22. Aradya
TWENTY-TWO
ARADYA
The question catches me off guard. Not because it’s surprising, but because of the way he asks it—not mockingly, not dismissively, but with genuine bewilderment. As if fear is a language he understands, and my lack of it doesn’t translate.
“I’m terrified.” The admission comes easier than I expected. I meet his gaze, holding it even when the intensity makes my skin prickle. “Fear doesn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. It never has.”
He stares at me for a long moment. The witch-light flickers, casting shadows across the planes of his face, and I realize he’s looking at me differently than before. Not like a tool or a threat. Not like a condemned prisoner whose usefulness he needs to prove.
Like a person.
Like someone who has surprised him in ways he wasn’t prepared for.
“The mark.” He says the word like it costs him blood. “It’s not going away. I thought—hoped—it might fade if I kept my distance. Forty years dormant, and now...” He shakes his head. “It’s only getting stronger.”
“I know.” I feel it too. The pull between us, intensifying with each interaction, each touch, each moment spent in proximity.
The mark doesn’t care about circumstance or timing or the fact that we should be enemies.
It only knows that the universe has decided we belong to each other, and it will keep burning until we acknowledge what that means. “What do we do about it?”
“I don’t know.” He steps closer. Not deliberately, I think—his body moving toward me without conscious decision, obeying the pull neither of us can control.
The mark on my collarbone responds, visible through my worn clothing, and I see an answering glow through the leather of his armor.
“I’ve never wanted anything for myself. Never let myself want.
Wanting is dangerous when your job is to burn what other people love. ”
“And now?”
The question hangs between us. He’s close enough that I can see the individual threads of gray at his temples, can smell the smoke and ash that cling to his skin beneath the leather. Close enough that if I reached out, I could touch the mark through his armor the way I’m touching my own.
“Now I want you safe.” The admission seems to surprise him as much as it surprises me. His tone roughens, fractures around the edges. “I want you safe more than I want to follow orders. More than I want to do my duty. More than I want—”
He stops himself. Shakes his head. Steps back, putting distance between us that the mark immediately protests.
“This is a terrible time for this.”
“The worst possible time.” I don’t move from the bench. Don’t reach for him, though everything in me wants to. “A king of corpses is rising beneath the city.”
“I know.”
“The Council wants me dead.”
“I know.”
“And all I can think about—” He turns away, runs a hand through his hair, the movement sharp with frustration.
“All I can think about is whether your magic could calm my nightmares. Whether your voice could give me the closure I’ve been running from since Torval died.
Whether holding you would make the faces stop. ”
My breath catches.
The words are raw. Unguarded. The confession of a man who has spent his entire adult life building walls, and has suddenly found them crumbling beneath the weight of a magic he never asked for.
I rise from the bench.
He doesn’t turn around, but I see his shoulders stiffen. See the tension ripple through him as I cross the small space between us, my bare feet silent on the cold stone floor.
“The revenant spoke to you.” It’s not a question. I can read it in the grief pouring off him, in the way his hands have curled into fists at his sides. “It used your brother’s voice.”
A single nod. Tight. Controlled.
“What did it say?”
“That Torval is waiting. That he has words he never got to speak.” The syllables emerge barely above a whisper. “That if I bring you to him, he’ll tell me how to stop the King.”
“And you believe it?”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.” He finally turns, and I see the devastation in his expression—the fractures in the armor he’s worn for so long.
“My brother died hating me. The last words we spoke were anger and accusation and things we couldn’t take back.
For years, I’ve told myself that silence was better.
That not knowing was easier than hearing whatever final truth he had for me. ”
“And now?”
“Now the dead are speaking his name. Now they’re promising closure I don’t deserve. And I can’t—” His words falter. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t face what he might say.”
I reach up.
My hand moves without conscious decision, drawn by the mark, by the grief radiating from him in waves, by an instinct deeper than thought. My palm presses against his armored torso, directly over the place where his mark burns.
The heat is immediate. Scorching. The leather between us does nothing to diminish the intensity—if anything, it amplifies, the barrier making the pull stronger, making the magic strain toward completion.
His hand closes over mine. Not pulling away. Holding me there.
“The King told me Torval is among its thousands.” My words drop to a whisper—the register I use for channeling, for reaching through the Veil and touching what waits on the other side.
“But the spirits that form the King aren’t fully absorbed.
They’re still individual, still aware, still waiting for the closure they were denied. ”
His breath catches. “You can reach him?”
“I can try.” The words come slowly, carefully.
“The suppression wards are weakened by the mark—by your presence. And Torval... if he’s been waiting for you, if he’s been holding onto words he never got to speak, he’ll be reaching back.
The dead always reach back when someone is finally ready to listen. ”
His grip on my hand tightens. “What do you need?”
“Nothing.” I close my eyes, let the whispers press against the edges of my consciousness. The wards muffle them, but they can’t silence them completely—not with the mark burning between us, not with his grief so thick I can taste it on the back of my tongue. “Stay still. Let me find him.”
I whisper his brother’s name.
“Torval Stoneveil.”
The effect is immediate.