Chapter 21 Harkin
Chapter twenty-one
Harkin
Dry, brittle cracks ran along the knotted wood of the ceiling above me. They were one and the same with the fissures in my heart. I could not rid myself of her words. They washed over me—the memories an ocean blue cascade over my entire being. A pang squeezed at my chest, painful in its conviction.
Every word that Seren had spoken pried at the gaps in my armor. She had seen through my facade as if it were nothing more than gossamer on the wind. It drifted on the current, and she tugged, unraveling the laces of my masks with nimble fingers.
The feeling of being seen by someone else so intimately was far worse than the slice of her blade as it slipped between my ribs. It was the kind of raw, aching pain that burrowed deep beneath my skin, into the tissues that held my very bones together.
I had spent the past eight years hiding, minimizing, cutting away the realest parts of myself so that I might become someone else. A mercenary, a warrior, a monster who could betray and hurt and kill without a second thought.
It had taken only one touch of her warm hands on my flesh, one glance of those mismatched, soulsearching eyes, to send me stumbling through the mistakes of my past. To unearth the ache I had locked away and buried so many years past.
She ruined me with those words. Has no one ever tried to know the real you?
“I have been running from myself for a very long time,” I told her, on one quiet night.
“What do you have to run from?” She blew softly over the steaming bowl cupped in her hands. She dipped a spoon within and tasted the soup with eye-fluttering reverence. The meal that I had made for her.
“There was a time before all this…” I trailed off, unable to tell her the truth of it.
Unable to reveal the truth of Claudian’s rotten treachery and the stained remnants of blood and ash on my heart.
“I made a choice a long time ago, and the trajectory it set me on…” I laughed, the taste of it bitter on my tongue.
“I have had to lie and betray and steal until I became an unrecognizable husk of who I had once been, but there was no choice at all.”
“Tell me.”
I sighed, worrying at my hair with trembling fingers.
I caught her gaze then dropped it, pulled my lip between my teeth.
How much could I really share with her? This girl who would have killed me only a handful of days ago.
This girl who I would turn over to Claudian, allowing him to do with her what he wished.
“Years ago, my sister fell ill. She was dying, and I did what I had to do to get her medicine. I made a terrible mistake that night, but I couldn’t regret it.
Not really—not when the fever broke, and she smiled once again.
Everything I have done, I had to do in order to protect my family.
I would do anything to protect the ones I love, Seren.
” What I couldn’t say was how that didn’t stop the bitterness that crept into the dark edges of my vision each night.
The sharp rush of dread which strummed the instrument of my fragility.
But she heard it anyway, unspoken in the pauses between breaths. In the bounce of my knee and the darting of my eyes.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Seren murmured, “to love someone that deeply. To be loved so deeply. Who could fault you for that?”
My breath caught, and I nodded, for it was all I could do. “And who do you love unfathomably?”
“Hmm.” Seren smiled but there were tears in her eyes. She swiped at them with the cuff of her sleeve. “I have no one. Not anymore.”
The pain was a living thing within her. I could feel it reaching for me, tightening my throat with a salty tang. Each inhale was sharp and lonely, a deflated lung fighting to fill itself with life again.
“Impossible,” I assured her. “I can feel it in you, buried deep. It’s only waiting for you to set it free.”
When the hour grew late and the shadows drew long, Seren left me for the comfort of her bed. The fire dimmed without her there, or maybe it only seemed that way.
I alternated between sleeping uneasily and dwelling on my musings.
Selfishly, I needed the time to process the tangled threads Seren had unspooled before me.
I knew she needed time to come to terms with her decision, too.
Though Seren had waved the white flag of alliance first, I knew it was not an easy choice for her.
The picture she had painted of her pain and hesitations still rang through my head.
We had reached a tentative understanding, and I would do my best to honor her requests. We would move slowly, at first, but I also feared the turning of each new day. The solstice was mere weeks away, and I knew they would pass far too quickly.
I would have to find the balance.
Seren did not need to fully master her abilities, but the prince had been very clear that we needed to acquire an understanding of what she was capable of.
Unease prickled at my belly as I remembered that I did not know exactly what Claudian intended to do with Seren. I hadn’t cared enough to ask at the time, or perhaps some part of me had known that the truth was not one I wished to carry.
In the years I had been in the prince’s service, I had never been tasked to help—only to harm—and I knew one thing with certainty. I had lied to Seren; whatever the prince wanted with her, it was not to provide her with a better life.
Prince Claudian of Acsilla had proven himself, time and again, to be of disreputable character. He cared for himself and his legacy alone. He would manipulate anyone, even those closest to him to achieve his own ends.
I felt sick at the growing revelation that I had learned my own manipulations from him.
I had watched the way Claudian had smoothed over his features, twisted his expression, changed the tone of his voice to win over royals, nobles, and citizens alike, while plotting their demise behind their turned backs.
I had modeled myself after this man despite loathing him at every turn.
The prince’s last letter rested in my pocket, the parchment weighing more heavily with each passing hour. It remained unanswered. I worried at it, fingers stroking the soft fibers as I waited for Seren.
“What will you tell him?” Her soft voice came from behind me.
I pulled my hand away from the letter as if it had burned me. “What?”
Seren shot me an exasperated look. “You must write him back eventually.”
“I didn’t realize you paid such close attention to my correspondence,” I deflected.
“I pay close attention to everything.” Of that, I had no doubt. The little smirk on her lips confirmed as much.
“Of course, I will write him back.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. “I’ll tell him that everything is going according to plan.”
“Is it?” Seren raised a single, questioning brow.
“Goddesses, I hope so,” I muttered.
The truth of it was, I couldn’t bring myself to put my thoughts into ink, to tell Claudian what had happened these last days. I could not bear to speak the words to anyone but her. I would not.
With any luck, I would not need to.
Seren would come into her mágik, of that I had no doubt. I felt the raw power brimming within her that day at the promotion ceremony, when I had pushed her to the breaking point. I felt the painful reminder of her mágik in my tired lungs, still healing from my brush with a drowning death.
I would learn how to interact with her and teach her without my masks, as she wished, and I would deliver her to Prince Claudian by the solstice. I could not entertain any other notions which might lead me from my path.
Seren had seen too much of my soft underbelly already—she would see more still if I did as she asked—but I would not allow myself to take in more of her. I refused to bear her pain alongside mine. This was still a job. This could only ever be a job.
“Are you ready?”
When I turned back to her, Seren was not looking at me. Her hands worked deftly as she laced up her worn leather boots. She had not bothered to don her armor. I wondered if there was something to that, some semblance of an olive branch held between us.
“Of course,” I rose from the settee, dusting my hands across my rumpled sleep clothes.
“You’re not even dressed.” Her discerning gaze traveled up and down my body, clearly unconvinced. “I’ll be outside.”
We had trained together for a week. Our conversations were awkward and stilted in the light of day, the honesty that flowed between us in the dark somewhat stanched, but neither of us had made another attempt on the other's life, so I considered that progress.
Seren practiced her mágik as promised, and her skills were growing—if slowly.
Autumn had arrived in full force and the sky threatened a brisk morning. As I reached for the door’s handle, I saw Seren’s borrowed cloak, still hanging by the fireplace. I doubled back to retrieve it for her.
I pulled the door open, cloak in hand and paused at the sight before me. Seren stood in the middle of the wide clearing, frost under her feet and clouds above her head. She was always looking to the sky.
Weak rays of sun trickled through the mist and drenched her face in pale light.
Her head dropped, gold limning her dark hair.
Her hands were raised before her, a large sphere of water cupped between them.
It rolled back and forth as she tilted her palms. Seren splayed her fingers and watched as the liquid trickled through, not crashing to the ground below but defying gravity by racing along the backs of her hands.
Rivulets twined around her wrists and danced into the air as they bounced off her fingertips.
I shook myself from my stupor and approached. Her fingernails were tinged purple-blue with cold. Without a word, I wrapped the forgotten cloak around her shoulders, turning her toward me so I could tie the ribbon at her throat.
Water disappeared into mist as she watched me.
My fingers tied the knot slowly, savoringly. Her pulse brushed against the calloused skin, soft on rough. I felt her swallow as if it were my own. “I see you’ve started without me.”
“I thought you were done with the teasing,” Seren deadpanned.
“Someone has to keep things interesting around here.” I shot her a fleeting grin then let my expression turn serious. “That was impressive, though. Show me what else you’ve been practicing.”
Seren frowned at me then rolled her shoulders, stepping a few paces back. She raised her arms once more, and small orbs of water rippled to life in both palms.
Her lips tucked in as she concentrated, eyes narrowed. The spheres raised into the air in front of her and merged into one. The mass grew larger, pulsing and undulating as if it were a creature alive.
“Good,” I praised. “Now, try to hit me with it.”
With alarm, her eyes flickered to mine. The water wavered as her attention skipped. “Are you mad? The last time I used my mágik on you, I almost killed you.”
“You caught me off guard. This time, I will be prepared.” My voice softened. “You won’t hurt me.”
She scoffed. “Right, I couldn’t possibly hurt the indomitable Harkin Aranti.”
I glared at her for a moment then felt the familiar urge to school my expression, to hide my emotions away.
As if she could see the battle I waged within myself, she said, “Feel what you need to feel. We don’t have to like each other, but we do need to work together, and that can only happen if you can be honest.”
Not liking her wasn’t the problem.
My mouth pulled down at the corners, eyebrows furrowed.
“Working on it,” I grunted, finally. “It is not so easy to tear down eight years of carefully constructed walls. Especially knowing I will have to build them back up again once we have finished here. I’m sure my next job will have no need for the real me.
” I said the last two words like they were a joke, but my voice was strained, betraying me.
Seren looked like she might say something, but I continued before she could.
“Enough of that. Hit me. Feel the mágik as an extension of yourself. Let it become one with you, and then bend it to your will. Focus on pushing the water toward me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You’re halfway there.”
Seren squeezed her eyes shut, flinging her hands apart. The mágik released, water splashing to the ground unceremoniously.
I made a noise of protest.
“No. You agreed to let me take this slow. I am not ready to use my mágik for violence. I may not ever be. I only want to know how to control myself.” She was crestfallen, and the protests died on my lips.
“Yes, I did agree to that. Keep practicing your maneuvers,” I sighed. “We’re running low on food. I will remedy that.”
I knew I shouldn’t avoid her when we disagreed. I knew she would rather me stay and argue, but I couldn’t. Not when I did not know how I was feeling. The anxiety in my gut followed me as I walked away from her, feeling her gaze on my back all the way.