Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
LYRA
The sky is duller after Draven leaves the room.
And it was odd, the way my heart felt both lighter and heavier the moment he entered. So odd, the way my heart suffers from the same confusion after he’s left. Terribly odd how I was so desperate to see him leave yet now ache insufferably for him not to go—for him to come back.
I know I need to speak with Draven soon.
That I can’t keep putting off the conversation.
It’s just…so…difficult to look him in the eyes right now and not see a murderer.
To not think of him as the person who just slaughtered the people I’d grown to cherish.
People I was beginning to truly know in ways which felt important.
I don’t want to view him in such a light.
In fact, on some level, I understand why he did what he did, and I don’t entirely blame him for it.
Yet the moment things grow personal, justifications and rationalizations change; the threshold one carries for cruelty suddenly lessens.
It shouldn’t. But it does. So my mind continues spinning webs of different narratives and thoughts, attempting to thread them together in new, digestible ways.
Yet each time I think I’ve made progress, each time I am convinced I’ve discovered a path to forgiveness which makes sense, I remember holding Neilina in my lap, and I hear her song in my head.
I can’t even bear to steal a glance at Draven after those moments. Those resurfaced images.
With conflict warring in my chest, I heave a sigh and remove myself from the spot I have been glued to for hours, staring absently at the changing skies.
I need to talk through everything raging in my mind.
All the venom and spite and pain stirring in my heart.
Because I can’t keep going like this, walking a tightrope between hate and forgiveness, waiting to be blown in a certain direction by some decisive gust of wind.
I need to make sense of my thoughts. Decide where I stand; what is forgivable. I need perspective.
I need Gray Nightenjoy.
I find him sitting just outside the front door, cross-legged and with his double flute pressed to his lips.
He is playing a sweet melody filled with melancholy—with longing.
His eyes are shut, his body lost in the sound of his music—his unbound hair and baggy clothes making him appear so liberated and free.
Like a traveling minstrel. When he finishes playing, I clap, a broad smile managing to find its way to my lips.
Gray snaps his eyes open at the sound, a modest laugh escaping him once he sees it’s me.
He rubs at the back of his neck. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to think what you were playing was beautiful.”
Gray leans over, reaching for a silken cloth, and wraps his instrument back up. “It was an Anatolian folk song. It felt fitting, given we are hiding in the outskirts of Anatolé Kingdom’s capital city.”
“I thought you didn’t know any Anatolian folk songs?”
His smile is fragile. “I do now.” He doesn’t elaborate, instead tucking the cloth into the leather satchel beside him, righting himself after and refocusing on me. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
An amused smile sweeps over my lips, knowing Gray has probably already read me like one of his books. I extend my hand out to him. “Will you walk with me?”
“It would be my privilege.” He takes my hand and rises, offering me his arm with a soft, close-lipped grin.
I accept without hesitation, immediately looping my arm through his.
At the contact, my fingers dig tightly into his bicep, like if I don’t clutch onto him with everything I have, somehow he and I will be separated again while traversing only this small distance, and I will be forced to walk my path alone.
Gray guides me away from our abandoned hideout, down a narrow street leading to a small dirt road encased by stout houses and the occasional tree.
Signs of life remain scattered about, lanterns lining the streets, some framing the old doors of older buildings.
There are stools and baskets. Lingering sandals and the occasional play toy left on the ground.
People are definitely within some of these homes, even if we have yet to see them.
“So,” Gray says, bringing my thoughts back to focus, “what has prompted you to invite me on a late-night stroll?”
“It’s not that late,” I point out. “The moon only just peaked.”
“Alright,” he drawls with humor. “What has prompted you to want an early-night stroll?”
I snort a laugh, my amusement temporary. “Draven,” I answer, voice dropping low.
Gray nods, as though expecting that. “You’ve been avoiding him.”
“I’ve been trying to decide how I feel about him.”
“Your feelings for him have changed?”
“No. Gods no. That would probably be easier to navigate than this. Instead of not caring for him, my heart aches for him. For everything to be alright with us.”
“Why isn’t it?”
I halt, dragging Gray to a stop with me. I drop his arm and turn to face him. “Because how can it be? He…murdered an entire group of people. People I was growing to care for. Innocent people who didn’t deserve to die. Whose only crime was being born with the wrong veins.”
“All to save you,” he reminds me, voice stern yet gentle. “All to make sure you were safe.” Gray pauses, eyes holding mine. “And he didn’t know they were innocent, Lyra. None of us did. None of us could have known, because the information was kept from us.”
Lead appears in the pit of my stomach. “Would you have done it? Killed an entire population just to save me? Abdites or not.”
“In a way,” he answers, voice unbearably soft, “I already have. We both have. At Bathara. In Foreigner’s Valley.”
“It feels different now.”
“Because you knew better this time,” he murmurs. “You knew them. We didn’t, and so it seemed no different to us. It is for that reason I find it hard to persecute Draven with merciless blame.”
My bottom lip quivers, forcing me to trap it between my front teeth. “Then who do I blame? Myself? Solaya? Casimir? Those who wore the mark of an Abdite and acted so terribly, making us fear them all? Tell me who to blame, because…I have to blame someone.”
Gray is silent for a long time. “Maybe that’s the problem. Everyone is always looking for someone to blame instead of trying to understand what broke in the first place. What created the problem.”
The words sit heavy between us.
I bracket my hips with my hands and jerk my chin up to the star-laden sky. The silver light blurs and morphs as I press my tongue against my teeth. The musk-scented air is silent around us; the noise inside me is blaring.
“If it counts for anything,” Gray continues, “I do think you will feel better if you talk to him.”
I drag my eyes down from the sky and onto him.
“And say what? That I’m angry at him for trying to save me?
That it’s hard for me to look at him and not see someone I cared for dying in my lap?
” I scoff a bitter laugh. “How can I say that, when he did it for me? While also knowing I did something so similar and feeling this way makes me a hypocrite? When I know he didn’t know any better?
That he was just fulfilling his promise to always come for me. To burn the world to ash to save me.”
“You can say it because you have a right to feel all those things, despite how conflicting they are. You can say it because if Draven is the man you think he is, then he will not turn away from you nor this conversation. You can say it because it is important to question the way of things after innocent lives are taken. You can say it simply because you want to, Lyra.”
I draw in a loud breath through my nose, studying Gray intently. He’s changed since I last saw him, despite somehow also being exactly who he has always been. My tense muscles loosen, and I release the death grip on my hips. “I missed you.”
He smiles at me, reaching out to swipe his thumb across my cheek. “Likewise.”
I lean into his touch, then sigh, expelling the remaining turmoil from my heart alongside the air from my lungs. I will talk to Draven. I will force myself to look at him, to tell him what I feel and to hear his response.
But first…
I loop my arm back through Gray’s. “Shall we continue our walk?”
He cocks his head at me, his smile lopsided. “I thought you had an important conversation to get to.”
“It can wait a little longer. For now, I’d like to finish our walk, and for you to finish catching me up on everything I’ve missed since being gone. Starting with how you’re adjusting to your new-found fame.” I elbow him in the side, chuckling.
When we docked at Halfin, we immediately began covering our tracks, staying in the shadows and sleeping only at sketchy inns known for their participation in illicit activities.
We arrived at our decision to hide out in the Anatolé Kingdom while on the boat, but we also soon realized we wouldn’t be able to travel there by foot, given the territories we would have to pass through.
Simultaneously, however, we did not trust traveling through any of Bathara’s aether-wielders.
Not even Klytis—who I still am shocked to know is now at Bathara—if only for his potential implication should anything go wrong.
Not to mention, nobody has the slightest idea what the Tani is capable of monitoring.
How their infamous Shadows always manage to track and find their targets.
So we agreed to use only an aether-wielder who operates in the black markets.
Someone who didn’t know our identities and who is used to not asking questions.
It took us a few days before we were able to find such a person, and during one of those days in waiting, Gray and I went to the markets to gather some food, where a middle-aged woman from Ninmere recognized him, approaching us and calling him, “Lion of the Heart.”