?” I griped, but this was nice, having him fuss over me. Even Anaria and Torin treated me like I was just another soldier, when it would be nice if they remembered I was female, every once in a while.
“What about you? I didn’t just get punched in the face downstairs by my supposed ally.” And Kaden Rooke would get some payback for that, I swore, as I reached out and brushed my fingers over the dried blood on Varian’s face, framed by blond, still-wet hair.
“I’m fine.” The smile that twisted his lips took me back to a time when I would have believed him unquestioningly. “Just let me look at those wounds, make sure you didn’t cut yourself going through the ice, then you can sleep for the next two days straight.”
Still, he didn’t move a muscle, waiting for me to give him the go-ahead.
“Fine. See for yourself.” I swept my hair over my shoulder and pulled down the neckline of the shirt. “All healed up, thanks to you. That salve made all the difference, and I never even thanked you.”
Varian settled himself closer, leaning into me, fingers tracing down my throat, over the tender spots of new skin.
“Much better, Lyrae. By tomorrow, they’ll be gone completely.
” His fingers danced over my shoulder, down my arm to my wrist. “Any other cuts or bruises? You crashed through the ice; did you hit your head?”
“I don’t think so.” I let him inspect every inch of my skin, that keen concentration growing more intense by the minute. He paused at the scar on my arm, making a little noise before moving to my blistered feet.
“I was so…everything happened so fast,” I said. “One minute I was above the ice, the next, the weight of my pack was dragging me under. I couldn’t…”
Sweat beaded up on my brow. “I kicked my feet, but the heavy pack dragged me down and I hadn’t gotten much air before I went completely under.
” I let out a shaking breath that somehow became a muffled sob.
“I don’t know how to swim; I never learned.
I couldn’t breathe, Varian, and I couldn’t…
I couldn’t…if you hadn’t pulled me out…fuck. ”
I didn’t know what was happening.
My chest was caving in, my breaths just…weren’t coming, like there was no air left in the room.
“Lyrae…sweetness, come here.” Varian pressed me against him, tears flooding my eyes, my throat closing off, fingers digging into his shoulders as I held on for dear life.
I didn’t even know who I was right now, falling to pieces, clinging to Varian like he was the only real thing in the world.
I’d never even imagined being underwater before today, and now I couldn’t stop reliving that suffocating panic, the way my pack dragged me down, unable to do anything but reach for the disappearing light.
Varian held onto me tightly, kept his strong arms wrapped around me so I felt protected by a wall of muscle. He let me cry some of the ugliest tears I’d ever shed, never telling me everything would be okay, just giving me something I hadn’t had in a hundred years.
A safe place to fall apart.
A firm chest to sob into, strong arms to hang onto, a place where I wasn’t judged.
Finally…I took a shaky breath.
“I thought I was dying,” I admitted, face still buried in his shirt. “And that would be the worst possible way to die. Down there in the dark, fighting for air, so cold I couldn’t feel anything.”
“You’re safe now, Lyrae, I’ve got you, you’re safe,” he kept saying, over and over again. “You’re here in the light, where the cold can’t touch you. You’re with me, and I will never let the darkness claim you.”
Maybe those were the words I’d been waiting for, because my body finally sagged, days of exhaustion and doubt and fear coming to a head as I let myself go.
His lips roved through my still-wet hair, arms tightening around me as the edges of the world darkened, my awareness filled with just two things.
Varian’s heart beating beneath my cheek, and the sun-drenched smell of him—achingly familiar and deliciously forbidden—spun a thousand fantasies inside my head as I pressed my lips to the side of his throat, stealing a taste of the friend who maybe hadn’t betrayed me after all.
He kissed the top of my head, tugging me closer, almost on top of him.
“Go to sleep, Lyrae. For once, let me watch over you. Let me be the one who keeps the darkness at bay.”