Chapter Twenty #2
“Don’t look so shocked, skylark. Zephyr occasionally mates with the wild mares that roam the beaches of the Leeward Port.
His offspring are only half Paexyri, resulting in a rather apparent lack of wings on Onyx.
” He twirls the stick in his fingers absently.
“But I’m sure you’ve noticed how swift his gait, how long his range.
They far exceed that of a normal horse.”
That is true. No ordinary mount could run tirelessly for days on end. Yet in all the many occasions I have spent astride him, Penn has never said a word about it.
Is it possible he himself does not know Onyx’s lineage?
“How did a half-Paexyri colt end up in Caeldera?” I ask.
“I gave him to Pendefyre about a century ago. A gift to celebrate the new alliance we’d struck between our two kingdoms.” Soren says this in a casual way, as though it is nothing of importance.
“Penn…” I shake my head. “He never told me.”
His hands still on the birch. There is a brief moment of stilted silence. “Why would he? Stories that paint me in a more generous light rarely seem to be circulated within the volcanic walls of the Fire Court.”
“That’s unfair.”
The twig snaps cleanly in two. “Is it?”
“Many still speak of how you aided the city during the Battle of Fyremas. I saw myself how valiantly you fought, defending people who were not even your own.”
He looks at me then—a look so intent, it makes my mouth parch and my stomach flutter with nerves. “Tell me, skylark. Why is it you are able to recognize the valor in my actions while defending Caeldera, but you can see only horror when it comes to your own?”
“That’s not the same,” I say immediately.
“No?” He tosses the snapped stick aside.
“Your defense of Hylios protected my people from harm. How is that any different from what I did on Fyremas? Or, for that matter, what you yourself did?” His eyes narrow in frustration.
“Why can you defend Pendefyre’s court without thought, but view yourself as a monster for protecting mine? ”
“It was not without thought.” I swallow thickly. “Trust me, I do not ever take lives without thought. Each death weighs heavily on me. Or…they did.”
He waits for me to go on, not interrupting. Merely listening.
“What scares me most is that it is becoming easier. The taking of lives. The weighing of morals.” My voice shakes, though I take pains to steady it.
“I look at my hands—the same hands I once used to heal—and see only the blood that stains them. I look in the mirror and do not recognize the woman I am becoming.”
“Rhya—”
I cannot bear the softness of his tone. “Must we talk about this?”
“We can either talk about this or we can talk about what happened last night at the Kettle.”
My teeth click shut so harshly, I nearly bite off the tip of my tongue. I would sooner carve it from my mouth voluntarily than discuss last night with him.
“Well?” he prompts.
Infernal hells.
I suck in a steadying breath. “I am not like Arwen or Yara or any of the other daring Paexyrian. I am not a warrior by nature. I do not want to be. I don’t believe in killing recklessly, or crowing when the enemy is felled.
And yet…I cannot help but worry, the longer I am immersed in this world of yours, the more I will lose my grip on the virtues that once guided my life. ”
Soren contemplates this for a long time, thoughts simmering in his eyes. “Morality is well and good, as lodestars go,” he says finally, his voice quiet. “Shame, on the other hand, is not.”
Shame?
My spine goes stiff. “I am not ashamed.”
“You live like you are. And I would wager it dictates your choices just as much as your sense of right and wrong. Maybe more.”
I shake my head. “No. No, that’s…”
Not true, I want to say.
But the lie will not come out.
“Who was it?” Soren asks darkly. “Who was it who taught you to hide the best parts of yourself away in fear that they might be judged?”
I flinch.
His jaw tightens, a muscle leaping in his cheek.
“You were born extraordinary, then forced to live as less than ordinary. To camouflage at all costs. But you, Rhya Fleetwood…you were made to stand out. To rise above every convention, every average, every metric. There is not a single ordinary bone in your body.”
I want to retort, but I am too tongue-tied to speak. In my head, I hear a familiar refrain. My mentor’s voice whispering in the oldest of my memories.
Best keep your mark covered, Rhya.
Best not allow anyone too close, Rhya.
Best try to blend in, Rhya.
“I was not there with you, so I do not know when, exactly, you learned to cower and conceal,” Soren goes on. “I do not pretend to know what it was like to be raised as you were, a maegical being in a mortal land—”
“A halfling,” I correct coarsely.
“What?”
“I was not a maegical being. I was a halfling, marked for death from my first breath. My ears were bad enough. An anomaly, a disfigurement. My Remnant mark was the direst of secrets. An execution order carved into my very flesh, should the wrong person see it.” I clench my fists, nails scoring deeply into my palms. “You are right. You cannot understand. You will never understand. And if I was raised to hide…So what? My mentor, Eli, did that to keep me safe. He protected me without a second thought to his own fate. You may brand that secrecy as shame, but that shame is what kept me alive. That shame is what led me here, to this moment with you. I will not condemn Eli for inspiring it.”
“You can find fault without condemnation. My own father, gods rest him, was not a perfect man.” He blows out a breath, leaning more firmly against the trunk.
“I worshipped him. And he in turn loved me tremendously. Yet that same love did not extend to my mother, whose heart he broke seemingly in slow motion, one ill-concealed affair at a time, until she was too bitter to love anyone at all. Even her children.”
I sit with that for a moment. Digesting his words. Feeling, not for the first time, that there are deep ocean currents running through the very heart of this man. Ones he rarely allows to reach the surface.
“I did not know your mentor,” he concedes. “Eli, was it?”
I nod.
“I am sorry you lost him. More, I’m sorry I will not ever get the chance to meet him.
To thank him, for keeping you alive all those years.
And for shaping you into the rather miraculous creature you’ve become.
” He pauses for a beat, shoulder pressing against mine—a solid, supportive weight.
“You say you cannot recognize the woman looking back at you in the mirror. That’s no surprise.
A butterfly cannot ever recall how much it has changed since the cocoon, nor can she see the beauty of her own wings.
Only those standing by watching, waiting, can appreciate her evolution. ”
My heart convulses as though he’s wrapped his fist around it.
No one has ever, in all my life, said something like that to me.
Hearing it unlocks something deep inside.
The gnawing sense of self-doubt I have been too scared to face head-on; the growing shame that has indeed been festering inside me for months now—not just since the Frostlander battle but since Fyremas.
His words spiral through me, deeper and deeper, until they reach that pit of doubt and self-disgust, dislodging them and settling in their place.
Filling me with something warm and strong and sure instead.
I breathe deeply until the emotions he’s stirred are subdued enough to speak. “I just don’t want…” I swallow hard, voice clogged with unshed tears. “I don’t want Eli looking down at me from the aether with disappointment.”
“Impossible.” His shoulder presses harder, underscoring his words.
“No one is perfect, Rhya. Not even the dead, who we all have a nasty habit of placing on pedestals and enshrining in heavenly light. If he is worthy of your descriptions, he will not find fault in your choices. For he will know, even up there in the skies, that they are guided by your heart.”
“He loved me,” I say, my voice breaking as a single tear rolls down my cheek. “He is the only one who ever loved…me.”
Soren is silent. But I feel something through the bond—something I am too overwhelmed to process—as he reaches over and brushes the teardrop away with the pad of his thumb. A second later, he is on his feet, one hand extended down to me.
“Enough heaviness for one afternoon. Debauchery awaits.”
The moment our boots hit the crystalline bathhouse floor, Soren’s entire demeanor shifts—frame stilling with tension, jaw locking tight.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s here,” he mutters, moving soundlessly toward the exit.
I trail after him as quietly as I can manage, not daring to ask anything else as we move across the stone bridge into the gardens where the night-blooming flowers pinch their white petals closed against the late afternoon sunshine.
I strain my ears, trying to pick up on whatever so alarmed Soren, but can detect nothing unusual.
It is not until we round the bend in the path that leads up to the terrace that I hear something banging from the vicinity of the kitchen. It sounds like…
Pots and pans?
Soren shoots me a look as we cross the terrace toward the archway that leads inside, lifting his finger to his mouth to indicate I should keep quiet. I roll my eyes in response.
Does he think I’m about to start caterwauling?
His lips twitch, but flatten into a severe frown as we step over the threshold and prepare to confront the intruder. All at once, the tension bleeds out of him.
“Vaughn!”
The half-brother.
The half-Titan.