TWENTY-TWO #3
“You don’t get to decide that,” I whisper, but I already know he’s right. I can’t go back. Not after tonight.
“No, I don’t,” he agrees. “But I swore to protect you.”
I look away, blinking hard. “You’re telling me this now,” I say, “because … what? You feel guilty?”
“Because if we’re going to survive,” he says, and the word survive lodges uncomfortably in my chest, “we need to learn to trust each other.”
“If I had trusted you, maybe I would have told you Kieren’s plan. Maybe you would have actually helped me.” I let the truth hang in the air, and he doesn’t interrupt. “Kieren would still be alive. I wish …”
I trail away, but the admission bleeds between us.
I wait for him to argue. To tell me that it isn’t my fault. Convince me I couldn’t have known how poorly it would end. That the world is cruel and unfair.
Instead, he almost smiles, and the sadness there crushes me. “You’ll always wish you’d done things differently,” he says quietly. “I do.”
The certainty in his voice chills me.
And for the first time, I really see him. Behind the authority, the armor, the careful restraint. There’s something old there. A scar opened too many times to ever heal properly.
“How many?” I can barely bring myself to ask.
His forehead creases. “How many what?”
I take a deep breath and force the question out. “How many people did you lose before you stopped wishing?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares past me like the question sent him somewhere else. To a different life. A log pops gently in the hearth, and he flinches.
“Too many.”
Not a satisfying answer. Or a complete one.
But it’s honest.
I nod slowly.
“If I ask you something,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “will you tell me the truth?”
His head tilts, and he hesitates a beat. “That depends on the question.”
“Figures,” I grumble.
Everything with him comes with terms.
“One question.” He holds up a hand before I can ask it and adds, “Choose it carefully. I’m not answering more tonight.”
I can’t blame him. Now that the adrenaline has finally burned out, my head throbs, and my legs ache. The night has already taken too much. Exhaustion presses in from all sides, but I consider what he says.
“Why did you come after me?” The question that’s been circling me since the clearing.
He glances out the window like he’s looking for an answer.
“You left a note,” he says after a moment.
This again. “That—”
“Isn’t an answer,” he finishes for me. He tips his head as if he agrees. “Because I know what it feels like to run.”
The idea of Bishop running is so unthinkable that I nearly laugh.
“Because,” he adds, lowering his voice like it’s a secret, “I know what it costs when you do.”
That cost is already burned into me.
Before I can ask anything else, he straightens. “You need rest.”
Confession time is over.
I slump into the pillows, frustration warring with relief. Exhaustion finally wins.
I hold the book out toward him.
But he doesn’t take it.
“Keep it,” he says. “You’ve earned the answers in there.”
Bishop turns toward the door, reaching to turn down the light.
“Wait.” The word slips out before I can stop it. “Leave the light on. I don’t want to be in the dark.”
He nods, not looking back at me. But his hand moves to grip the doorframe, knuckles whitening. He shifts, just enough that I think he’ll turn around. He doesn’t.
“Try to sleep,” he says instead. “Your wounds need time to heal.”
I stare at the closed door long after he leaves. Without him here, the room feels too empty and sleep too far away.
My gaze drops to the book resting against my thigh. I don’t know if I want the answers inside it, but I can’t keep running. From the truth. From myself.
From him.
But when I flip it open, I find the ink faded from time and dense notes occupying every margin. But that’s not the problem. I flip the page. Then another.
The whole thing is written in the ancient tongue.
Of course.
Those are the answers I earned.
Just like his trust.
He’s not going to give me either until I prove myself.
Even if I already hold his biggest secret in my hands.
The burden snaps the last fragile thread holding me together.
Tears come hard. Fast. They rip out of me as though my grief is overdue and they’re here to collect that pittance of me that remains.
I curl in on myself, letting the book fall to the floor.
I can’t bring myself to pick it up. To face the truth that even it seems determined to show me.
I let it happen.
Not just tonight.
In Wintour. At the palace. During every moment when someone else stepped in front of me because I couldn’t stand my ground.
Kieren paid the price.
So did Bishop.
I won’t let it happen again.
No one else bleeds for me.
The tears don’t stop. Maybe I don’t want them to.
Maybe they’re the key to my own resurrection.
So, I give in to them until exhaustion creeps in and dulls the night into softer focus, dragging me toward the place between here and dreams. I let it take me.
But the question I should have asked Bishop follows me there.
Why did he find that note in my bedroom after midnight?