Chapter 30 Toran
Toran
Toran had forgotten what happiness felt like.
Satisfaction pricked his every bone and joint. He felt buzzed, like he sometimes did after a few drinks, only this warmth filled his whole body, not just his stomach.
He wasn’t sure he deserved such a feeling.
Nes lay curled beside him, her breathing even but her eyes open.
Her fingers charted veins across his bare chest. He kissed each of her knuckles before standing and crossing the room.
He grabbed one of the blankets from the bed and returned to her, draping it over both of them.
She sidled up to him until they were nose to nose, their knees alternating.
He fiddled with the frayed edges of the blanket, reliving how they’d come together.
He hadn’t known it could be like that. When he held her, he’d felt hopeful.
He felt like he’d been dangling himself over the edge these last few months and she had pulled him back to solid ground.
And then they’d shattered. Not apart like glass but together, a breaking in reverse.
His cloak and clothes were still bunched beneath his body, a haphazard nest he didn’t want to leave. The girl beside him a mooring he didn’t want to release.
Outside, the raucous sounds of the Ditch tried to invade. In the castle, the outside world rarely intruded. Of all the moments he’d shared with Loriana, they’d never been interrupted. And suddenly, he wished he were back at the castle. Wished he could share a moment of isolated bliss with Nes.
He hoped life in the Ditch wasn’t as horrible as Nes described. He remembered how she’d looked in the distillery. Her bloodstained hands, her smudged legs, her unfazed lips.
Worse. It was worse.
“Why do you stay?” he asked, his hand sifting through her hair. “In the Ditch?” The question spurted from his mouth like bad wine. But he had no desire to take it back. “Why not live in a different sector?”
“It’s not like there are many opportunities to get out. Costs are too high to live anywhere else.”
“Is it that bad?”
Before meeting Nes, he’d been to the Ditch only a handful of times.
“It’s bad,” she said, but her expression softened at the words, “but not all bad.”
He wished he could see inside her head. To know which parts she’d recalled to grant her such ease. “I could change that.”
Her head shot up from his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I can make it better. Change the bad.”
A star of an idea was forming in his mind. Too far away to see the brilliance of it, but just bright enough to know it could be incredible if he coaxed it forward.
“It would take some time. But as the Prince’s Crown, I would have a say in what happens to the city. I could convince the Prince to help better the Ditch.”
Maybe he’d even put forth the plans himself.
“You’d do that?” Her voice was quiet.
“I would try.”
He pushed himself up so he sat with his back against the wall, his head at the windowsill. The blanket slipped to pool around their waists.
For so long, he hadn’t let himself think of the future.
Of the duel that waited around an unknown corner.
But it was there. And the day he’d have to fight Kohen for the very crown on the Prince’s head would come.
Whatever the outcome, Toran would have power.
A power he’d have to find ways to use, ways to benefit the people he served.
“Do you remember your parents?” Nes asked.
The question came out of nowhere, and yet it settled over him like the blanket.
“I remember bits and pieces,” he said. “Like picking flowers with my mother. How the field was full of so many shades of blue, pink, and yellow. I remember wanting to pick them all for her.”
“And your father?”
He shook his head. “Never knew my father. You’re lucky to still have yours in your life.”
“I am,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t always feel that way. He’s here, but I never get to see him.”
“What about your mother?”
“My mother died giving birth to me. I wonder how she would have felt about the woman her daughter has become—whether she’d be proud or horrified.”
He let her words sit in the air. He couldn’t answer her. Not when either option might be a lie. And he didn’t want to lie to her. Not now. Not ever.
Nes sighed and laid her hand over his. “Your mother would be proud of you.”
He didn’t move. “I’m not so sure.”
“I am. You’re a good person, Toran. You care about people, not only those close to you.
You care about this city, this country. You just need the opportunity to show how much.
” With her other hand, Nes reached up and smoothed back a piece of his hair.
“I know I’m just some criminal from the Ditch, but for what it’s worth, I hope you win the Crown Duel. You’d make a great king.”
Her admission turned his mouth dry. He tried to swallow, but there was nothing to wash the sand down.
“You shouldn’t sell yourself short, either,” he said after several seconds. “I saw how you were with Marnie and Genna. You care, too, even if you don’t want to admit it. Caring isn’t a weakness, Nes. In fact, it could be your greatest strength.”
She stared at him with an intensity akin to the blaze inside him. He expected her to kiss him again or for her to hold him tighter. But she turned away, her bare shoulder suddenly cold.
“Nes?” His voice cracked on her name, and he watched her whole back sink as she exhaled.
“I don’t love you,” she said.
He blinked. He hadn’t expected…love. They’d only known each other a few weeks. He didn’t expect her to love him. But he didn’t expect her to tell him she didn’t, either.
“I don’t love you,” she repeated. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she turned to face him. “But I feel it.”
He reached for her—her hands soft and clammy in his grip. “Feel what?”
She was staring at him in a way he’d never seen before. The look in her eyes made him wonder if it was possible to tame the sea.
“How easily I could.”
Everything in him went still.
She could love him. Nes could love him. And he…
When Loriana told him she loved him, the words had been so welcome, so light and gentle, like a caress across his heart. It had been the first time he remembered hearing those words. Before her, no one—not his friends, not Kohen, not even the King—had said they loved him.
But Loriana had.
When Loriana died, his love for her had been left to rot his heart, curdling the blood pumping through it.
Her death had sickened him more than the alcohol ever had, and the love left behind was tainted.
This was not the love he wanted to offer Nes.
It wasn’t the love she deserved. Moreover, the love still belonged to Loriana and, dead or not, he couldn’t take that love away from her.
He’d forgotten what happiness felt like. He’d also forgotten how devastating it felt to lose it.
Though he kept his words delicate and soft, he knew the blow they’d land, the bruises each one would leave on Nes’s heart. “You shouldn’t,” he said at last. “Because I can’t.”
This time, when he met her eyes, there was nothing there. Nothing but a deep, fathomless blue.
“It wouldn’t be fair to you. You’re incredible.
But I can’t love you the way you should be loved.
” He kept talking, if only because he needed her to understand.
He wanted to believe he could love her. She’d made him feel things he hadn’t thought possible after Loriana.
But Loriana was still there. In his heart.
In his mind. She’d consumed him, and he was still trying to find himself among her ruins.
“I loved her too much, I think. And when I lost her, that broke me.”
Without speaking, Nes stood from their nest and gathered up her clothes. She pulled her shirt over her head and slid one leg, then the other, into her pant legs. She glanced briefly at him before grabbing her shoes under the window and turning away.
He knew he shouldn’t, but…“Nes?”
He needed her to say something, anything. It was okay if she hated him. She had every right. But he couldn’t lie to her, couldn’t lead her on.
She stopped in front of the bedroom door. Her back to him, she said, “Everyone’s broken, Toran. That’s what this world does. It’s how you piece yourself together that matters.”
And then she was gone, leaving the door open behind her. The light from the hall bled into the room, the beam stopping just short of him.