Chapter 37
Ebony tendrils slid around our ankles, our joined hands.
Mine was shaking.
I’d accused him of abandoning her. Of standing by and doing nothing while she died.
And yet… Gods. I’d been so wrong.
When fear had found her beneath the waves and seized her in her final moments, he'd gone to her. He’d stepped willingly into the pain and helplessness of her dying mind—not because he could save her, but because he could ease her through it.
He’d cradled his sister all the way to the end, so that when darkness finally came for her, it found her wrapped not in terror or grief—but in peace.
My throat burned. Who was this person, standing across from me, holding my hand? This wasn’t the Dark Prince… It couldn’t be.
His lips were slightly parted, his chest rising and falling unevenly, and for perhaps the first time since I’d known him he looked utterly unguarded, exposed.
I didn't want to see him like this. Didn't want to see the heart-wrenching grief etched into the lines of his face. I didn’t want to see the terrible kindness he'd shown Levinica in her last moments—because that kindness demanded something of me in return.
It demanded that I acknowledge there was more to him than the monster, more than the villain from the stories, more than the ruthless prince whose cruelty was unmatched, and I found myself shrinking from that realization even as it settled inexorably into place.
I wasn't ready for that.
Gods, I wasn't ready…
The contradiction of it lodged like a splinter beneath my skin.
His eyes searched my face, a faint furrow gathered between his brows at whatever he found there. I realized then that I was crying.
His free hand lifted.
The movement was so slight, so unconscious, that for a heartbeat I wasn't certain he was even aware he'd done it. I could only watch as his fingers rose between us, his gaze following the path of a tear as it slipped slowly down my cheek.
I flinched.
The reaction snapped him back to himself. He froze. His hand stopped mere inches from my skin, suspended between us in the deafening silence.
For a moment neither of us moved. Even the black curls drifting from the well slowed around us, coiling through the silence in slow, watchful spirals, as though the magic itself had stilled to observe whatever fragile, impossible thing had almost passed between us.
Something shuttered behind his eyes. His fingers slowly curled inward and his hand fell back to his side.
And as though the well had been waiting for precisely this moment, the inky magic surged upward around us once more, blanketing stone and light and temple alike as the world lurched so violently that my stomach dropped.
Shapes emerged. The smell of burning pitch and smoke stung my nose as screams and shouted orders rang through the air.
No.
Recognition slammed into me.
Not this. Not here.
Terror flooded my veins. This memory.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I drew the bowstring until my shoulder screamed in protest, my breath puffing in the frigid winter air. Below me, the Infected poured from the darkness beyond the walls, silhouettes lurching from the treeline like nightmares given form.
I loosed.
The creature leaping toward a Plague-Hunter dropped bonelessly into the snow.
Another arrow was already in my hand. Then another. And another.
The familiar rhythm seized me as arrows flew from my fingers almost without thought, each one finding its mark somewhere within the tide of Infected. An arrow buried itself in an eye. Another speared through a throat. I didn’t miss.
I never missed.
My gaze found him instinctively amidst the chaos below, found the familiar shape of him through the smoke and snow, the worn cloak whipping around his legs as his iron blade slashed again and again.
No.
Not this.
Not with him watching.
An Infected broke toward him and my arrow took it cleanly through the skull before it could reach him.
My father glanced up, finding me immediately atop the wall, and the look he flashed in my direction—the fierce, uncomplicated pride written so plainly across his face—shattered something inside me, splitting my chest wide open all over again.
The formation below broke apart beneath the pressure of the horde, the fighting going frantic, while my quiver grew steadily lighter.
Three arrows…
Two…
My throat tightened.
And then it happened.
My father stumbled, his bad hip seizing beneath him. An Infected launched from the shadows, jaws unhinging and rotten teeth flashing as it aimed for him.
I pulled my last arrow.
I aimed, my fingers numb from the cold, exhaustion creeping in.
No…
This was the moment that replayed in my nightmares, the moment that lurked in the darkest recesses of my mind and festered with time, with each passing day that I was here and he was not.
The distance wasn’t remarkable. The angle uncomplicated. The target exposed, somehow unobstructed by the press of bodies around it.
I exhaled—and loosed. The arrow flew.
And when it sailed harmlessly past and the creature slammed into him a heartbeat later, I felt the wound tear open all over again, fresh and bleeding and every bit as unbearable as it had been that night.
Its teeth sank into the soft flesh between his neck and shoulder. A Plague-Hunter's blade took its head seconds later.
It happened quickly after that.
One moment my father was standing, blood pouring down the front of his leathers, and the next his hand was at his belt, drawing the rusted dagger that had hung at his side for as long as I could remember, a blade I'd never once seen him use.
In one smooth motion, he used it to open his throat.
His blood sprayed through the air in a crimson mist as he collapsed into the snow, staining it red in great spreading blooms.
The scream that tore from my chest was one of horror and failure and grief so enormous it felt as though it might tear me apart from the inside out.
Silver light erupted beneath my skin, blazing through my veins and spilling into the world around me as my magic roared awake in answer to my anguish, wild and violent and utterly useless in the face of what I’d done.
I missed. I missed…
His body lay motionless against the snow.
So still. So horribly, impossibly still.
The battlefield dissolved. Midland tore away piece by piece until nothing remained but the cruel agony of loss, as devastating as it had been that night.
That terrible night.
The temple rushed back around me. I swayed, but Rìan's arm circled my waist before I could fall.
The stones swam in and out of focus, the well standing silent behind us while my magic rolled beneath my skin, rising in great crashing waves.
Silver-white light spilled from my arms, throat, and face, bright enough to illuminate the ruins around us, yet still I could barely breathe.
Despair lodged in my throat so tightly it felt as though it might choke the life from me.
Rìan stood perfectly still, his heavy gaze fixed upon me. There was nowhere left to hide from what he’d witnessed, nowhere left to conceal the ugliest, most shameful wound I carried.
The glow beneath my skin dimmed, fading from a blinding radiance to a distant pulse, steady as starlight lost in an infinite night sky.
The darkness began to retreat, the jet-black tendrils curling inward and slipping back into the depths as though the well were drawing a long, slow breath.
Only when the last of them had vanished did Rìan seem to remember himself.
His fingers slipped from mine. Abruptly. As though the contact itself had suddenly become unbearable. He took a step backward, then another.
"That's why," he said hoarsely. "That's why you won't touch the bow."
I couldn’t speak. Couldn't do anything except fight to keep myself together as the memory threatened to pull me under all over again. It felt as though every part of me had been torn open and left exposed, my most carefully buried memory dragged into the light for him—my enemy—to see.
Before I could gather enough air to answer, a roar ripped from Rìan's throat—furious and so filled with pain that it nearly mirrored the storm raging inside my own chest.
He spun away and drove his fist into the nearest wall.
Stone exploded outward beneath the force of the blow, fragments spraying across the chamber as cracks raced through the crumbling masonry like lightning through a storm-dark sky. The entire wall shuddered beneath the strike, sending dust cascading down from the arches overhead.
He pulled his hand away and staggered back, breathing heavily.
The skin across his knuckles was split open, blood smearing the stone where his fist had buried itself, but if he felt the injury he gave no sign of it.
His broad shoulders rose and fell with each breath, his shoulders drawn tight beneath his shirt, his hand half-clenched, fingers curled like claws.
For a moment he simply stood there with his head lowered amidst the drifting dust, blood pattering steadily to the floor. His sudden stillness was somehow more alarming than the outburst itself.
He glanced up suddenly, as though wrenched from some deep and unpleasant thought. His gaze snagged on the fading daylight spilling through the broken ceiling of the temple. Something hardened across his features.
"Drink." The word cracked through the silence.
I stared at him, startled. "What?"
His eyes snapped back to mine, flecks of silver flashing through the dark, as though something savage inside him strained to break free.
"We drink," he said. "Now."
Before I could react he rounded the side of the well and seized my arm, steering me toward the rim with a single-minded urgency that left no room for protest. I caught myself against the weathered edge, wincing as my bleeding palms scraped the stone, my balance pitching forward. My gaze dropped into the abyss below.
The darkness seemed deeper than before. Bottomless. Waiting.