Chapter 24
In the Sirael line, the gift manifested as light. Reis knew as much.
Mirielle was hiding her magic. She had been hiding it for over a decade. Hiding it from Orbin. Hiding it from himself and now as Reis lay in the tent after finally getting Mirielle to sleep after hours of her shaking against him, Reis was starting to realize what that cost her.
He watched a lamp burning above him, its light bathing Mirielle in a light that only seemed fitting.
Reis could guess why easily enough. The power to level battlefields, to turn cities to memory. Levels of destruction someone soft like Mirielle wasn't suited for.
She was gentle in a way the world rarely allowed. The kind of spirit who thanked horses after a long ride, who apologized for her own fears. Her wielding that kind of power felt wrong, cruel even.
And Mirielle...
His gaze drifted to her sleeping form curled beneath the blankets. Mirielle was not made for war.
Yet perhaps that was exactly why someone like Orbin would have wanted it. Not despite her softness, because of it. Because gentle people could be manipulated, controlled, convinced they owed the world pieces of themselves until nothing remained.
Getting her to sleep had taken hours. Still, she wasn't truly resting.
She lay curled beneath the blankets beside him.
Her breathing was uneven and choppy. Every so often a tremor would run through her body or her fingers would tighten in the furs as though fighting some nightmare she could not escape.
He remembered the night at the tavern after he had taken her from Ambersaith.
The way she begged someone to open the door.
The panic in her eyes and the sound of her uneven heart when she ran from that dark room.
At the time he had thought little of it.
She had woken in an unfamiliar place, had probably forgotten she wasn't in Ambersaith. He hadn't seen her fear then.
Then there was tonight. The way she made herself small beneath the fallen log.
The dirt packed beneath her nails. Her fingertips rubbed raw from clawing desperately at the earth.
The way she had fought him. Not because of the hounds, but because she thought he was someone else.
Someone else grabbing her from her bed. Someone else punishing her.
Reis closed his eyes.
He remembered the night she had lied to him.
The night she had told him she didn't have a gift and her fear when she said it.
He knew what he heard, the skip in her heart—it was distinct.
The same skip and flutter he heard whenever she told him she was okay when she clearly wasn't. And Reis had never been wrong.
The Sirael gift was light, actual light. Stories spoke of Siraels who could illuminate entire battlefields. They could turn night into day, their power shone so brightly it could be seen for miles. A woman with power over light should never have feared the dark.
Yet Mirielle did. Gods she feared it. Not the childish discomfort of someone startled by shadows. Real bone-deep fear. Old fear. The kind of fear that was born from years of repetition.
What had Orbin done to her?
The question had haunted him since Ambersaith. Now it weighed on him more heavily. Reis had thought about it relentlessly for weeks. Orbin was the only person in Ambersaith that could hold that kind of power over her. Not Gregorat or any other noble, at least not without Orbin's agreement.
The thought made his gut turn.
And now it was more urgent. Because now it wasn't Orbin she was hiding from. It was himself.
She had wanted to use her gift in that hollow. He was certain of it now. Just as she had probably wanted to use it a dozen other times over the past month but she hadn't because he had been there.
She shouldn't have to live hiding part of herself like this. But how could he show her? How could he convince her to trust him with it?
Reis brushed a strand of hair behind Mirielle's ear. She had felt safer with him over the past week. He had felt it, the way she curled into him when asleep, the way her body eased when he held her, the way her breathing steadied when he entered a room—little fragile things.
But he was still the Blood King. He had fought and killed and bled his way into forming his kingdom.
Quelling villages that had bent to Myrkur.
People whose fear of his cold outweighed their humanity.
Villages that had surrendered their neighbors, their friends, sometimes even their own children to keep themselves safe a little longer.
He had dragged it together with conquest and held it together with steel. His life was war and his war with Myrkur was far from over. He was gaining strength beyond the veil and the veil was weakening by the day.
For one horrible moment Reis remembered exactly why men like Orbin would try to control her. If her power was what the legends told, she could win a war, win battles he would otherwise lose, break sieges that could last years. The strategist in him knew the value immediately.
The thought made his stomach turn.
Mirielle was not a weapon, not a tool of war. She was a woman trying to live but was trapped trembling in the dark. She was made of peace, not war. She was made of quiet things, of soft snow on windowpanes, of gentle hands and curious questions, of wonder at the majesty of mountains.
War would only break her.
He looked down at her sleeping form. The tension in her face seemed carved from the warring world around her.
Her hair spread across his arm, her eyelashes still damp from the tears she cried.
Even now, exhausted beyond reason, her hand remained clenched in the blanket as if she expected someone to drag her awake.
No.
If she didn't want to use her power, so be it. It belonged to her. No king, no noble, no general, no god had the right to demand it from her. He would not let the world take any more from her, not her light, her wonder, her laughter, not a single damned piece.
He did not know exactly what Orbin had done, but one day he would. And when that day came, Orbin would pray Reis killed him quickly.
He would tear across his country, half-mad, angry and bloody. He would break armies, break kings and countries if there was even a chance he could make a world for her where her light wasn't threatened.
Beside him, Mirielle stirred in her sleep. Without hesitating, he rested his hand on her back. Her tension disappeared from her face.
And for just a little while, the shadows lost.
*
The next morning Mirielle woke to overwhelming birdsong. The sun was only just rising, its rays spilling through thick trunks and splaying warm light on the tarps above her.
For a moment she just listened to it. Felt the warmth of the sun, the heat from Reis's chest behind her. He had fallen asleep, his steady breathing held a deep rhythmic cadence, his face buried in her hair as if the scent of her allowed sleep to come to him.
Mirielle had learned that Reis rarely slept but he always slept the day after a battle. He was also a very light sleeper so she tried her best not to move.
They were alone in the tent. She could hear Lettie and Kellan talking and hushed voices outside around the fire. Dane was probably out patrolling the forest, fixing something or building. Always one of the three. She almost smiled at the thought. Almost.
Her thoughts went to the day before. She had reacted poorly. Shame twisted in her like a serpent spilling poison on her chest.
She had attacked Reis, left bleeding marks on his face.
She didn't know it was him at the time. She thought it was Gregorat, ripping her from her bed and shoving her into another box—one she would be trapped in for days, starving and thirsty and soiled and terrified in a space barely large enough for her to breathe.
Spending all of her energy stifling her light until she finally fell into the dark sleep again.
The memory raked at her chest. She curled into Reis on instinct. He let out a low sound before burying his face deeper in her neck.
Reis killed Gregorat. She had made herself look at his body that day, or at least what was left of it. She thought it would help knowing that he could no longer harm her. But if yesterday showed anything, it proved that it didn't.
She had tried to fix it. She would sleep with one less candle, make herself enter dark rooms. None of it ever helped push away the fear.
She tried to think of anything else. When she couldn't, she just resorted to focusing on the birdsong outside again, the sunlight and Reis's steady breathing.
She lay sleepily for a while, her eyes half-lidded before she noticed an unnatural heat coming from above her.
Her eyes wandered towards it. A lamp. Somebody had placed a lamp right next to her. They had turned the flame as brightly as it could go, illuminating her through the night. She didn't know who had done it, it could have been any one of them. Even Dane, she suspected, might do something like that.
Mirielle felt something warm unfurl inside her chest.
Reis stirred behind her. "Mirielle."
She turned to look at him.
He was propped on one elbow, blinking away sleep, his hair disheveled and his eyes only half open.
Yet all his attention was fixed on her.
"Why are you crying?"
Mirielle blinked.
"What?"
He lifted her hand to her face and her fingertip came away wet. She was crying. She hadn't even noticed.
"I'm okay."
Reis looked at her like she had told him the sky was green.
"Really."
She reached for her face to wipe her eyes. Reis gently caught her hand before she could. Then he slowly pushed a kiss into her knuckle. It melted something in her.
"I was happy," she admitted quietly as another tear escaped her.
The concern in his face softened. She wasn't lying. She really was happy.
"Good." His voice was still rough with sleep. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his palms before pushing himself upright.
"Let's get you breakfast." He stood and started grabbing plates from the packs nearby.
Mirielle wrapped herself in Reis's cloak before climbing out of the tent. The morning in the forest was damp and green. Not the soft light greens that swayed with the wind in the countryside, but a dark damp green, one that promised life and water.
The sun's shafts seeped through the massive trees. Snow melted from the treetops, spilling onto the warm floor like golden rain.
For a moment Mirielle was breathless. It was beautiful. Intimidating but beautiful, like she had stumbled upon a secret magical place where mornings hid.
Lettie was hunched over a cookfire turning sausages on a spit with intense concentration.
It had taken two hours of arguing and three burnt meals for Kellan to finally accept that letting Lettie cook was necessary for their survival.
Kellan had been given the job of cutting apples, deemed one of the only culinary jobs acceptable for his skill set.
Dane was pulling leaves off a small herb he had found and putting them into a pouch. He glanced at Mirielle, frowned slightly and immediately returned to his work.
Nobody was talking. Mirielle knew why. Her eyes lowered as she thought about retreating into the tent but Reis was already behind her with his hand on her lower back, gently barring her from doing so.
Mirielle rubbed her thumbs and carefully took her seat next to the fire. Reis sat next to her and wrapped an arm around her. The pressure of the silence weighed heavily on Mirielle. She wouldn't look anyone in the face, instead she just watched the fire.
Kellan felt it was his duty to end the torment.
Unfortunately.
He looked at the lantern inside the tent. A grin appeared. "Oh good." Mirielle looked up at him. "I was worried we would run out of sun."
Dane frowned.
Lettie groaned.
Reis glared at him in quiet warning.
Kellan continued anyway.
"I've been thinking, we need at least seven lanterns."
"Kellan," Reis warned.
"No, hear me out. Seven lanterns and a small sun. We can tie it to Maisey and be seen from every kingdom."
Mirielle lowered her eyes immediately. "Oh." The smile slipped from Kellan's face. "I'm sorry." The words came out small, distressed. Mirielle's shoulders tensed. "I know it's foolish. I try to hide it from people."
Reis's expression darkened rapidly.
Kellan looked horrified. Not teasing horrified, genuinely unabashedly horrified. "Mirielle." His voice was gentle.
She looked up sheepishly.
He pointed a finger at her. "You are not allowed to apologize anymore."
She blinked.
"What?"
"You are terrible at it."
"I'm sor..."
"No."
Kellan pointed harder.
Mirielle pursed her lips.
"Done, finished, banned."
"But I..."
"No."
"I only..."
"No."
He leaned forward. "Any time you want to apologize it requires written approval from all of us." He waved his hand vaguely at the clearing.
Lettie tried to hide a smile.
"What?"
"Official approval."
She blinked at him.
"With witnesses."
Dane looked suspiciously amused.
Mirielle glanced around the fire, confusion clearly painted on her face.
Kellan's expression gentled into something soft.
"You don't apologize for being afraid." All the humor had left his voice. "You don't apologize for being hurt." He glanced at the single lantern in the tent. "And you certainly don't apologize because we decided to carry extra light instead of watching you suffer."
Mirielle looked down at the fire.
"Oh."
Kellan smiled again. "See?" Kellan said leaning back. "Much better. Excellent progress."
Mirielle blinked a few times.
Reis hid a smile under his hand. Dane smiled into his work. Mirielle felt heat creep into her cheeks as something warm grew in her chest as she experienced what it felt like to be cared for.