Chapter 10
My mare tossed her white mane, jerking me out of my thoughts.
“Sorry,” I muttered to her, loosening my grip on the reins.
Once again, I’d fallen deep into the lake of my mind, drowning in grief and rage.
The emotions weighed me down, sinking me to the bottom of the abyss, all the while my lungs screamed for the tiniest sip of air.
“Are you okay?” Lyriasthe asked, tilting her head to look at me.
Her creamy white hair hung long and loose today, tumbling over her bare shoulders.
Neither of us dressed like the recruits, whose light-colored leathers signified their upcoming transition to full-fledged soldier.
Instead, we wore cotton pants and sleeveless tunics, catching the final rays of the summer sun.
She looked like nobility. Like she belonged with Maelsar.
I couldn’t say the same about my mate and me.
“No,” I sighed, shifting my horse closer to hers.
We rode in the midst of the procession, between the deep blue ocean and the light spilling between the leaves of the lush green canopy.
Our presence was easier to hide among the mass of bodies.
Per usual, no one paid us any attention, involved in their own conversations or in their heads during the long march.
“Is what they said still bothering you?” she asked me.
I didn’t need her to elaborate on what she’d meant. When we’d been mobbed in Thaerii, terror had wrapped me in a vise. Those people thought I was some sort of savior. That my power would finally end the war.
The one who had grabbed my cloak and begged for me to See something of her lover haunted my dreams. While I’d been chained to those damn crystal chairs, Iaoth had been using the priestesses to quell the masses.
Maelsar and Lyriasthe had whispered the stories to me late into the night.
How the Goddess had given her divine appointees a sign that the end of the war was near.
How the most powerful Seer in a century sat in the palace then, attention focused on how to eradicate the Demons.
I’d begged them to tell me so I would know what I faced; after hearing them, I’d craved the bliss of ignorance.
Vaeron had escorted the females around Sivy to speak Iaoth’s stories. I thought it had been contained there.
How wrong I was. The crown painted me to be a symbol of hope. Even out of their sight, they still stripped me of autonomy and used my persona to amplify their message.
“Yes. I don’t want to be their symbol. I don’t want their attention, their expectation.
There’s nothing I can do for them, not really.
” Sorrow snagged in my throat. I was lying to everyone but her about what I’d Seen.
In fact, with the dance I’d choreographed, the Angels would fall with stunning certainty.
“Do you still consider yourself…” Lyriasthe trailed off, casting a furtive glance around us. Because speaking that final word when someone was listening was a risk. Elessarum were still traitors to the crown, and very few knew of our affiliation.
I sighed, tipping my head toward the sky. Seabirds circled, calling out before diving into the water to fish. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
It was a fair question, given that I had protested any notion of Seeing with such vehemence before. At the time, I’d believed that my power contrasted with my pacifism.
But now…
I raked my teeth over my lower lip, trying to find the right words. “Extreme dogma rarely creates real change. I understand that now.”
How was I supposed to ensure I drowned the crown without at least some violence? I wanted the monarchs dead. They wouldn’t merely keel over—not at their ages anyway—simply because I wished it so.
“There has to be a middle ground,” I murmured, dropping the reins and shaking out my hands. Blisters had long since popped, and calluses now formed in their place. After nearly two weeks on the road, my muscles were accustomed to these lengthy rides.
Lyriasthe nodded. “Exactly. I still want peace. I don’t think we can reach that by screaming about pacifism alone anymore.”
“What broke me was the cruelty of Iaoth and Stadiel,” I murmured, throat thickening. Instead of chirping birds, Heraphia’s screams inundated my hearing. Burning flesh stomped out the salty, wet scents of the ocean.
“Heraphia’s death impacted me too,” she whispered. “I still have nightmares about it.”
I caught her gaze, finding her sky-blue eyes shining.
“And the Issaraeth’s betrayal…” I paused, agony piercing me anew when all I wanted was that numbness I’d been able to snatch after the trial.
“You told me once that to you, Seeing was a fate worse than death. Why continue now? Outside of your keepers, I mean.” Lyriasthe flicked a glare over her shoulder at the two who rode behind us, though at a distance that provided me a modicum of privacy.
Not like their stares didn’t keep the hairs on the back of my neck raised at all hours, though. There was no relaxing, not truly.
I stuck my tongue in my cheek, considering how I wanted to reply.
At the moment, Lyriasthe was the only person in this whole world I trusted.
Her reaction to finding out what the Issaraeth had done, her continued allowance of me in her tent, her presence after I sat to See, all of it was the harbor I craved when I was unmoored in the storm.
“Because my beliefs are changing too. And what visions I have might shape our path to peace,” I finally said.
A wry grin twisted her lips. “So I was right all along?”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help the smile that bloomed. “Yes, fine, you were right.”
She flicked a ball of white magic at my face. I swiped my hand through it, the tendrils dissipating like smoke in the wind. We shared a laugh—a genuine, belly-shaking laugh. My shoulders dropped away from my ears, an ease returning to me that hadn’t been available since we departed Sivy.
“Have you told Vaeron any of this?”
My face fell, along with the joy I’d managed to snatch. The chain linking our fates rattled behind my ribs at the reminder of my mate. “Of course not. We still haven’t spoken.”
Yet I saw him everywhere I went anyway. He moved through the camp now, training the recruits in the evenings, speaking with them long into the night. About what, I wasn’t sure. I never got close enough to hear. The moment I spotted him, I retreated.
Because I couldn’t bear to look at him.
And he hadn’t come for me when those people in Thaerii surged past the soldiers.
I hated that I wanted him to. I hated that I’d scanned the square for him as they gathered, desperately seeking the safety that awaited in his arms.
“Perhaps you should try,” she said gently. Lyriasthe and I had spent most of the past few weeks together, and she hadn’t broached the subject yet.
But when he’d betrayed me before—by keeping his betrothal secret, she’d come to me in the palace and told me I should let him escort me to the healer because he was hurting.
To me, he showed no signs of remorse for what he’d done. All he’d done was explain why.
And his internal agony was too much for me to grapple with on top of my own.
“How am I supposed to forgive him?” I choked out. Hot tears stung the back of my nose. I sniffed, hard, to dispel them. I’d given him far too many already. “He’s broken my trust so many times. In fact, every time he said ‘trust me,’ our story twisted into so much worse.”
“Is being out here worse than being locked in Thalvireth?” she asked, gesturing to the sandy shores and the coastal redwoods flanking us.
If I didn’t have a pair of stalkers at my back, it would almost taste like freedom. “No. But that doesn’t change what he did to get us here.”
“You mean sacrificing himself, his reputation, and his power in a trial by light because he stopped Herr Elyriane from hurting you?” she clarified, a brow arching up her forehead.
I huffed. “Stop making sense, Lyriasthe. I’m trying to be angry here.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Feel your feelings, Sylaira. But eventually, you’ll have to admit to yourself that even if you didn’t agree with his methods, his intentions were always good.”
Little did she know. That was the very crux of my problem. I understood it. And hated him and myself all the more for it. “What would I even say to him at this point? I’m not apologizing.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not running at the mere sight of him might signal you’re ready to talk?”
“If he’s going to talk to me, it better be on his hands and knees, groveling,” I grumbled.
“I don’t care that he did all those things—okay, that’s a lie, I definitely do—but I want a sincere apology.
I want to feel like although he thought he had my best interest in mind, he should have fucking talked to me rather than keeping me in the dark. ”
“That’s fair,” she agreed, twisting her hair around a polished stick and pinning it at the nape of her neck.
The midday heat pressed down on us, amplified by the hundreds of bodies swarming us. Even the breeze off the sea wasn’t enough to cool me down. “I, for one, have had enough of hot weather.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Lyriasthe groaned, swiping sweat from her temples. “What I wouldn’t give for a dip in one of the southern lakes right now.”
Summer in the lake country was the best time of year. I longed for it, for the simpler times. If I could turn back the clock and return to when Heraphia and I splashed around them as younglings, I would. Though I would want to take Lyriasthe with me too.
How we never crossed paths was a mystery to me. It wasn’t like we hadn’t spoken long into the night about all the places we’d stayed while hiding from the crown.
The Goddess had brought her into my life when I needed her most.
Her form blurred as I reached across the space between our mares and squeezed her hand.
“We’ll get through this,” she told me.
I blinked as the color of her irises turned a creamy white and her hair a sky blue. Shaking my head, I tried to refocus on the freckles that dusted her cheeks.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but her words were coated in fog.