50. Vera
Vera
“Can I have a few minutes alone with her?” I asked Aramanth after she welcomed me into the healing wing.
“Of course, Lightbringer,” the elderly woman said with a bow. She set down her jar of salve and padded out of the room.
I waited until she was gone before I took a deep, uneven breath.
The scents of the healing wing flooded my senses.
Dried herbs of rosemary, sage, and mint mixed with the sharper, pungent ointments and cleaning potions.
All the other cots were empty, with their white sheets crisply folded and slightly dull, as if they hadn’t been touched in a while.
I crossed to Odessa’s cot against the back wall, then collapsed into the chair next to her, white dust from the crypt clouding the air.
My hands and clothes were filthy. I didn’t have the energy yet to clean up after that disaster—the adrenaline had subsided, leaving me with shaking hands and the heavy weight of failure on my chest.
Odessa looked so peaceful. Her hands rested on her abdomen, her head slightly tilted to lean against the pillow, with those brown curls billowing around her face.
If I concentrated my Shifter hearing, I could hear the barest intake of breath, and the slowest, most faint heartbeat fluttering in her chest. She’d only been under the stasis for a day, but I felt her life ticking like a pocket watch in the back of my mind.
“I’m sorry, Odessa,” I said with a sigh, grabbing her hand. My dirt-stricken skin was a stark contrast to her smooth fingers. “I failed. I didn’t get the amulet today. But we’re going back out tomorrow, and the Elders have a whole list of places to look.”
I had been so close. I thought I’d held the amulet in my grasp, and in that single moment, I saw Odessa’s freedom flash before my eyes. I saw the kingdom raised, saw their people rejoicing, saw my friends sailing back home into a new dawn.
Those hopes had been crushed to dust when the fake amulet disintegrated in my grip.
I was foolish to think it would be so easy.
Maybe part of me had bought into the idea of being this “all-powerful Lightbringer” as the Elders and Pyraethis heralded me.
I thought I could manifest my victory into existence by sheer force of will.
Follow the Elders, fight some mythical creatures, slash and stab my way through.
But the Fates weren’t going to give it over so simply.
“I want to do right by you,” I whispered to Odessa, tapping the back of her hand absentmindedly. “I just hope you weren’t wrong to put your faith in me.”
“I don’t believe she was,” Kieran’s deep voice said from behind me. I released Odessa and turned in my chair to see him walking over, his brown hair still wet from bathing. He nodded toward her. “How is she?”
“Same as she has been. Tessa said everything was normal today. I just wanted to check on her.”
Kieran took the seat on her other side, pulling out several books from the bag slung over his shoulder. He set them on the bedside table next to her.
“What are those for?” I asked.
A pink tint crawled up his cheeks. “I know she enjoys reading, I just don’t know what types of books she prefers.
I brought several from the Hall of Archives.
A book on ancient Pyraethi history,” he held up an old, leather-bound tome, “folklore, myths, and legends,” he picked another, “theories of numerology,” he pointed to one on bottom, “and a romance.”
I held back a smile. “Quite the range.”
“It’s not as if she’ll know what I’m reading to her, but it will help pass the time.”
“I think that’s great,” I said quietly. “She’d love it. Thanks, Kieran.”
He inclined his head to me in response, and we sat in silence for a minute as he rifled through the numerology textbook. I stared at Odessa, lost in my own thoughts, when his voice brought me back into the present.
“I believe I owe you an apology,” he started. His brown eyes held mine so intensely, it made me need to look away. “For what I said earlier today.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I said that your brother deserves someone who will stay for him, and I insinuated that you were not that person.” His voice was measured, straightforward. “That wasn’t fair of me, and I’m sorry.”
My fingers played with the edge of my dirty shirt. “You don’t have to apologize. You were right. I can’t change what I did, but I have to live with it.”
“Did you know,” he said as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, “that your brother worked closely under Kane Scarven’s charge in the years you were his prisoner?”
My nose twitched. I knew a little bit about what Nox had done, how he’d played both sides and acted like Scarven’s personal lapdog while starting the Ashen Order and rescuing prisoners from beneath his very nose.
It had been because of me. Scarven held my imprisonment over Nox’s head like a noose, threatening my safety to keep my brother in line.
But it wasn’t something Nox had talked much about in the couple of months I lived in the Keep with him last year.
Kieran took my silence as a nod to keep going.
“Scarven forced Nox to harm many people. Nox did what he could to get out of those situations, of course—sneaking his victims to safety, lying to Scarven, crafting cover stories to trick him. But it didn’t always work.
You’re not the only one who has blood on your hands because of that man. ”
I shuffled in my seat. “I know. But Nox did it to save hundreds of lives.”
“And you did it because you had no choice. But that isn’t my point.
” Kieran tilted his head. “Your brother also wanted to bear his past alone. There were many times when he chose not to confide in Tessa or myself, despite us being partners in the rebellion. He’s a stubborn man, but his heart was always in the right place.
It took years of building that trust for him to feel comfortable enough to lean on us with his problems, as well. ”
I looked back at Odessa, unable to bear the full weight of his stare. “You were good for him,” I managed to say, even though I knew this lecture wasn’t just about Nox.
“He learned that he couldn’t walk this road alone, Vera,” Kieran continued gently.
“I believe that’s something we all had to learn, with time.
But we never gave up on him. Just as I see you will never give up on Odessa.
” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him gesturing to her.
But it was his next words that hit me straight in the stomach.
“And there is a man sitting alone in his chambers who would rather lose his life than give up on you.”
It suddenly hurt to swallow. I cursed the tears that stung the backs of my eyes as I cleared my throat. I wondered if he and Tessa had coordinated their speeches over the last couple of days.
“I’m not my brother,” I said, raking my fingers through my greasy hair.
“Nox never hurt any of you. I have. Your Order was good for each other. You gave each other strength in the hard times, right?” I asked, and Kieran nodded hesitantly.
I forced out a breath. “This is the only kind of strength I know. The fight, the blood and sweat, the constant moving. This is how I help the people I love. It’s the only way I know how.
I don’t know how to give any of you—give Everett—what the rest of you give one another.
” I shrugged again, as if that would make my words more casual, not lay my innermost insecurities on display.
“I’m not good for him the way you all are. The way you want me to be.”
“Perhaps not,” he said with a curt nod. “Perhaps there are things you’ve done that I would do differently.
But it doesn’t matter what I think is best for him; it only matters what he thinks.
Just as we allowed Odessa the choice in her own fate instead of making the decision for her.
You say you’re not good for him, but who is the one who gets to decide? ”
I didn’t have a response. I didn’t know what I could even say that would make sense.
My mind had been such a mix of emotions and half-truths and stubborn defiance for as long as I could remember.
The way he boiled it down made it seem so simple, but things were never that easy.
Just like I couldn’t force this final amulet into existence and save Odessa with a wave of my hand, I couldn’t take down the voices in my head that told me everyone was better off without me.
I hated those voices. I hated the insecurity, the shame, the self-isolation. It turned me into someone I didn’t want to be. I wondered if Nox had ever felt this way, too.
“How did he do it?” I whispered before I could stop myself. Kieran gave me a quizzical look, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How did Nox move on? Get over his past?”
“That’s a conversation for you and your brother to have,” he said softly. “But I know that he did not do it alone.”
I twitched my nose, my fingers curling and uncurling in the fabric of my shirt. I looked around the room, anywhere but in Kieran’s steadfast eyes, and my pulse stuttered with anxious jitters. I didn’t like standing still. I always needed to do something, to take action, to—
“Go to him,” Kieran said. “I’ll watch Odessa. He needs you.”
I need him, too.
It was as if his words gave me permission to do what my body had been yearning for all day. I sprung from my chair and pivoted to the door, then paused and glanced back. “Thank you, Kieran.”
“Go,” he said with a nod, his lips lifting into a faint smile.
I darted out of the healing wing, feet carrying me straight to Everett.