Chapter 59
Allie
The fortress felt worse than a mausoleum, the silence so ugly, not even mourning dared disturb it.
Or maybe it was just me.
Every breath shattered me a bit more, reminding me I was alive and Geryll was not. Yet the sensation felt foreign and strange, as if it stuck at weird angles underneath my skin.
With Ryker so close, it was impossible to know where my own grief ended and his began.
But I’d only known Geryll for a few months.
Ryker had known him all his life and had been guiding him for years.
I didn’t know how he was still standing from all the pain and guilt pulsing through him, palpable even from beyond the washroom door.
My washroom door.
After we’d stopped crying, we’d made our way up the stairs, no words exchanged. Ryker had raised his hand to open his own bedroom door, but he’d frozen at the last moment.
I hadn’t asked what memories had stilled him; how many cups of tea had been drunk there.
I’d taken him into my room.
Now I sat on my bed, exhausted in my own sorrow, looking at Geryll’s shield. Ryker had placed it gently on top of the table, like a precious heirloom, too pure to touch the floor. It sat on top of the papers and journals, as if they all wanted to drive us insane.
Geryll was so young. In age and in heart.
He’d lived his short life under the world’s pressure and it had finally caught up to him. And Nadya–
The water stopped flowing.
I stood up straighter as Ryker appeared in the threshold, eyes still downcast, like he’d only had enough energy to open the door, not actually pass through it.
In the past, he’d filled up the doorways he loved so much, always making an entrance, always catching my eye. Now, he leaned on the wood as if he needed it to stand.
Neither of us moved or spoke, like we were forever frozen.
I watched him, this man who’d held an entire Clan in his hand and now commanded an ever bigger army, completely drained and done with everything.
I recognized that stillness.
It was the same one which had kept me in bed all those weeks ago. Back then, Ryker had given me a bow to try and yank me back to normalcy.
It was my turn to pull him away from the darkness I already felt forming.
I cleared my tear-soaked throat.
“What’s wrong?” Apart from everything.
He sighed like even that pained him. “I want to sit down, but it’s your room. Your bed.”
Still so attentive to my own space.
I patted the duvet next to me. I felt a flicker of surprise radiating off him, even as his face remained stony.
He sank next to me, the weight of him bending the mattress so that I slid closer. My skin burned, either from the closeness or not enough of it.
Silence reigned between us once more.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked in a whisper, still weary of breaking the stillness.
Breaking him even more.
“I think I need to,” he said, voice haunted. “But I can’t. Not right now.”
I twiddled my fingers to keep from reaching out to him. “What can I do to help?”
“Distract me.” He ran his hands down his face. “I need…I need not to think about it for a moment.”
“Very well.” I licked my lips. “How long are you staying?”
“I have to leave at sunrise. The battlefield…” He shook his head. “It’s slaughter. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Are–” I licked my lips. “Are we losing?”
His silence was answer enough.
“How?” I asked, horrified. “You have the fiercest army in all of Malhaven.”
“The Serpents are working with the Borderline Bands. They’re using something that makes them harder to kill,” Ryker said, tone devoid of all the emotions I sensed coursing through him.
Rage. Hopelessness. Need for vengeance. They all battled for the opportunity to drive him insane.
“They have a veil that protects them. Ever heard of that?”
I shook my head. “I already told Evie. Protectorate magic doesn’t work that way.
If such a spell would even exist, they’d need an almost endless source of energy to keep it going.
I almost killed myself trying to conceal the voices of a few men.
Nobody could protect an entire army from physical danger. ”
Nobody from the Protectorate, at least.
“Dark magic, then. Dark magic holding the veil, dark magic not letting the soldiers die, dark magic protecting those fucking snakes–” He gripped the edges of the mattress and exhaled loudly. He shook his head. “How can we fight against that with normal powers?”
“Hate to be the one to tell you, but your powers are anything but normal,” I said, forcing my tone to be lighter. Almost like an invitation to pretend. Just for a little while.
The request had been to distract–and, gods, I needed it, too.
“It’s just blood.” He shrugged.
“Dax thinks we should keep our self-righteous goals, but use their miserable tactics,” I said.
“Do you believe that?”
“No. However…thinking outside the limits isn’t the same.”
“I don’t think the motive can justify the means.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “Maybe that’s why we’re losing.”
I sucked in a breath. The thought of the Blood Brotherhood’s loss cut deep. Especially since I was stuck here, unable to help with more than a few protective runes which had apparently done nothing.
“You can’t lose,” I said.
“I know.” Ryker’s energy flared with an ugly, hot emotion. Not rage, not shame, somewhere at the brink of both. “I don’t even know which limits to think beyond. I can’t see beyond survival. So many…so many lives.”
His gaze drifted to the heap of grimy armor he’d yanked off him at the washroom entrance, where my tears had blended in with the blood. Gods knew whose.
He tilted his head to the side, staring at the leather and furs. His energy shifted with the barest tingle of hope, before it was once again suffocated by the neverending desolation raging inside of him.
Yet nothing showed on his face, still.
No spark in his eyes, no tension in his jaw.
It was as if Ryker felt so much, he’d had to encase himself in this rock exterior so none of that tumult would escape.
So that nobody would know.
But I knew.
I felt.
And it terrified me.
“Ryker?”
A lone breath came out stuttered. Finally, he looked at me, eyes glazed in surprise.
We’d stared into each other’s eyes for hundreds of times, but I’d never felt a jolt like this.
“I didn’t think I’d get to hear you say my name like that again,” he muttered softly.
“Don’t.” I shook my head. “Don’t talk about death so easily. Misfortune and all.”
Not right now.
Not when I could still smell the blood on Geryll’s shield.
“Not this,” he said. “That night, in the dining room, you looked at me with so much hatred, I’d lost all hope you’d ever say my name with anything other than disdain. I hadn’t realized it until now.”
“Oh.” Honestly, I’d thought we were doomed, too. Perhaps we still were, clinging to some semblance of hope to get us through the horrors. But that didn’t change one glaring fact. “I felt you. When–when it all happened…”
His eyes went wide, darkening. “You–you saw–”
“No.” Gods forgive me, but I was glad I hadn’t. “I only felt sorrow. Mourning.”
I left out the details of me writhing on the ground and breaking windows with my wail for another time. I was bidding against the gods that there would, indeed, be another moment like this, where we sat in the darkness alone.
Relief washed over him. Gods, how had Geryll died?
“I–” I licked my lips. “I can feel you now.”
He kept looking at me for the longest time; enough to make me want to squirm under that unflinching gaze.
“I can feel you, too,” he said at last. “And when you were attacked.”
My lips parted. “It was you! You were in my mind!”
Soothing me and keeping me from imploding.
“Not like that. I can’t tell what you’re thinking,” he said, the words yearning. “I had no clue why I was so hot all day. Your energy…it was transferring into me when it became too much.”
“Yours did the same thing.” If I’d only felt a fraction of his pain and it had cut me to the ground, I shuddered to imagine the true extent of what he must have gone through.
“I heard you,” he said, watching me closely. “Whispering to me. Telling me–telling me to let him go.”
I shook my head, confused. “I didn’t say anything to you.”
I couldn’t even comprehend how I would have done so even if I’d wished it.
“I didn’t say anything to you, either. And yet…” His fingers played with the edge of the duvet. “Our minds somehow found the words the other needed.”
Mad.
Frightening.
Impossible–or, at least, it should have been.
“Ryker…what is this?” I asked, half lost, half knowing the answer, but refusing it.
He gulped, hesitation and hope pulsing through him. “Remember when I told you about fated mates?”
The words fluttered from my mind and settled in my chest, burrowing deep. Like they’d always belonged there.
“But–” I shook my head. “You said Evie and the Dragon are fated mates. She can’t sleep when he’s not near.”
My sleeping problems were only partially caused by his absence.
“And they can actually talk with each other in their minds. Knowingly.” He sighed, envious. “I don’t know why it’s different for us. If…if we are what I think we are.”
We were.
My mind rebelled, but my body already knew. Because it felt right.
And that scared me–because it meant now I had even more to lose.
“Maybe because we’re different,” I said softly. Hesitantly. I twisted my fingers hard. “We’re stubborn and stand alone. Maybe that somehow seeped into…whatever this is between us.”
Calling it–us–fated mates out loud felt strange. Like I was reciting forgotten legends as Clan Code.
Everything about this moment was so tentative.
Fragile.
Like neither of us really knew how to handle this, but we both tried nonetheless. Awkwardly, but we tried.
“This isn’t the way it should have gone,” he said sadly. “It should have been a happy moment.”
“Those are few and far between.” But maybe not impossible. I slid closer to him. “Has anybody told you you’re too curious for your own good?”
“Out of all the things they say about me, I haven’t heard this one. Why?”
“Because you want to delve into my mind.” The idea should have scared me more than it did. “And I want to delve into yours, but we already know I’m nosy.”
He huffed a tired laugh. His leg tilted closer to mine, until our knees touched. Another jolt raced through me.
“It would have been useful.” He sighed once more. “Being able to talk to each other from a distance–if you would have wanted it. I understand you can block your thoughts.”
“Imagine us fighting on the same battlefield with that power. Our enemies wouldn’t know what hit them.”
He let out another surprised laugh.
“What?” I asked, a bit offended. “It would be an amazing advantage.”
“It’s just…you.” His eyes softened. “We’re inexplicably linked for the rest of our lives and your first thought is how it can benefit us. It’s…amazing. You’re amazing.”
Despite the pain, my heart leaped.
“Hate to break it to you again,” I said quickly, before the color rose in my cheeks. Fated mates or not, the trust between us had yet to be rebuilt. “But we were already linked for all eternity. We’re supposed to get married once all of this is over, remember?”
“I remember. Most days, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
My gaze fell from his and I gripped the edge of the bed hard enough to whiten my knuckles. I couldn’t have this discussion now, when everything was at risk of being taken away from me.
Right now, I didn’t dare dream of a future when our present was so unstable. What if I invited bad omens by hoping?
“Your relatives are awful,” I said when the silence stretched.
“They are,” he said and I tried to ignore the stab of disappointment I felt from him at my refusal to play along. “But I understand you handled them beautifully.”
“Dax ratted me out, did he?”
“Sylvester filled me in on the way to the fortress,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s such a gossip.”
“He was very proud of how you threatened those bastards with an icy grave..”
“Wait.” I frowned. “He wasn’t in the room.”
“No, he was perched right above the window you shattered.” Whatever softness had been slowly brightening his face instantly vanished. A fresh wave of guilt radiated off him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know–”
“I know,” I said earnestly. “I didn’t know I was frying you up, either.”
“Still. You shouldn’t have felt that pain. I couldn’t–” His voice changed. Colder. Vengeful. “I couldn’t think straight when I saw that snake…”
Ryker went eerily still once more, turning himself into that statue he needed to be to live through this.
Another crack marred my heart.
I couldn’t imagine the horror Geryll–sweet, innocent, eager Geryll–must have felt at being attacked by a gigantic snake.
Goosebumps erupted all over my skin as a flash of fangs invaded my mind. I shook my head to dislodge it.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there,” he went on, voice haunted and haunting. “I didn’t realize he’d snuck into the marching army. I thought he was safe and happy in the Capital and I didn’t even think twice to look for him.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t I check?”
I placed a gentle, hesitant hand on his shoulder. My skin instantly heated at the small contact. Try as I might, I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t missed his warmth. “It’s not your fault.”
“Then whose?” he asked viciously. “Because someone needs to pay for what happened. He’s gone–” He tilted his face to the ceiling, blinking rapidly, and making my heart ache. “And I didn’t protect him. I suggested he come to the Capital. Maybe if I hadn’t and insisted he stay here–”
“It’s not your fault,” I said earnestly. “Geryll chose to sneak onto that battlefield.”
“But why?” His voice cracked. “He was so eager to get into that library. What changed? I took him into the arena and he was amazed by the warriors. That might have changed his mind.”
“Stop blaming yourself.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, struck by the sudden urge to wrap myself around him. “His death is not on your hands.”
“He’s–he’s dead. He was supposed to bury me. I’m the oldest. And now–” His chest trembled. “Now I can’t even bury him. I only have his shield.”
“The gods and his ancestors will receive him just the same.”
“That is my one solace. Because I don’t think they’ll ever receive me.
” He shook his head and leaned it against mine.
I felt his tears falling into my hair once more.
“I have to go back onto that battlefield and fight a war we cannot win, when all I want to do is bring my warriors home and defend our land. I should be better than this.”
“You are.” I leaned back and grabbed his face in my hands. “Because you are going back out there to fight for what is right. Doubts are inevitable. It’s how we face them that matters.”
“Gods know what else we’re going to face.”