Chapter 12
My wet clothes hit the floor with a sloppy thump.
Shivering, I wrung out my hair—again—over them, seawater dripping onto the pile.
A round brazier on the floor warmed the ship’s small cabin, but gooseflesh speckled my skin anyway.
With trembling hands I pulled a wet rag from the basin of fresh water and wiped salt from my skin, then, still damp, grabbed the clean, dry clothes set on the narrow bed for me—a simple shift, a simple dress.
I tugged them on and tied up the front laces before again wringing out my hair.
It always took forever to dry. I’d worry about the salt later.
Yet even with warm clothes and a lit brazier, I trembled. I stared at my quivering hands as though they were not my own. Forced them to still even as my heart pounded against my chest.
Hope flickered through my heart connection just before a soft rap sounded at the door. Breath catching, anxiety fleeing, I ran to it and flung it open. Renn stood there, changed into a common soldier’s uniform, damp hair sticking to his forehead, a small tray of food balanced on one hand.
I burrowed into him right there, chest to chest, absorbing the warmth of him, the realness of him. His free arm circled me and held me tightly. Almost too tightly, but I didn’t care. If he crushed me into nothing, it would be a good death.
He felt different. Thicker. Smelled different, like sea and leather and black powder. But I felt that golden cord between us, taut as a lute string. Felt his familiar heart beating hard over mine.
We stood like that for several minutes before he murmured, “You’re cold, Nym,” and let go, grasping my hand to pull me to the brazier.
“I’m fine,” I said.
A soft smile touched his perfect mouth. “I can feel you’re cold.” He looked at me knowingly as he set the tray aside and guided me to sit on the floor by the hot coals. “And I can feel that you’re hungry.”
“I don’t want to eat,” I lied, gripping his hand.
He met my eyes, his own so blue and . . .
sad. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in five months.
Through our bond, I felt, first, love, and the relief of it warmed me all on its own.
But with it, guilt. Intense guilt, growing up as thorns.
I’d felt guilt from him throughout our time apart, but it seemed more potent now.
Why? What had he done?
I let him go; he moved the tray to the floor and knelt beside me. I grabbed the apple straight away and sank my teeth into it, the sweetness of it shocking me. How long had it been since I’d eaten an apple? I couldn’t remember.
I devoured it, that worm of guilt inching through me. When I finished, I asked, “Eden?”
“She’s safe.”
I crumpled in on myself, the news releasing a tension I didn’t realize I’d been carrying. “I’m so glad,” I whispered, picking up a piece of bacon. “She told you? Where I would be?”
He nodded, studying my face like a painting, relearning it. “She came into Toke on a fisherman’s boat. My men found her and brought her to Derren.”
Gods, it felt so good to hear his voice. I wanted desperately to wrap myself up in him. To fall asleep to that voice. Talking to me, reading to me, anything. “Derren?”
“An old fortress we’ve retaken. Where we’re headed now.
” He cleared his throat. “I . . . I felt you there, Nym. In Rodsfell. You were so afraid . . .” His voice squeezed, and he swallowed.
“I knew you were in Klepton. We’d been holding back, but I knew you were there, felt you were there, so I had them fire. ”
The sound of the cannons echoed in my mind. That glimmer of hope through our bond. Tears pricked my eyes. “Thank you.”
He reached forward, cupping the side of my face. I leaned into the touch. Put my hand over his and savored the warmth of his skin. Turned my face and kissed his palm.
His guilt spiked in me. Larger thorns, sharper.
I hesitated, fear clenching my stomach. “What did you do, Renn?”
He searched my face. “What do you mean?”
“It works two ways.” Leaning forward, I pressed a hand against his heart. “What did you do?”
My mind twisted through all the possibilities.
Maybe he’d razed an entire city, women and children included.
Maybe he’d found solace with another woman during these long months.
Maybe he intended to take me home to Fount and leave me there, indefinitely.
The possibilities were a vise around my ribs, squeezing, squeezing—
“What did I do?” he repeated, emotion choking his voice to just above a whisper.
“Nym, I did this. I handed you right to him. I left you, and you . . .” He pulled away, turning his head.
The apple of his neck bobbed. Red rimmed his eyes.
“And I felt everything he did to you.” He ran a hand back through his hair.
“All this gods-damned power, and I couldn’t protect the one person I love most.”
My chest gaped like an open hole. Heat prickled my face. “Renn, no. It’s not your fault. None of this is your doing.”
He shook his head, eyes glimmering.
I shoved the tray away and rose to my knees, grabbing his shoulders. “None of this is your fault. Look, see? I’m fine. All in one piece. All—”
My voice cut off as I thought of Ursa. Gone forever. Left with that man in the darkness of the dungeon.
He wouldn’t be able to keep her like I had. She’d hurt him and then dissipated into the other side, where my parents preceded her. At least there was that. At least she’d have them. Still, I felt the chasmal emptiness she’d left like an open wound.
Renn knit his fingers through mine, stitching up the cut, and I settled down beside him.
“All this power,” I repeated, looking him over. He didn’t glow, outside his usual, very human radiance. No golden shimmer, no light-woven wings. “You’re so . . . healthy.”
A dry chuckle escaped him. “Of course I am, Nym. More or less.”
My joy faltered. “More or less?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t relapsed.” He paused, that guilt twisting and shredding between us. “Truly, I’m better than I’ve ever been, but . . .”
As though to punctuate it, he pressed a fist to his lips and coughed. It clicked and rattled, but no blood passed his lips.
Immediately I put my hands to his jaw, dowsed—
And gasped.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. More majestic than Sestan mountains, more glorious than a sunlit sea, more riveting than an autumn sunset. I’d never gotten to step back and see the whole of it, before . . .
Gods-touched. I believed it absolutely, now.
I stood in a brilliantly lit wall-less room, colored orbs of all shapes and sizes orbiting one another, glimmering like starlight and a sheen not unlike the surface of a pearl.
They turned and twisted around one great center sphere, about three feet in diameter, which pulsed every color of the rainbow and beyond, colors I’d never experienced before and couldn’t possibly describe with any human tongue.
All the connections were made of gold and light, not unlike what Renn glowed with when I’d first healed him, or when he’d dove into the Midly Strait after me.
Marveling, I walked around the entirety of it, my mind struggling to comprehend this chandelier of globes.
Even if I were to cut their likeness from precious stones, I could not re-create the wonder of it.
The size of it. The way each orb pulsed with warmth, with power.
It was enough to make the hardest of men weep. This was prophecy. This was salvation.
And all of it, riddled with scars.
Every glassy orb had marks on it. Some like dried glue, others like spiderwebs.
Though the spheres were whole, every break Adoel Nicosia had inflicted upon him remained there.
I cupped a smaller bauble in my hands and pressed my thumbs into it, expecting the glass to shatter, but to my relief, it held.
Pulling magic into my fingertips, I tried to smooth away the scars, but the magic didn’t take.
There was no effect, no matter how much magic I summoned.
Stepping back, I reveled in the wonder of him a little longer before shifting back into the ship’s cabin. The wooden walls looked dingy and decrepit in comparison.
“You have scars,” I whispered, searching his face. “It’s utterly beautiful, but you have so many scars.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. He clasped my hand in his own. “You have done so much for me, Nym.”
“But—”
“But this is who I am.” He squeezed. “It will always be part of me.”
I swallowed hard, drawn into the blueness of his gaze.
That half smile dropped. “What are you nervous about?”
That’s right, he could feel that, couldn’t he? There would be no secrets between us. Then again, this relationship had been built on honesty.
But I didn’t want to tell him, not yet. It would break this spell between us. I wanted to hold on to this a little longer.
Instead, I said, “The healing held.” I touched his shoulder again, his chest, his stomach. He let out a shuddering breath. “You’re all here. But I’m confused. I haven’t felt your symptoms. Any of them.” Because they’d been magically induced? I wasn’t sure.
Memory of agonizing pain through our connection came to mind. Pressing my fingertips into his side, I asked, “What happened here?”
He slouched. The thorns reappeared. “Of course you felt that, too.”
“Renn.” I forced sternness into his name. “What happened?”
“Spear,” he answered. “Sestan spear at Molls.”
“I don’t know it.”
“North of Rove,” he explained. “I rallied them, after you left. The army, the troops. I sent spies north to find you. They never did. Or, if they did . . . they never made it back.” A deep breath punctuated the sentence.
“We fought. We haven’t reclaimed Rove, but we’ve driven them out elsewhere.
Molls, Speth.” He turned fully toward me. “Nym, what did you do?”
“In Rodsfell?”
“To me,” he enunciated. “Like you said, it’s held. The sickness . . . it’s nothing like it was. But . . . I’m hardly normal.”
I smiled. “You can fly.”