Chapter 14 #2
But we were going to be riding for a while yet. He’s already heard you sing it. It doesn’t matter.
I steeled myself and hummed the first note. My voice cracked slightly, and I cleared my throat before beginning again.
S?ren did not speak. He simply waited.
The song was familiar in a way that was both comforting and nerve-wracking. Once, my mother had cared for me. Once, she had seen me as precious.
And I had killed her.
The melody swelled at the chorus, and I felt the moment my Lurae resurfaced once more. This time, I was careful, treating it like an easily startled animal. I focused instead on the notes. And on the steady presence of S?ren at my back.
With my eyes closed, I could not see the threads. But I felt a gentle tug in my chest as my Lurae connected me to S?ren.
When I heard the steady thud, thud, thud of his heartbeat, my lips curled into a satisfied smile.
“What’s your question, Princess?”
I wondered whether the pride in his voice was my imagination, then told myself it wasn’t worth mulling over. Instead, I needed to decide what I wanted to ask. Something about his sister? I knew what it meant to love a sibling and lose them—and of course, S?ren would speak about Sonja that way.
But he had killed Frode to spare her. And that knowledge ached like a tender bruise. Talking about her would only remind me of my own loss.
So instead, I asked a question I’d been chewing on all week. “Which of your personas do you identify with the most?”
When the silence stretched on in the wake of my question, I turned to glance at him. He was staring at me, brows furrowed, eyes wary. Our eyes met for only a brief second before he glanced away. “You’ll have to clarify.”
I faced forward again, careful to hide the smile threatening to emerge. Only one question in and I’d already managed to unsettle him. Finally, for the first time since his arrival in Bhorglid, I had the upper hand.
“Well, the Hellbringer is not the same man as S?ren the scholar,” I said, willing to elaborate if he was going to insist. “One is a general, easily able to command armies, an expert on war strategy, and the queen’s right-hand man.
You, on the other hand—or at least, the you you’re pretending to be right now—are a man of knowledge, far more likely to be found in a library than on a battlefield.
You’re an ambassador. Someone who loves your country and finds no fault in its leadership.
“The Hellbringer once told me he feels differently.”
“The Hellbringer and the scholar are both loyal servants to their queen in any way she so requires,” he snapped. I watched his grip on the reins tighten, wondered if his knuckles were blanched white beneath his gloves. It seemed I struck a nerve.
Good, I thought. Now he knows how uncomfortable it is to feel like I don’t know him at all. Like any moment together from the prison could have been a lie and I might be in the dark about it.
He sighed. “The S?ren you came to know during our time together in the prison is…neither the Hellbringer nor the scholar.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him, not when the S?ren I’d known so intimately had obviously been hiding things from me.
But the version of him who had agreed to tutor me in magic was different, too.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. For now, I was at least grateful to know not everything we’d experienced together had been a lie.
“And which version do you relate to more?”
“What a question.” His tone was dry, but I felt no remorse at asking him a question far more uncomfortable than the ones he had leveled at me.
If he chose not to pry any deeper than the specifics of my Lurae, that was his choice.
This was mine. “I suppose the truthful answer is that the Hellbringer and the scholar are both masks. Versions of myself I use for protection. Each one holds pieces of me, and each represents a different set of rules I have to follow. I don’t know that I would gravitate toward either of them as being more honest than the other—you are more aware than most how the need for survival can change a person. Warp them into someone they aren’t.”
The question escaped before I could stop it. “Then who are you really?”
The heaviness following his answer evaporated like fog, his answer belying the hint of a grin. “Hear another heartbeat and I’ll happily tell you.”
We made camp for the night as soon as darkness fell. I built a roaring fire and S?ren hunted, then cooked us dinner. We ate in silence until snow began to drift down from above.
“Let’s set up the tents,” I said, pushing to my feet. My thoughts had drifted to Frode, and my mood reflected it.
S?ren moved to the supplies, which he’d unloaded earlier to allow the mare to graze. She huffed at him from her spot near the tree line and he chuckled. But then he turned to me, uncertainty on his face. “Did you move the other tent?”
I stiffened. “No.”
He ran a hand through his hair, not meeting my eyes. “Ah…well, we only have one tent then. I don’t know what happened to the other. Maybe it fell off while we were riding.”
I tried to muster up enough energy to be angry, but I didn’t have it in me. Not when a barrage of memories buffeted my mind and the sorrow lingered. Frode was gone, and here I was gallivanting into the wastes with the man who had killed him.
“Just set it up.” My voice was monotone.
Sharing a tent with the enemy? my thoughts whispered. Your friends are right not to trust you. You’re keeping so many secrets from them. Maybe you’re not a good person at all.
S?ren was silent, and I found myself turning to the breathing exercises he had taught me. The poisoned thoughts running through my head didn’t feel entirely mine. Like a foreign entity had placed some of them there.
My magic, maybe. Perhaps this was my Lurae speaking to me, the way S?ren had mentioned earlier.
It built inside of me if I didn’t use it sometimes, and often the only way to calm it was with violence.
It made sense that it would try to turn me against my friends, try to make everyone who loved me my enemy.
The acknowledgment didn’t ease the burden of the thoughts, though. If anything, they weighed heavier. Did I have any hope of controlling my Lurae if my own mind was fighting me?
S?ren cleared his throat. “It’s ready. I set up the bedrolls.”
I stepped inside, removing my boots at the entrance so I didn’t track in mud and slush.
The tent was tiny, intended for one person, but two bedrolls managed to fit.
I suppressed a sigh. This didn’t seem like a purposeful attempt to cajole me into forgiveness.
S?ren looked more uncomfortable than I felt.
We settled down, and I willed my body to relax.
“How are—” He stopped, clearing his throat, uncertainty slowing his careful choice of words. “How are you…feeling?”
Did he mean about him specifically or in general? I didn’t know the answer to the first, but the darkness made the answer to the latter slip from me without a second thought. “Sad. I miss him.”
Several long heartbeats of heavy silence passed. Then, tentatively, S?ren asked, “Will you tell me about him?”
I hadn’t shed a tear since our journey began. Instead, my sorrow had sealed over while I dealt with the problem in front of me. But now the dam burst, and I gasped, air refusing to enter my lungs.
“Revna?” My name sounded far away as I threw off the blankets and forced myself to my hands and knees, trembling.
I heard the rustle of S?ren’s blankets tossed aside and a wave of pure panic whited out my vision. “No,” I forced out. “Stay back.”
“Are you sure?”
“It will only be harder if I can see you.” The truth was harsh, but the moment it spilled from me my shoulders relaxed a bit.
The sounds of S?ren moving stopped, and I changed position to sit cross-legged, arms wrapped around myself.
I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Frode was the worst gossip. Always spreading secrets. Not far enough to be hurtful, to cause harm, but I know far more about the servants working in the palace than I should.”
The memory hit me like the crush of an avalanche. I waited for the tears to burn behind my eyes, but it never happened. Instead, the strangest sensation overwhelmed me until—
I laughed.
It was a short, quiet thing. More a breathy chuckle than anything else. But I couldn’t remember the last time I thought of Frode without dying inside. It still hurt, my chest throbbing dully as I recounted the memory, but it was easier when the pain lived alongside happiness.
My panic faded slightly, replaced by curiosity.
I tried again. “When I was young, we would play hide-and-seek. I was at quite the disadvantage, as I’m sure you can imagine.
But I made him work for it. I started climbing the trees on the mountainside and hopping from branch to branch, so he could hear my thoughts but not see me. And he had to see me to win, so.”
No chuckle this time, but a wave of fondness settled over me instead. “He was so mad when he found out I cared for you. I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about our time together, and he gave me the silent treatment for several hours after I was rescued.”
“Rescued?”
“Mira wouldn’t have told you, but she dropped me in the middle of nowhere instead of taking me back to my family before the Trials.”
A growl of frustration. “I’m not surprised in the slightest by that information, sadly. I’ll speak with her about it later. Continue.”
I found I had no interest in griping on about Mira’s mistreatment of me. Not when the recollections of happier times were both calming my breathing and pooling in my stomach like a well of never-ending sorrow that would ache for the rest of my life.
“The front always made him so depressed. Every time he returned, we would ride to the prison and pretend we were doing security checks for a few hours. Really, though, he would bring a saddlebag full of blankets and take a nap in an empty cell. The silencer guards had no idea they were helping him so much. We knew if Father found out we would both be punished.”
Finally able to breathe again, I curled up beneath my blankets once more. S?ren was so quiet I wondered if he had fallen asleep. For several long minutes, there was only the sound of our breathing.
His silence made me bold. I assumed he’d fallen asleep. It had been several minutes of no words between us when I finally murmured, “Do you ever regret meeting me?”
“No.”
I froze. His answer had been so instantaneous he might as well have been reading my mind. I had expected to be met with nothing, for the version of him living in my imagination to admit that yes, he did regret our time together. And that would have been the end of it.
But the unshakable note of stubbornness in his voice startled me.
There was no hesitation, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was lying.
After all, someone had to do the smart thing.
Someone had to look at the past and see the mistakes we’d made by growing so close and feel the guilt of it all.
“I do,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t this all be easier if a stranger had killed my brother? If the only thing I wanted was revenge for what you’d done? In another world, you would have killed me without a second thought if your queen had ordered it.”
“Revna.” His voice was ragged around the edges, and I could hear that he had turned to look at me. “If you want to regret what we had…I can live with that. I have some regrets, too.”
Something inside me tightened. He was lying. My fingers curled into the blankets, and I reminded myself that it was a good thing for him to feel this way.
“I regret how long it took me to open up to you. That it was four weeks of pretending to hate each other, pretending I didn’t want to take my mask off and bare my face to you.”
Now it was my turn to listen silently, startled by his earnestness.
“If I could go back, I would do it all differently. But not in the way you think. I would dance with you more. Touch you sooner. Make you laugh again and again. And kiss you the first time I considered it.”
I stared at the top of the tent until the darkness felt surreal.
S?ren hummed a half chuckle as he continued, “Can you imagine? If you’d walked into the forge to find me shirtless and maskless?
If I’d let my thoughts become reality and pressed you into the wall so I could taste your beautiful mouth the moment I realized I was gone for you? ”
He rolled over onto one side, the sound of his voice quieting as he turned away from me. “You can hate me forever, if you like. Those six weeks we spent make it bearable. At least I have the memories.”
He fell silent again. I rolled over too, and desperately hoped I was not the only one restless until the night sky began to turn light once more.