Chapter 2 #2
She moved forward with false surety, brushing lightly past Quentin and Matheo; gave a small smile to Delaynie and Kiira; took Ciana’s outstretched hand and squeezed. Finally, she shifted around Trefor and stood beside the bed.
The bed where Feran lay, wrapped in bandages and swaddled by down blankets and pillows.
Where Feran indeed looked up at her, very much awake.
For the first time, something other than hollow grief rolled through her. A sob caught in the back of her throat—a sound of quiet relief, of knowing she didn’t have to say goodbye to another member of her family quite yet.
Feran cracked a crooked grin, his brown eyes crinkling.
Well, eye. Only one was visible, the other hidden under the wrapped bandages and thick gauze.
“No need to give me that look, Mariah. It’s just a scratch. Looks a whole lot worse than it is.”
Beside him, seated in a chair that hadn’t left Feran’s side since their arrival, Drystan snorted. “That’s not reassuring, considering it looks terrible.”
Feran’s grin stretched wider. “C’mon Drys,” he said. “Admit it. You love a man with scars.”
Drystan’s golden skin flushed furiously, and Mariah took the opportunity. She sank to her knees beside Feran’s bed, gripping his calloused hand in hers, the sheath of her dagger digging into her thigh. His attention returned to her, the humor in his eye fading to his familiar softness.
“Feran,” she said, voice hardly more than a whisper. “I am so, so sorry—”
“Sorry for what?” He tilted his head. “Sorry for doing everything you could for your family? Sorry for bringing us with you when you knew damn well none of us would’ve stayed behind?” He shifted, grimacing. Drystan perked up, concern etching across his brow, but Feran waved him off.
“You don’t get to apologize for my mistakes in battle. I should be the one apologizing to you—for falling when you needed me. For failing when I shouldn’t have.”
“You didn’t fail me, Feran.” Mariah squeezed his fingers. “I’m the one who failed you.”
Feran’s brow tightened. “Mariah—”
“No.” Mariah hung her head. Seeing Feran there, bandaged and covered with wounds that would mark him for the rest of his life, seeing the rest of her court who’d come so close to dying just a few short days ago. Her grief swelled around her relief, a tinge of self-loathing swallowing her with it.
“I failed all of you,” she said into the blankets.
Her voice was muffled but somehow clear; she had no doubts the silent room heard every word.
“We had a plan that day. A sound plan that would have avoided a confrontation with the Royals, would have gotten us all in and out. But more than that… I failed you because I failed to keep my family safe. I thought forgetting about them would keep attention away from them, but I was wrong. I always knew I was being a fucking fool, that I needed to bring them to the palace months ago. But I let my fear control me, and now…” A shudder wracked through her.
Her mind—her cruel, vicious, loathsome mind—finished the sentence for her.
And now your friends have been uprooted from their home, Feran is scarred, Andrian is taken from you, and your mother is dead.
“I’m…so sorry,” Mariah finished with another tearless sob, Feran’s hand warm against her cheek.
Someone shuffled behind her. A small body wrapped around her shoulders. “I know you feel guilty, Mariah,” Ciana murmured against her temple, squeezing her tight. “But it’s not your fault. None of us blame you for any of it.”
“If we could go back and do it all over again, right now…we would.” Quentin knelt on her other side, brushing a stray lock of her hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear.
“Even if we’d stuck to our original plan, it wouldn’t have mattered; it was all a trap from the beginning.
” His voice hardened. “But it was a trap that we would walk into over and over again. As many times as it took, because that was your family. You can try to take the blame, but the failure was ours, not yours.”
“I think we can pass the blame all day if we wish,” Sebastian said, “and it wouldn’t make any of us feel better. What matters now is how we move forward from here.”
Mariah took a deep, shaky breath and lifted her head, but she didn’t turn to Sebastian or Quentin or Ciana. Instead, she locked her gaze on Feran’s good eye, trying to read past all the steady kindness shining back at her.
“Don’t even think about it, my queen,” he said. “I am telling you my whole truth. There is nothing to forgive.”
Mariah didn’t answer. She just turned her attention to Drystan, his expression contemplative.
The second her eyes met his, any hardness he carried melted away. “Don’t look at me like that, either,” he said. “We all took the same vows. I didn’t involve myself with this idiot without knowing the risks.”
“Those vows had you swear your service to me, not your life.”
“I think we are remembering very different vows, Mariah.” Sebastian moved around the bed, halting beside Drystan. Trefor and Matheo followed, her Armature forming a ring, eyes locked on her.
Without as much as a shared glance, they spoke as one.
“On this day, and on every day of my life, I will answer your call, my queen. I swear my life, my sword, my shield, and my soul to you. I promise to be your armor against the world and to guard your back against those who might wish this kingdom harm.”
Mariah’s hands trembled, eyes burning as she forced a swallow down her closed throat.
Never would she deserve this. Never would she deserve them.
This type of loyalty did not belong to monsters and failures like her.
Drystan reached across the bed, resting a warm hand on hers still clenched around Feran’s. “That is the oath we swore. And we meant every word. No matter if it leads us to the depths of Enfara itself: if you call, we will answer. Your armor and your guard.”
The burning behind her eyes finally won. A tear broke free, rolling down her cheek. She fought against the tremor in her throat, against the wave of overwhelming feeling rattling through her. Ciana sniffled, quietly asking Delaynie for a handkerchief.
Something about that almost made Mariah smile.
Almost.
“Thank you,” she finally whispered, the words low and hoarse and gravelly in her throat.
She met the eyes of each of her Armature—those brave, selfless men who owed her nothing yet still gave her everything, even when she’d been nothing but a stranger.
A naive little girl they found themselves bound to for the rest of their now very long lives, and not once had they shown her anything but gratitude.
Feran’s eyes flashed over their group. His brow tightened, his arm tensing beneath Mariah’s fingers.
“Where’s Andrian?”
Everything stalled.
Broke.
Shattered.
All that blubbering, thankful happiness was scraped away, grief and loss returning like a wickedness that couldn’t be shaken. Every painful memory swarmed into her mind, couching her firmly back into her self-loathing and misery.
Her Armature, captured and shackled.
Her mother, bleeding out over a cursed black stone.
A great black dragon bursting out from Enfara, blocking out the sun.
Andrian, a love she was warned would be her weakness, staying behind to be a dark god’s plaything so the rest of them could escape.
Mariah blinked and the room came back into focus. Even through the haze of her despair, she felt their expectancy.
“He’s…” She cleared her throat, clamping hard around her pain. Forcing up that comfortable numbness, that blessed dissociation, she tried again. “He didn’t come to Kreah with us. He stayed.”
Feran’s lip lifted in a snarl. “Oh, that little fuck. I’ll kill him—”
“Feran.” Drystan’s interruption was firm. “It wasn’t his choice.”
Mariah could hardly listen as Drystan recounted the final events in Khento, telling Feran of all that happened after he was wounded and knocked unconscious. She sank into the void, her mind emptying of feeling until it was nothing but a shell.
Better than letting the pain drown her out and wash her away.
When Drystan finished, Feran turned back to her, dark-brown eyes soft once more. Delaynie, Kiira, and Rylla had joined them at the edge of the bed, Ciana still dabbing the corner of her eyes with her handkerchief, her expression devastated.
Mariah wondered distantly if she and the other girls had been told of all that had happened in Khento, or if they were learning of it right there with Feran.
Not that it mattered. They all knew now.
“Mariah?” Delaynie’s soft, fervent voice pulled her from the depths of her emptiness. “What’s the plan?”
Mariah blinked, finding everyone staring at her. Waiting. “What do you mean?”
“Your plan, Mariah,” Feran said gently. “To get Andrian back. How do you plan to do it? What can we do to help?”
The emptiness cracked. The void slipped. Grief wormed its way back in.
A part of Mariah’s soul splintered further as she mustered the words she’d been cowering from for days. “I don’t have a plan.”
Silence greeted her for a beat. “M.” Quentin gripped her shoulder. “I know it’s hard. I know you’re hurting. But we can’t just leave him there—”
“Stop, Quentin.” She shrugged him off, shock and hurt flashing in his bottle-green eyes. “I can’t think about it. I can’t. Because I know—I know we can’t leave him there. But I can’t… I can’t…”
The awful, shameful, devastating truth lurked right there, right on the tip of her tongue. Her heart caved in, reaching for that place deep within her, a place that once shone with so much beautiful, raging light.
“You can’t what, M? Tell us. Let us help you.” Sebastian’s earnestness finally pulled the truth from her throat.
“I can’t help him—I can’t save him. Because my magic…” Gods, it hurt, but she forced it out anyway.
“Because my magic is gone.”