Chapter 25 #3
There’s a long pause. I watch his shoulder roll in a shrug. The sea-wind tugs at his black hair, unfurling it like a sail.
“Maybe. Come in the water.”
The familiar gut-punch of revulsion smashes through me at just the idea.
“No.”
Roiven turns and slowly walks back toward me. His feet leave wet, glistening prints on the black stone between the waves and the safe, dry space where I stand.
“What are you afraid of, Cai?”
I don’t look up to meet his gaze. Instead I stare at Roiven’s chest. It’s easier. Today’s shirt is open just wide enough that I can see his clavicle.
“There are things in there. Reapers. That creature.”
“Nothing that will hurt you. Not in these shallows.”
“I don’t go in the sea.” I take a step back from him. Roiven takes one forward, not letting me get distance from him.
“Why not? You seem fearless enough about everything else.”
“I just don’t. I told you.”
“Same reason your head was hurting?”
He takes another step forward and I scramble back.
My muscles were exhausted after pulling the magic from him, but I feel wide awake now as panic pumps through me.
If he thinks for a moment he’s going to pick me up and toss me into the sea, he has another thing coming.
I don’t need my sword in order to fight.
I have hands, knees, feet, elbows. I have teeth.
“When you were a knight. Did you always wear your armor?”
“When I was in enemy territory.”
“When you were near the sea, you mean.”
“Obviously.” What is he playing at?
“Even behind your barrier? Did you ever go by the sea without it? In the Empire?”
“Sometimes. If I had my protective necklace on.”
“Never without enchantment, then.”
“I… the sea’s dangerous.”
“Your arm is enchanted,” Roiven says. He stops approaching. I take another two steps back, to be safe. I’m almost at the corner where the crevasse bends and becomes a hidden village. “If you took it off…”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him. “It doesn’t come off, thanks to you. The armor is part of me now.”
Roiven doesn’t say anything. He stares at me, his eyes burning, his black hair twisting in the wind.
Why is he pushing me so hard?
“Will you trust me, Cai?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because one of us will regret it. Either you’re evil, or I am.”
He blinks at me. For a moment Roiven almost looks confused. Then he offers me a sad, solemn smile.
“That doesn’t have to be true.”
“Of course it’s true. If there’s nothing wrong with your people, then I’m a monster.”
Whatever Roiven believes I am doesn’t absolve me of any of it. I still killed. I still wielded the blade, and charged into battle, and gloried in the victory.
“Or maybe you’re just what they made you to be, Cai,” he murmurs. “But who will you choose to be now? Who will you be today, and tomorrow?”
He doesn’t understand. I shake my head, tears welling.
“You have to hate me.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Roiven says.
“I can choose to believe in you. I can choose not to blame you, for not knowing the truth; for thinking you had no choice but to wage this war with all of its costs. What matters to me is what you do with the truth now. Will you look away, or keep facing it? That is where the test lies.”
What did I ever do to make him believe I’m more than his sworn enemy?
“I’m tired. I need to rest,” I snap. I turn and freeze. There’s a solid cliff in front of me, not a ravine with a village. And I feel the strangest certainty that I don’t want to go this way.
“Illusion,” Roiven says quietly. “You can just…”
Of course. They aren’t just hiding the villages behind stones. They’re using magic to make sure the Empire doesn’t look hard enough to find them anyways.
I cross through it before he can even finish.
The spell hums, a low, thrumming feel, as I pass through and step back into the ravine village.
I keep walking, as fast as I can without running.
I don’t dare look over my shoulder. If Roiven follows me, I don’t hear him.
I climb up the first ladder, and then the second to the long line of courtyards.
Nobody stops me or calls after me. I close the door to my room behind me and slide down the floor as my vision blurs with tears that I refuse to shed.
My armor is just armor, nothing more. Roiven is looking for excuses for me, and he’s not going to find one.
No matter how badly I want to carve out my own heart to make it right, I don’t see how I can ever fix all the lives I’ve broken.
And if he’s lying, and the witches are as evil as I’ve been taught—if everything I’ve seen so far is a carefully crafted lie to fool me—then I’m still evil, because…
I’m a witch.
My brain lets me think the words without immediately slamming me with pain.
I’m a mistake either way, and I don’t deserve any kindness. My head throbs, and then the pain returns, slowly at first, then building, like the drizzle that presages a storm. If I don’t forget before whatever witchcraft Roiven used fades, I’ll pay for that knowledge in agony.
I crawl into the bed, and I don’t get out for a full day.