Chapter 26 Valenna #2
Evander looked down at her with an expression of surprise, and she gazed into his eyes—so familiar, so gentle.
Impossible to think of him as Evandaine, the warrior son of a queen of death.
He was just Evander—her Evander. She’d wrestled dragons with him; held open a snarling hydra’s jaws while he lay between its teeth; tended his broken head.
But could she go to Cobblepine with him? Bare her side to the sword for him? She would be walking practically to her father’s front door.
“Look, Val,” Evander said with practiced placidity. She knew him, and this is what he did when he was about to say something logical and unpleasant. “The sanctuary is on the border of Sennalaith. In the mountains. You’ll be able to stare out over the horizon and see your father’s kingdom.”
Valenna held onto the stump like it might buck her off. “If my father finds me and discovers who you are, he’ll use you against me. He’ll do something horrific and unthinkable to you, and I’ll be helpless to resist him.”
“I know,” Evander whispered. “My mother would do the same.”
She thought of her father—his thirst for vengeance so violent he’d sacrificed thousands of lives on the altar of his rage. She remembered the last time she’d seen him.
“I want you to find Prince Evandaine on the battlefield and kill him,” he had said. “I want to push Marwenna to her darkest.”
If Cadmus learned that she loved the son of his greatest enemy, he would not spare Evander.
He would toy with him, like a cat with a mouse, and then he would kill him.
Torture, starvation, and then a tidy public execution in Stratus, so everyone in Sennalaith and Ashkendor could witness Cadmus’s superiority over Marwenna.
And he would make Valenna watch — helpless and despairing. He would give her a front seat to every horror until she was driven out of her mind.
“It is too dangerous,” Valenna said, shuddering and trying to shut the door on these dark imaginings. “I can’t risk you. It’s reckless.”
Evander knelt in front of her. “I would risk my own life, my own safety, and my own freedom to be with you, but I will not risk yours.”
She dug her nails into the bark under her, peeling it from the stump until her fingers were dirty, her nails packed. “I feel the same.”
“Then we need to consider this with clear heads …”
“Whenever you say things like that, it makes me want to scream …”
“We need to be practical,” he persisted. “And the wise thing to do is go …” he faltered, then steadied his voice. “… go our separate ways.”
“But how can I let you go on this journey alone?” she said, choking on tears. They surprised her; she never cried.
He leaned forward and cradled her face between his hands. “I’m not yours to worry about anymore.”
She gripped his wrists and pulled his hands to her chest, where she pressed them against her heart. “A part of you will always belong to me, and a part of me will always be yours.”
“Our destinies are not intertwined. It wasn’t meant to be. But know that you were the first woman I ever loved … and the last.”
“Stop that,” she snapped, and a tear trickled down her cheek. The trees glowed brighter, their light pulsing on his face. “You’re going to find wyvern bone powder at the sanctuary, and you’re going to live long enough to be bitten in half by a dragon, like I always said you would.”
He smiled sadly.
She swallowed her tears, plunging them into the pool of anger she kept swirling under her breastbone. Anger didn’t hurt less than grief, but it was a pain she understood.
He was right. She needed to let him go so she could find her sister. So she could punish her father. Because this was her father’s fault.
This was his mother’s fault.
This was her fault.
But oh, how her father would pay for this loss. She would tend her anger like a garden until she could cut the flowers to poison Cadmus with.
“Come, let’s get some sleep,” Evander said, drawing her to her feet.
She followed him into the hut.
A glowing rain pattered on the hut roof, the drops luminous sapphire. Valenna awoke with a start, sitting up on the little cot and looking around frantically for Evander.
Torsten sat at the table, peeling carrots, and Evander crouched in the light of the stove, packing his rucksack.
“Will you send them a letter,” Evander was saying to the wizard, “so they know I wasn’t eaten?”
“Certainly,” Torsten replied.
“Were you leaving without saying goodbye again?” Valenna demanded.
“I was debating if I should wake you.”
“Yes, Vander, you should wake me.”
Evander stood, the firelit limning his face. It struck her that she might never see him again. “Be safe on your journey home,” he said.
“If you find more powder, will you write me?” she asked.
“I will.”
A fraught silence settled over the room, thick enough to scoop with a ladle.
Valenna had to grip the cot to prevent herself from leaping up and throwing her arms around him.
Pressing her lips to his. It made sense, kissing him goodbye, but she feared that if she touched him, she would never let herself be wrested away, all her good sense and logical platitudes forgotten.
A vein in Evander’s forehead showed, and he made a nervous motion, like he might lunge forward and embrace her. She wished he would. But he let out a short breath and said, in a tight voice, “Safe journey,” before striding out into the rain.
Valenna drew up her knees and covered her face with her hands, choking on the urge to call him back.
Tiny belladonna flowers bloomed around her feet, releasing a noxious violet-hued steam.
Biting her tongue, willing herself not to run after him, she listened as Hera’s grumbles and heavy footsteps faded into the forest.
Your parents are at war. Your father will use him against you. It cannot be. It cannot be. It cannot be.
Her heart was stretching, like a corner of it was tied to Evander, and every step he took pulled it tighter, ready to snap.
Valenna focused on her breathing, listened to the rain, tried to ground herself, but she wanted to shriek and throw something. She wanted to cut something. Thorns wound over her, binding her to the bed.
“This magic of yours,” Torsten said. His voice startled her. “It is like balancing a pot of boiling water against your chest.”
She glanced out the window. The trees shook down their tears; Bernice danced through the canopy, singing to herself. Evander was gone.
“You’ve met Bernice, I assume,” Torsten asked.
“I have heard stories.”
“She is the product of dark magic swallowed and digested until it turns to clear blood and an unbeating heart. Your magic is the same as hers, I think. Very much the same.”
In the distance, Bernice’s laugh was a deep rumble, like water rolling over boulders.
Torsten considered her as one might contemplate a blight on a leaf, and she felt as though he saw through her to the well of dark inside. She pulled the blankets up, as though they would block his view into her heart.
“You cannot be healed if you hold to your brokenness like a knife you clutch by the blade. Why don’t you let it go?”
“I’m saving it. Shouldn’t my father pay for making me like this?”
Torsten’s knife slipped, and he nicked his finger.
He held it up, a drop of blood falling to the table.
“Anger is not water in a channel, turning to the will of the lochman. Anger is a disease. You can wish your illness would strike your worst enemy as you pass him in the street, but more likely it will spread to the person with whom you share your bed.”
Valenna wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear him.
Torsten continued, regardless. “Sit with your wrath for a night, but in the morning, let it go. It has been many nights and many mornings. It is time for you to release it.”
“Anger,” Valenna snapped, “is power.”
“Anger,” the wizard corrected, “is weakness.”
“And you think loving Evander will fix me?”
Torsten’s eyes crinkled at the corners, soft with compassion.
“People do not fix us. Your love for him will turn your cracks to fissures and your scratches to deep wounds, but that does not mean that you should give up loving him. Love leads us to a thousand small deaths—to ourselves, to our cherished flaws, to our darkest demons. Love him, and trust the Only to exact the vengeance you cherish.”
Valenna’s mind wandered. Yes, her magic would be her ruination someday, and Evander’s ruin was just as certain because, eventually, the wyvern bone powder would run out. Their love story was doomed in every letter, but if they must collapse, why not collapse into one another?
She had been her father’s secret weapon—and now, her anger was hers.
She could let her magic lie dormant, like an old shotfire loaded and shoved into a box in a cellar.
And someday, when the wyvern bone powder ran out and Evander was gone and she had no one left to live for, she would take her grief and her rage and force it down her father’s throat.
And in the meantime, if her father touched one hair on Evander’s head, she’d tear him to shreds.
She was clever. She was powerful. She could outsmart Cadmus.
“Which direction is Cobblepine?” Valenna asked.