Chapter Twenty-Five Mathias #3
“It wasn’t the lie itself,” she said finally, the words frayed like old cloth, thinned by too many recitations. “It’s that it made me hate myself more than I ever hated her.”
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on the water, on the way the light broke across the surface in thin, restless veins, as if somewhere beneath it there might be something cleaner, something untouched. Then, almost without breath: “You’ve heard of Captain Benjadir?”
Mathias gave a slow nod. “The name carries.”
A dry sound left her then – not quite a laugh. “I suppose it would. He’s always been good at that. At making people remember him. Even when he doesn’t want them to.”
Her expression shifted – not guarded, not sharp, just worn – and he caught it in the brief space between her looking away and looking back.
“We grew up together. Trained together. Fought side by side through more campaigns than I care to remember. Before I ever carried a title, he was already helping me shoulder its weight – not by force, but by standing beside me. Holding the line when I couldn’t. ”
Her voice softened, wrapped in something that sounded like grief dulled by time.
“He made me laugh when nothing else could. There were moments when rage nearly overtook me – and somehow, without a word, he could pull me back. There were weeks, once, where I think we only spoke in glances. And he knew me – really knew me – better than anyone. He was the one person I never had to be anything with. Not the Queen’s heir. Not even a soldier. Just… who I was.”
She paused then, eyes on the horizon, as if the sea might carry the next part away if she didn’t say it quickly enough.
“We were young. Not just in age. In the way we let the world feel simple, like it might let us have something of our own. And for a while, there was… more. Not long, and not loud. Just…” Her breath hitched, but she held it steady.
“We shared something. Brief and quiet, like a fire started in the dark when no one’s watching.
It was real. It was ours. And then I ended it. ”
Now, finally, she looked at Mathias. There was no defence in her eyes. No shield lifted. Just the unvarnished honesty of someone who no longer had the strength to lie – not even to herself. “I didn’t tell him why. Not then. Not ever. Just stepped back. Drew the line. Let him think it was me.”
“Was it?” Mathias whispered, acknowledging he was allowed in to something deep and painful. “Was it you?”
Ara blinked once, slow. Her mouth parted like she might answer, but the words didn’t come. She turned her face away again, toward the sea, and for a long moment the only sound between them was the waves drawing in and out, in and out—like breath steadied by force of will alone.
“No.” The word hung there between them, not as a confession but as a release – soft, frayed, exhausted. She dragged in a breath, deep and briny, and let it out slow.
“There was a man,” she said then. “Benni’s father.
The General before me. Falkar.” She glanced sideways, as if to anchor herself in to Mathias’ presence to be able to continue.
“He trained us both. Raised Benni in his own shadow. And me, because my mother told him to. He was ruthless. Gruelling. The kind of man who carved soldiers out of children, whether they broke in the process or not.”
She ran her hand through the water, stirring the surface. “Years later, when Benni and I were close, Mowgara told me something. That after Falkar’s wife died, he’d gone to her bed. And that it was possible… very possible… that I was born of his seed.”
She did not pause for reaction, nor did she flinch from the sound of it spoken aloud. Instead, she pressed forward, as if each word were a step through deep water – measured, unhurried, and necessary.
“She said it like it meant nothing. Like it was only a fact I ought to have known. It wasn’t a warning. Just a suggestion that I might be better off not bedding my own half-brother.”
Her jaw tightened then, not in anger, but in restraint – the kind that comes from holding something too long, too tightly, until it shapes itself into you.
“And I believed her. Of course I did. There was enough truth in the timing, in the look she gave me, in the way she didn’t press.
She never had to force the knife in—only leave it where I could take it up myself.
And I did. I looked at Benni and saw not love, but something monstrous, something ruined before it had the chance to take root.
So I ended it, stepped back. I told myself it was right. I told myself it was a mercy.”
The water lapped against her shoulders, and she lifted her hand, watching the droplets fall from her fingers.
“But it wasn’t mercy. It was shame. A shame so deep it made me recoil from my own skin.
I let her make me afraid of the one person who ever saw me whole.
I let her turn that light into something filthy.
And worst of all,” she said, her voice low, raw now, but still holding, “I let her take it from me. And I hated myself more for how easily I gave it.”
Slowly, as if he was brushing his fingers over a flame and feared it might burn his skin, Mathias reached across to the General and closed his hand over her shoulder: “It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” She asked, her eyes gleaming with tears now, her breath shallow and sore. “I kept him at my side all these years and never told him because… because I was disgusted with myself.”
“If he’d wanted to be anywhere else, he would’ve been,” Mathias said softly, and in the stillness that followed, a memory surfaced – sharp as the day it happened – of his mother’s hand on his shoulder, her voice cold as she left him at Maeve’s door and walked away without looking back.
Then, more to the water than to her: “When people don’t want to stay, they find a way to leave. ”
Without him noticing, his thumb started circling Ara’s shoulder, gently coaxing comfort from his own broken soul into hers.
He only stirred to it when she pressed against it, seeking the warmth and solace it offered.
The cold water caressed them gently, but his blood was running hot in his veins.
When she looked at him, tears dried and the fire again blazing around her pupils, he gently pushed a strand of wet hair off her shoulder and another off her face.
“It wasn’t your fault.” He repeated in a quiet voice.
“And whatever it was, it wasn’t monstrous, and you, Frejara, are not a monster. ”
“I may not have bedded my brother, but I have burned and murdered my way through an entire continent.” She scoffed. “If I am not a monster, then what am I, Seer?” There was a bite to her words, cutting the air between them almost violently.
“I don’t know.” Mathias said. “I guess we have to find out.”
A pause – longer than a heartbeat, shorter than a breath, but still somehow it felt like it was never going to end.
The General tilted her head, studying him as if she were weighing his words.
Then, with the same care one might use to trace the outline of something precious, she let her fingers run along his arm, the one still resting at her shoulder, until they reached the crook of his elbow, and there, she eased herself in, closing the space between them.
He felt her breath at his neck, her shape warm and full despite the cold water, and let his arms come around her – not to claim or contain, but to meet her where she’d come, holding her not as something fragile, but as something treasured, something that had shed a weight never meant for them to carry.
She stirred against his chest when a voice called from the shore, loud enough to echo over the sound of the seagulls. Maeve’s voice, a blend of reprimand and concern, cut through the air. “You’ll freeze your bloody bones off if you don’t get out of there soon.”
Without quite being able to help himself, Mathias let out a shallow laugh, and he could feel the General meeting it against him.
“We should go.”
“We should.” She drew back from him, then struck out toward the shore, her strokes swift and clean, cutting through the water with practised ease.
Mathias lingered only a moment, watching the wake she left before following – slower, less graceful, a grin tugging at his mouth as he realised how much better a swimmer she was than he, a seaside lad.
By the time he reached the shore, Maeve had already bundled Ara into a blanket and sent her up the path and now stood waiting with arms folded and a face arranged into its finest scold.
“And just what in the blazing hells do you think you’re doing,” she demanded, “in the water, in your birthday suit, with the last living descendant of the Sisterhood?” She scoffed, already tugging a blanket around his dripping shoulders. “You daft, reckless boy.”
Mathias let himself be chided, the warmth of the blanket no match for the burn still low in his chest. “It was her idea,” he offered, teeth clicking as the wind needled at his wet skin.
But Maeve only rolled her eyes and thwacked his arm with the edge of the fabric before turning to follow Ara’s retreating shape.
They walked the path back in silence, the General just ahead, her figure hunched slightly under the wool, hair dark with seawater.
It wasn’t until they reached the crooked doorway of the old temple that Mathias paused, letting Ara step through first. He waited until she had vanished into the warmth and shadow, the door closing behind her with the soft clatter of wood against stone.
Maeve turned, halfway through unpinning her shawl, and caught the look on his face. “Well?” she said, but not unkindly. “You’ve had that look since before you set foot in the water. Out with it, boy, before it burns a hole clean through you.”
He didn’t speak right away. Just stood there a moment longer, watching the sea where it bruised itself against the rocks below, white spray catching the wind.
When he finally found his voice, it came quiet and low, the kind of tone that doesn’t ask to be heard by anyone but the one it’s meant for.
“I never told you what I saw the first time the Sight took me.”
Maeve’s expression shifted. Gone was the bark and the bluster. She stepped closer, her shawl clutched in one hand, as if bracing herself not for what she feared, but for what she already knew.
“I thought the world would end inside me. And maybe it did.” He swallowed. “Flame everywhere. My chest”—he glanced down at it, almost absently—“torn open. Blood boiling in the heat.”
Maeve’s face held steady, but her knuckles whitened where they gripped the blanket.
“She was there,” Mathias went on. “Not causing it. But walking through it. Lit by it, maybe even made from it. And I knew—” He stopped for a beat, the words caught not out of fear but from the weight of saying them aloud for the first time.
“—I knew my death would come with her rising. That whatever I was meant for ends the moment she becomes who she’s meant to be. ”
Maeve’s hands, busy with the folds of her cloak, fell still.
She closed her eyes once, like someone standing in a doorway as a storm gathers, knowing there’s no outrunning it.
When she looked at him again, her gaze was old with knowing and bright with unshed tears, and for a moment she wasn’t a guide or a guardian or a wise old aunt—just a woman watching someone she loved walk toward the fire.
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “Not of the ending. But I don’t want it to catch you off guard. Not again. Not like with Signe.” He reached out, briefly, fingers brushing the back of her hand. “You deserved a goodbye then. You deserve one now.”
Her eyes closed for just a breath, a flicker of pain that passed like a shadow. And when she opened them again, they shone not with sorrow, but with something steadier – forged in the long years of losing and loving anyway.
“Then promise me,” she said, voice rough with something old and maternal and sharp-edged. “When the time comes, you’ll give me that.”
He nodded, once, and meant it. “When it’s time.”