Chapter 44
Min waits for us atop the barrow, over a hundred braided strands of grass littered around her.
“How did it go?” she asks. Her black eyes scan us, taking in our wounds and torn clothes, but worst of all, our surly moods.
“Apparently not well. You did all survive, though. That must suffice as a minor cause for celebration.”
“I’ll be celebrating,” I grumble. “With a full night’s sleep and a drink.”
“You won’t be celebrating come morning,” Finnian says. “The drinks at the inn are as unsavory to your body as they taste to your tongue. Learned that the hard way.”
“Did you find Olin’s treasure?” Min asks me.
“We found it, alright.” I roll my eyes. “But we only got out with half of it, thanks to those three. If they hadn’t—”
Auri stomps on my foot.
“Hey!” I shove my shoulder into hers.
“Oh, my bad. I’ll watch where I’m stepping.” Her pointed glare tells me one thing: Min doesn’t know, and the fae don’t want her to.
Since Finnian was in on it, I really thought that Min would be, too. The realization is a warm spark of kinship with Min. We’ve both been misled. But the warmth withers as soon as I realize what it means. I have to lie to her. I made a promise not to tell anyone, and that includes Min.
Damn promises. Damn secrets.
Min blinks. “If they had not what?”
“If they hadn’t triggered a trap, the treasure room wouldn’t have flooded,” I lie. It doesn’t sound believable. I’m too bitter to put any conviction behind it.
“Unless we want to camp here for the night, we need to get going,” Desmond says.
I hadn’t noticed we only have an hour or two of daylight left. The last thing I want to do is sit inside the barrow and stew in my thoughts. “Let’s go to Vekhara. If you can handle the walk, Min.”
She nods, so we start our trek down the hill’s spiraling steps.
No one says much on our walk through the necropolis, the towering mounds to the west blocking out the rays of the sun.
I shiver. It’s already colder here than Nettlerock, but winter is approaching, too.
I’m lagging behind the others, my head pounding from the exhaustion of my magic.
They’re far enough ahead now that Finnian’s bumbling story is just a blur of sounds, though less animated than usual.
Their spilled secret has cleaved a gaping wound between us all.
Desmond slows until his pace matches mine. He pulls his cloak out of his pack and watches me until our gazes connect. There’s too much longing in his eyes for me to handle. I look away, not turning even when he offers the cloak to me.
Only after another shudder racks my body do I take it and pull it over my shoulders. Desmond’s lithe fingers ghost along my neck as he fastens the clasp. I involuntarily draw a breath, staring at him as he lifts the hood over my head.
The instinct to spew out the usual fae etiquette wars with my anger. I appreciate your generosity. This gesture is kind. Like any of that could possibly be authentic after what happened. After he tried to glamour me.
To my surprise, he says nothing of my silence, and we resume our walk. Only after the sun sets, stars winking above us with the glow of the waxing moon, does he finally clear his throat. “I shouldn’t have misled you.”
Does he really expect me to believe he’s sorry? He knows how humiliated I felt when Auri glamoured me, and he still tried to control me. Even if he wanted to protect me, he should have let me make the decision myself. He should have trusted me.
“Save it for another naive peasant girl.” I train my gaze dead ahead and quicken my steps to outpace him.
He easily catches up to me, those damned long legs. I banish the memory of his knees hitting stone so he could straddle me.
Desmond’s jaw tightens. His shoulders stiffen. “I had already accepted the inevitability of losing you, so I told myself that lying was justified. I was a coward.”
“Losing me?” I finally whirl to face him, seething. “You’re the one walking into a suicide mission! Did it ever occur to you that even if I stuck around, I’d lose you?”
He inhales like he’s about to speak, then pauses. His hands clench. Silence carries for several more steps, our agitated breaths puffs of frost before us.
“Nothing left to say?” I huff, fisting my hands around the straps of my pack.
Now that the vow has been fulfilled, I can’t feel his emotions.
I have no idea if he’s putting on a show or if he’s really as tense as he seems. Either way, I can’t afford to care.
Not when I’ll spend the rest of my life grieving the weeks I’ve shared with the thieves—and with him.
Desmond sighs. He runs his hand through his curls and stares up at the moon forlornly.
“I’ve told myself every damn day since I came up with this plan that I should run,” he quietly says.
“Why did I need to be my kingdom’s most vile weapon or their sacrificial prince?
Instead I could disappear into the life I always wanted. The life you want.”
I swallow hard, remembering when he told me he wished he could be free of it all. The war. The court politics. Then he could walk every step of the world, just like me.
“I’ve always admired you for chasing your dream. Yet I could never decide which choice makes me the greater coward. Abandoning my people, or abandoning myself.” He pauses, his face tight like admitting it physically pains him.
My mouth dries as I try to think of what to say.
I’ve suffered that same dilemma. In my dreams each night, I would hike the Krelthar Mountains to Mordrak, tour the distant city of Horalden, but then wake up in a lumpy bed beside Evie, sick with guilt.
I may not have a kingdom to save, but I have my family. And that duty has felt just as strong.
“What do you want with me, Desmond?” I whisper. I remind myself that he’s half-fae, the same bitter barrier I put between us when we met. He wouldn’t be trying to apologize unless he wants something from me, right?
His voice lowers with the roughness that makes my toes curl. “Ask me anything. Three questions. I give you my word that I will answer them.”
“No.” I hate that his cloak wraps me in the scent of him. I cling to my anger as if it were a shield around my heart. “I’m done with these games.”
He stiffens as if I slapped him. A minute passes, our feet crunching in the dry, frosted grass.
“Then I’ll tell you everything,” he says. “No bargain. No vow.”
I glance at him, a foolish hope fluttering in my chest. I squash it like the bug it is. What could he possibly say to make me forgive him?
Another minute passes.
“For most of my childhood, I was a disappointment to the High Court,” Desmond says slowly, like he’s thought over the words until they lost meaning.
“I was a scion in a long line of Elites on my mother’s side, and my father’s human blood must have tainted me.
That’s what everyone said when they learned of my Average Gift. ”
I wish that his words didn’t fill me with sorrow, even without the bond. I wish I could pretend that I didn’t care. Despite everything, I raise a brow at him in question. “But you don’t have an Average Gift.”
“No, but they thought I did.” He swallows, then exhales to steady himself.
“I’d escape my lessons to play with friends in the woods.
I still remember the first time my instructor found me.
He told my mother that he had found me alone.
Those children were ghosts, victims of the War of Burning.
Because of the violence they witnessed and the suffering they felt, they failed to find the afterlife. ”
The screams from his memory echo in my ears as though I’m overlooking the burning forest once again. Then I remember the desolate fae city in the barrow I walked through with Evie. The collapsed homes. The iron weapons left behind.
I shiver.
Desmond’s jaw ticks. “Since our bodies quickly decay when we die, no one knew how many fae perished. But over the years, I’ve counted hundreds, then thousands—just of the ghosts. Just of the fae who didn’t move on.”
“Gods,” I murmur, my stomach roiling. The thought of all that death is horrifying. “And your court assumed you were a spirit medium,” I surmise.
He nods. “I prayed to Danu every night for a stronger Gift, but not for the reason everyone thought. I wanted the power to prevent wars, Cynthia. Yet the Court bemoaned that I lacked the power to end them. They wanted a weapon and were stuck with a prince who couldn’t even throw a ball of flames.”
I expected him to sound rueful, but instead, his words were coated with bitterness.
His eyes darken. “They got what they wanted in the end. The other powers emerged. I went from the spare heir to our greatest weapon in the span of seconds. All because Deitra’s horse squashed the toad I’d been feeding behind the stable.
And when I found it, in my grief—” He draws in a breath, then lets it out unsteadily.
“I forced its soul back into its body. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and stop myself, or at least make sure a guard wasn’t watching. ”
His laughter is hollow, steeped in regret.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, but then I wince. “I know it’s rude to say that to fae. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine,” he says, surprising me. “It reminds me of him.”
Of him?
His father.
I bury my hands deep into my pockets to ward off the cold. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because I wish I had let you in. Then you could’ve made every choice knowing that when this is over, we’d never cross paths again.
” He grimaces like he’s swallowed something bitter.
“I raised the corpses of my friends to save myself. I had to watch their bodies twitch and rise, then live with that guilt every damn day. I’ve committed sins that don’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness, least of all yours. I don’t deserve you, Cynthia.”
Hours ago, I would’ve welcomed his honesty.
Now I only feel a resigned emptiness. How can I bring myself to forgive him for glamouring me? For making me an instrument in his death? He had so many chances to open up to me, and now he’s only taking it when we’re on the verge of going our separate ways for good.
Swallowing back tears, I take off his cloak and hold it out. “You lied to me. You used me. So no matter what you say, it changes nothing.”
His face falls, and an irreconcilable guilt twists my insides until I can’t bring myself to look at him. After weeks of holding himself back, he finally bore his truths to me. And after all my pleas that he open up, when he finally did, I rejected him.
He takes the cloak. Then his dejection is replaced with the cold, indifferent mask he wore so often when we met. “I understand.”
“I’m glad,” I murmur, a lie that tastes like ash. It sickens me.
We walk in silence the rest of the way.