Chapter 38
I don’t know which one of us started holding the other’s hand, but when I wake up to knocking on the door, Roiven’s fingers are loosely intertwined with mine, the lines of our bond touching. I blink groggily awake. Our eyes meet, and then he draws his hand back and rises from the bed.
I cover my face with my living hand in embarrassment.
This shouldn’t be as comfortable as it is.
But it’s nice to know that if I burst into flame, the man next to me can do something about it.
And after a lifetime in the Empire… it's nice to feel for the first time that somebody is seeing the real me.
Roiven’s room is similar to the one I was staying in, before I burnt it all to ash.
The colors in his are darker, blues and silvers, and while everything is tidily put away it has a lived-in look that mine didn’t.
Books and journals and notes on the desk, an empty wineglass on the table next to a lounging chair.
“Aveinor,” Torain gasps when Roiven opens the door.
The white-haired witch sounds out of breath.
Slowly, I slip my feet off the side of the bed and sit up.
Torain’s eyes slide away from Roiven’s and widen at the sight of me.
“They’re going after Aveinor,” he repeats, but I’m the one he’s staring at. I guess he didn’t hear about the fire.
“Fuck. How far?” Roiven asks.
“Just started moving, but there’s no mistaking it. They’re headed in a straight line.”
“Aveinor?” I ask from the bed, then bite my tongue. Maybe I shouldn’t interrupt. They’ve been strategizing far longer than I have.
“The village,” Roiven tells me, and he doesn’t sound annoyed that I spoke.
My heart goes cold. I don’t know how powerful Nor is, but surely they can’t hold off the Hellion fleet by themselves.
“Can we make it in time?” I ask.
“If the gods are willing. Get everyone assembled,” Roiven snaps. Torain nods and leaves.
“I want to come.”
Roiven spares me a glance, his jaw tight and his eyebrows furrowed.
“I need to change,” is all he says. I close my eyes and stretch as he begins to strip. Drawers open and slam shut. A moment later I open my eyes as I hear Roiven’s footsteps approach.
He pauses in front of me. The witch is fully dressed, in his usual dark clothes and leather. His arms are raised as he knots his dark hair back out of his handsome face.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he says. My throat tightens.
“You don’t have to worry what side I’m on.”
“I know. It’s not that. It’s just, well, your arm.” He finishes tying his hair and folds his arms across his chest.
My arm. I grit my teeth and look away from him.
“Am I that hideous?” I try to make it sound like a joke, but it comes out strained, and anyways Roiven can probably feel the shame flooding me.
“Hideous?” he breathes. The witch steps closer. His hand reaches toward my face, then drops abruptly, like he’s thought better of touching me. “Of course not. But you fight right-handed. And today, in the fire… if you’d still had your armor, you could’ve escaped through the vent, couldn’t you?”
Ah. Of course. He thinks I’m weak.
“Either my magic’s the important part of me, or it isn’t,” I tell him stiffly. Roiven shakes his head.
“All of you is the important part. I’m not doubting you, Caiteven. It’s just that Torain could make you a new one, so that you can use all your skills. But we have to leave now, if we’re going to reach them… so the two of you could stay back, or…”
I was part of the imperial forces long enough that I do have to think about it. I know better than to give in to pure emotion at a time like this. Without my sword arm, my entire strength is through my familiar, who I can’t currently reach, and the magical power I still have no idea how to control.
Protecting the Tower might be the fight that matters most. The majority of their people are here. If Roiven and the others can reach Aveinor fast enough to evacuate them, by the time the real battle happens…
“You’ll stay?” Roiven asks quietly.
But what if they face down the Hellions, and I’m not there to do anything about it? Roiven thinks my power is enough to make a difference. And I don’t know if he’s right or if he’s just fishing for moonlight, but I don’t have anything else to believe in right now.
I’ve spent my life trying to destroy my own people. And now, it’s time I risked my life to keep them safe.
“No. I’m going to come with you.”
I brace myself for him to refuse, to tell me he was just trying to let me down softly. But instead, Roiven nods. His expression is deadly serious.
“Equipment. Do you need anything? Your sword?”
It’s still in my room. I didn’t even check what happened to it in the fire. I like the feel of its weight at my side. And I can fight left-handed, even if I’m not as good. But it was an imperial sword, given to me by the War-Father himself. And if I can’t trust the armor…
“I don’t suppose you have a blade I could borrow instead?”
Roiven's firm expression crooks into a smirk.
He turns on his heel and walks to a tall wooden cabinet that takes up the better part of one of his large room’s walls. The handle clicks as he swings both doors open wide, and I gape at the armory inside. There must be two dozen swords here, not to mention the daggers.
“Why do you have so many weapons?”
Roiven steps aside as I approach, running my eyes over the hilts.
Sheathed, I can’t tell much about them, but the metalwork on just what’s visible is beautiful.
One is worked to look like a twisted branch, but I can see how it would fit neatly in a hand.
Another has a large purple gemstone set into the pommel.
“An interest of mine.”
“Collecting them?” I reach for a blade in the middle that looks like a good length for my style of fighting.
It’s got a one-handed grip, with an s-shaped crossguard.
The pommel looks like a scallop shell, which makes my heart ache around the empty hole the kraken left.
The scabbard is lightweight, red-gold wood, with metal accents.
“Making them,” Roiven says. I turn to look at him in surprise, the sword in hand. He offers me a grim smile and grabs the scabbard so I can pull the sword free one-handed.
It's damnably beautiful.
“You made this?” I ask. I hold the blade up in front of me. The steel is thin, and folded so many times the smooth surface seems to ripple. It’s lightweight. Easy to cut things with a sword this fine, though a higher chance of the blade breaking.
I step back from Roiven and swing it in a quick figure eight.
The movement feels clumsy in my left hand, but the blade is nicely balanced.
I find myself wishing I’d spent more time practicing with my left hand.
But the movement isn’t entirely foreign, and I at least don’t embarrass myself in front of him.
I can hold my own this way, so long as my opponent isn’t very good.
“I made that one for you.”
“What?” I nearly drop the sword as I turn back to look at him, eyes wide.
“Not for you,” Roiven quickly amends, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that his cheeks look a little red.
“After we fought. When I was having nightmares, wondering if there were others, or if I should have kept you alive. I poured everything I was feeling into making that blade, and then I outvoted the rest of the coven and began sneaking onto Hellions.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Something must be wrong with Roiven if a woman who tried to kill him inspired him enough to make a blade this pretty. The witch clears his throat and holds the scabbard up. I slide the blade back into it, refusing to meet his eyes.
“Do you want help fastening the belt?” he offers. His voice is tight.
But I can tell he wants to. Every part of him is full of longing.
“I might,” I admit, as much for my sake as his. Maybe I could figure doing it out one-handed—it isn’t like I’m useless—but I’m new to life without my enchanted arm, and there’s no need to waste time.
He fetches a leather belt, then pauses in front of me, belt in one hand and sword in the other. Roiven stares at my waist for a second, then up to my eyes.
“Would you rather someone else did this?”
“No. I mean, if you don’t have time…”
“It won’t take long, I just wasn’t certain…”
Gods, we’re being as awkward as children with a first crush. As if just last night he wasn’t inside me. As if we aren’t married, whether or not I agreed to it.
“Put the sword on for me. Please,” I interrupt.
Roiven steps close, and I feel my mouth go dry as my heart beats a marching rhythm. He reaches around me, his arm grazing my hip as he threads the belt between my right arm and my waist. I lift my living arm quickly and clear my throat.
He slides the scabbard onto the belt and tightens the leather across my waist. One of Roiven’s palms holds the buckle in place just below my navel. I stare at his collar.
“Would your arm be easier in a sling?”
“Maybe.” I barely get the word out. He nods sharply, finishes with the belt, and turns to another one of the cabinets.
There’s a tall mirror along the wall. I sidestep until I can see myself in it, and freeze.
I don’t know what to make of the woman staring back at me.
He told me last night that my eyes were burning, but I was too exhausted after we made it upstairs to see for myself.
My iris rages with deep blue fire. Crackling, shifting, writhing.
It glows so brightly that blue light colors the top of my cheekbone and the ridge above my eyes.
I look like I belong here. I look like I’m one of them.
I’m not used to my right arm yet, and it’s strange to see the thin limb instead of the armor I used to wear. The hair growing on the left side of my scalp is a tangled mess from being slept on wet. The sword is on the wrong side of my body, so I can draw it with my left hand.
But as unfamiliar as I look… all of it feels, somehow, completely right. I’m seeing myself, not who the War-Father made me into.