Chapter 23
She was furious...
As furious as a wet cat, and rightly so, for he could tell she was terrified as she stomped after him, refusing to let the subject go.
Good.
Let her chase him, let her take her wrath out on him.
He’d relish it, because he deserved it, and because she needed to release the pain she’d carried – the pain she’d shouted at him while in Six’s cage.
He would be her mental punching bag.
He would take every hit.
“I’ll die!” Ezer yelped, as they reached the Aviary doors.
No, she wouldn’t. He’d seen it in his dreams.
“It perplexes me, Raphonminder, how you can think so highly and yet so utterly lowly of yourself in one moment,” Kinlear said.
Why didn’t she see the power she held?
One didn’t just become a Raphonminder. They didn’t just step into a raphon’s good graces. No, Ezer was born for this. She was made for this, handpicked from the Ehver to be sent here for a creature such as Six.
She laid into him, cursing him for the mission, the War Table, the secret he’d kept. All of it.
“We die,” she growled. “So that you can live.”
He’d been enormously gracious so far, but that phrase?
It sparked a nerve in him.
“Careful,” Kinlear warned. “You don’t know what you’re speaking of.”
She stepped closer, her dark curls trembling as if a rogue wind had just whipped through the space. “Don’t I, though? Who’s the one that spent the past many weeks in the cage, while you were...” she waved a hand, searching for an answer that would probably hurt him.
“While I was what?” Kinlear challenged.
The front door opened, and a few Scribes walked in. Snow danced between their ankles as they shut it, and bowed to Kinlear, who bowed back.
And in that time, Ezer had finally chosen her next slew of words. “While you were galivanting about the castle in your silly little outfits, all prim and proper and—”
He gasped. How dare she? “We needn’t bring the outfits into this.”
But she just kept going. “While you were reading books, lazing about in your plush quarters...”
His eyesight darkened.
For a moment he thought he saw red, or perhaps that was his tears threatening to well over again, but he bit his cheek to force himself back into the present.
“...while you were drinking winterwine from your precious flask when it’s not even Absolution Day,” she continued. “While you were—”
He guessed now was as good a time as any.
So, he didn’t wait another second.
He looked at her, all furious and beautiful, and dropped the ugliest truth he’d ever told.
“I’m dying, Ezer.”
It was the first time he’d ever spoken it out loud to anyone.
The first time he’d decided himself to tell the truth.
He’d never even told Soraya about his fate, for it was Arawn that had broken the news to her.
And even with the look in Ezer’s eyes as he explained himself, even with the way her anger fizzled, and a look of pity took its place.
..something that normally would have set him on edge. ..
Today, he felt freer than he had in ages.
Like one of the bars on his own cage broke.
And he could breathe deeply, just for a moment...as if there was never any illness to begin with.
Things shifted, after that.
She saw him.
She saw his truth, and though sometimes over the next few days, he caught her looking at him with concern in her eyes, as if she were trying to pick out the illness hiding beneath...
He had her care now.
He had her attention more than before.
He had her friendship, too, as they began to work together with Six, instead of apart. As time passed, Kinlear got the approval from the War Table to take Six outside. He’d reveled in giving Ezer that chance, and secretly loved the way she got so royally pissed off when the raphon hated the snow.
He loved it, because for the first time in what felt like forever...
He felt the innermost parts of himself begin to thaw.
He hadn’t even realized how utterly frozen he was, how hard his heart, until he spent his days with Ezer.
She was the sun when he was the shadows.
She was the joy when he had none. She gave him warmth when she laughed, and when she dug at him with her twisted little words, it reminded him that he could feel things again.
Each night, he still dreamt of her. Each night, he experienced their future love in his dreams. He experienced the moment they made it, together, all the way to the Acolyte’s throne. He saw the knife in his own hands, felt the promise of freedom...
But he never saw it play out to the end.
No, he had a strange feeling that his Veilborne power was saving the victory for his waking moments.
So he could experience it all in real time with Ezer, glorious and true.
When he spent time with her in person, his mind whispered the same command, over and over.
Tell her.
Tell her what you’ve seen, what you know, what you can do.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t, not yet, and maybe not ever, for his power was a gift... one that he wanted to save only for him.
But he could tell her a piece of it.
He could tell her what was on his heart...and how it beat for the promise of a future with her.
It was a sunny day in Augaurde, Ezer and Six practicing their laps on the cliffside, when Kinlear finally dared try.
She was standing at Six’s side, the way she did in his dreams. The beast was purring, the cat side of her loving the feel of the rare, northern sunlight on her fur and feathers. Ezer laughed, and Kinlear’s heart thrummed at the sound of it.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he said. The sun was warm on his face. It lit up the shades of Ezer’s dark hair, reminding him of Six’s feathers. Blues and emeralds and deep purples that were only revealed today. The two of them, Rider and raphon, were practically shimmering.
“Just...beautiful,” Kinlear said.
He wasn’t looking at the sky or Six.
He was looking right at her.
Something shifted in her gaze...but it wasn’t resistance. No, he sensed that maybe, just maybe, she was softening for him. Maybe she was opening the door to her heart.
Maybe she would finally let him in.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he said carefully, for he didn’t want to push too hard. “I’d say you were born for this.”
“For what?” she asked.
He smiled.
Do it, his mind whispered. His heart thumped a little faster, and for a second...he thought he might be sick. But he had only today. Only this moment, so he dared.
“For her,” he said softly. “For...me.”
Thump.
His damned heart slammed so hard, he was worried she’d hear it.
Thump.
Oh gods, what was she going to say?
The wind danced between them. Six stamped her paws in the snow.
And Kinlear waited, and waited, feeling like the world had simply paused just to spite him.
Damnit.
Perhaps he’d gone too far too fast, because he cleared his throat, and feigned indifference, sliding on that old, familiar mask.
“Oh, gods, I mean...” Don’t push it, you fool!
“I mean for me and this mission. I feel as if you have been godsent, Ezer. The answer to the prayers so many of us have sent skyward, hoping the gods would take pity on this realm. I’ve never met a soul like you.
You’re...unburdened.” He smiled, though inside.
..he had to breathe the pain of longing for her.
He would wait a bit longer.
He would wait forever, if he had to.
“There is no greater joy than to share this moment with you,” he added.
True.
All of it....true. And it felt so good to speak what was on his heart.
He hadn’t done it since he’d written letters to Soraya, so long ago...when things were pure in his mind. When he knew only the here and the now, and had never been burdened with the visions of what could and would be.
So, he kept going. He told Ezer of his past – only the important pieces – and of how small he felt when Arawn was near. How the people of Lordach had always compared the two of them...and Kinlear had never measured up.
“That’s not what they think,” Ezer said gently, the wind tugging at her dark curls.
He raised a brow.
“They adore you, Kinlear,” she said. “Because you are different. Because you are a sort of mystery no one can quite unravel. And I think people are drawn to that. We’re fascinated, by things we cannot understand. It’s why you and I share a love for Six.”
We could share so much more than that, Kinlear wanted to tell her.
But he held it back. He saved it for later. And in the shadows of his mind, he begged the gods that it would come true.
“I am honored, Ezer. So honored by your yes,” he said instead. “It was the greatest gift you could ever have given your kingdom. And by proxy...the greatest gift I have ever received.”
She smiled.
A true one, the kind that tugged at her scars. She hated them, but they were another little gift in and of themselves, for they reminded him she had been through hell and back...and still, she could find joy.
So perhaps he could, too.
“You are the first Raphonminder known to Lordach. The first in history!” He yelled, holding his arms wide.
His voice echoed across the snowy cliffside.
Six ruffled her feathers.
“Even if Lordach doesn’t know?” Ezer asked. “I suppose I am a mystery, too.”
He shrugged. Not to me. But he smiled, and said, “We can be mysteries together, you and I.”
Together.
He held onto that word as the cough returned to him, and the illness tried to steal his joy away.
He wouldn’t let it.
He held on to it as the sun sparkled down upon her, and they looked out at the Expanse. The shadowstorm stirred over the Sawteeth mountains, a furious, living thing, but not even the Acolyte’s magic could hold Ezer back.
Soon...they would cross it. Soon, they would go through the shadowed veil, and reach the other side.
They would save Lordach, just as he’d seen.
Together.