Chapter 38
Revna
Someone was screaming.
I had a single lucid thought amid them all. Things were quiet like this when Frode died, too.
Unthinking, I reached deep within for my Lurae. If I could keep his heart beating, then he would live until we got to a healer. He would make it.
But my magic did not answer when I called.
How unfair. Distantly, I knew the thoughts were mine, not an impostor’s.
I sent them out the way I would have when Frode was alive.
Loud and clear, with the intent of being heard by someone who loved me.
The one time I really could have used a Lurae, it’s abandoned me.
How unfair that the most beautiful face in the world is covered in blood when life leaves it.
How unfair that I would have given it all to save him and it wasn’t enough.
My breath sawed from my lungs, ragged and heaving. With one hand, I clung to the Soulcleaver, unwilling to let it go. With the other, I cradled S?ren until he lay on the ground.
Callum spoke. Of course he did. Because the Tapestry had offered him immortality, and now it expected me to give everything, everyone I had to correct its mistake. I didn’t register a single word.
“Just kill me now,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to S?ren’s chest, to the armor I’d painstakingly latched on him barely an hour ago.
I wasn’t speaking to Callum—no, I wanted my voice to reach beyond the line of death.
Surely S?ren could hear me, if his soul wasn’t able to move on.
“Take me with you. You promised you wouldn’t leave me. ”
I waited for the blade to fall, wondered if I would feel the wetness of my own blood mingling with the river of tears flooding down my face. Please.
But a hand grabbed my wrist. The darkness enveloping me wasn’t the sightlessness of death. I gripped S?ren’s cooling body tighter as my stomach lurched and we were pulled from the castle.
When my knees hit the ground, I stayed silent, curling over S?ren. Clutching at his body, at his armor, at his clothes. They had taken Frode away when he died, muscled me back to camp. I wouldn’t let them do the same with S?ren.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours. And as my muscles stiffened, as hands brushed at my skin and murmurs reached my ears, I clung tighter.
He was gone. S?ren was gone and I would never again hear him tell me he loved me. That I was worth it all. Never again would I hear his laugh or see his smile, rest my head on his chest in the darkness and listen to him breathe.
We would not see the world together when all was said and done. We wouldn’t travel, leaving our responsibilities behind while we explored new places. We would never get married, never discuss whether we wanted to have children. There were no more chances to tell me something true.
The world around me came back slowly. All the while, pressure built in my chest—inescapable, undeniable. The first word I registered was my own name.
“Revna.” Mira, maybe. Who cared anymore? “Revna, what happened?”
I said nothing. But the pressure, the unshakable creature clawing its way through my chest reared its head in anger. I didn’t save him. He did save me.
Another voice, this one Sonja’s. “You need to stand up, Revna. Get cleaned off.”
And gods, she was so gentle about it. Sonja, who’d argued that she needed to come with us, and we’d refused her.
Told her it was smarter for us to go alone.
She’d even suggested we take Astrid, and I’d insisted we wouldn’t put anyone else in danger.
How would the tides have turned if we had another person on our team?
If we hadn’t been so damn stubborn? The what-ifs ate at me, until I was nothing but bone.
Hollow, yet filled with too much grief to go on.
Perhaps that’s why I pulled my head up from S?ren’s chest and screamed.
The feet in my line of vision took a step back as the sound, long and drawn out, nothing but rage and anguish made breath, stretched into the silence. And when I ran out of air, when my voice cracked and I was forced to inhale, my sobs echoed.
And that was how they left me. Screaming and sobbing, the love of my life dead on the ground.
I must have fallen asleep at some point. My mind too overwhelmed to let me face the rest. But opening my eyes did nothing to pull me back from the horror of his bloody face and torso, the unnatural angle of his neck.
“I never wanted this.” My voice was so hoarse I could barely hear myself.
“I only wanted to protect my friends. Keep the people I love safe. I didn’t want a Lurae or a crown; I didn’t want to be a leader; I just wanted to be equal and—and happy.
If this is the cost of revolution, then I don’t want to pay it. ”
I brushed the hair back from S?ren’s face. My lower lip trembled, and I felt more tears coming when I whispered. “You said you wouldn’t leave me.”
A throat cleared. I didn’t look over. Why should I care if anyone heard me? No one else could possibly understand what a loss this was. The world was afraid of the Hellbringer. They didn’t deserve to mourn him, no matter any change of heart they’d had down the line.
But I did look up, blinking to clear the tears from my eyes. Dawn broke, lighting a set of hills on either side of me. Bhorglid, the thought registered. We’re still in Bhorglid.
I was numb to my core, but a single question throbbed in my mind. I called out to whoever stood in my vicinity, my voice hoarse. “Did you get the prisoners out? Is everyone safe?”
Footsteps padded over the grass until a pair of boots entered my vision. “I wouldn’t say safe, but we’re all alive.”
No other voice would have been enough for me to take my eyes off S?ren. But Freja’s? I stared up at her. Waited for her rage to spill from her again, like it had at the festival. She could kill me right now for everything I’d done. I wouldn’t have blamed her.
She turned her impassive gaze away from me and crossed her arms. Through blurry vision, I noted her gaunt cheeks and shaking hands. Had prison been easier the second time around? Or had Arraya and Callum made them suffer more?
“Is Jac okay? And Volkan?”
Freja’s cold disdain was almost worse than her fury. “You’ll have to ask them when you’re done here.”
I allowed silence to fall. What did it matter if she hated me? I’d known for weeks that this was coming and had chosen to dig myself a deeper grave all the while. She had earned her rage.
It was all my fault. The loss of Freja’s trust, my friends’ time as prisoners, S?ren’s death. All of it.
My fault.
“They tortured me and Volkan,” she said quietly. “Tried to convince us to tell them where you’d gone. Inconvenient for them that we didn’t know.”
I blinked slowly, trying to clear my mind of grief and fog for a moment. Finally, I whispered, “We came for you as soon as we could.”
She sat down next to me, facing the opposite direction. “So Valen said. You’re lucky I believe them. I wouldn’t have taken anyone else’s word, especially not yours.”
“If all you’re going to do is tell me I’m worthless, then leave.” My shoulders curled in on themselves. “You’ve already made it clear—you aren’t interested in anything I have to say.”
She shrugged. “I’m not. But you set out to kill the queen, and you haven’t finished that mission yet.”
I thought about screaming at her the way I’d screamed at Sonja. Seemed like the only way I was going to get any peace and quiet around here. But before I got the chance, Freja said, “You said you have no interest in being a leader. More than fine with me.”
As if I could lead anyone in my current state. Any other day I would have snapped, but the thought of it was too much. “There’s no point in being a leader no one wants.”
“You can fight, though,” Freja said, her lips pursing together. She didn’t like admitting this. “And right now, what we need is fighters.”
“I don’t have any interest in fighting.” I slumped back down over S?ren’s body. It had been hours by now—someone would come to tear me away from him soon.
“Do you have any interest in revenge?”
I paused. Looked up at her. She raised an eyebrow. “We need someone willing to gut Callum with the Soulcleaver, you know.”
Revenge.
I let the idea roll over my tongue. Revenge. I breathed deeply for the first time since…
I nodded. “Revenge will do.”