Page 48

She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Or else your kind would have conquered the world.” Her answer was blunt.

“That is a very mortal impulse to have,” Dom said, and meant it. Conquest over the men of the Ward seemed foolish to him, even at his young age. Mortals rose and fell like summer wheat. Kingdoms were born and died. Those he’d known in his first century were dust now, barely shadows in his long memory.Why bother reaching out a hand for what could disappear before you grasp it?

Even so, there were histories of the Vedera too, records of immortals who fought alongside or against the men of the Ward. For glory, for sport, for nothing at all. Dom could not imagine it for himself or his people now. They defended their homes on rare occasion, but nothing more.Cowards they are now, hiding in their enclaves. Ready to let this world crumble around them.

Corayne stared with her keen gaze. She had a way of prodding without words.

“My people are focused on finding a way home,” he offered. “But the way was lost to us, the Spindle closed, and even its location destroyed long ago.”

“Destroyed?” she asked, cocking her head.

“The ground my people first arrived on is now at the bottom of the Long Sea, swallowed by the waves,” he answered softly, trying to see a place he had never been. “Every day we hope for another doorway, another Spindle. A way back to Glorian.”

The last cobwebs of sleep seemed to lift from Corayne, and she leaned closer, sharp with interest. Her tangled braid fell over one shoulder, gleaming almost blue in the starlight.

“Your realm must be magnificent,” she said.

“I suppose.” Dom shrugged again. “I am Wardborn, still young among my people, still learning the realm we live in now. And what I know of my own realm comes from others.”

He felt the familiar lick of regret that came every time he thought of the realm he did not know, the home he might never see. It was tinged with sour, green envy of all those who did know Glorian and could remember its stars.

“They are whole while I am not.”

“We have that in common, I guess,” Corayne said softly. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around herself, though the air was still warm, even for mortals.

Dom narrowed his eyes. He felt worlds apart from her, separated by a pane of glass. “How so?”

She dropped her gaze to the grass. “I only know my father, his blood, what we come from, what we were born as, from what others tell me.” Her fingers picked at a leaf nervously. “And they’ve told me very little.”

She’s interrogating me,Dom realized, looking Corayne over.

The curious gleam had not left her eyes. There was hunger too, a thirst for answers she could not get elsewhere, and a strong will to find them. Dom was reminded of scholars back in the enclave, combing their archives for some scroll or tome, for word of Spindles, for any whisper of Glorian Lost.But I am not a shelf of books eager to be picked through.

She ran her hands through the grass like a child. It was a good act.

This wound will never heal if you keep cutting it open,he warned himself. But somehow Dom wanted to. He wanted to remember Cortael and give Corayne something to remember too.

Do not,he thought.Shut the door on those decades, and let them turn to dust as the centuries pass. Such is the Vedera way, our only defense against years of memory.

“You’re Spindleblood. Corblood,” he said flatly, if only to give hersomething. “Your ancestors were travelers of another realm, mortal as the men of the Ward, but set apart. Some say the Cors were born of the Spindles themselves, not another realm. But your kind fell with Old Cor, your bloodlines dwindling through the centuries.” Her eyes shone in the starlight, egging him on. “It makes you restless; it makes you ambitious; it gives you awantso deep you can hardly name it.”

Her black gaze seemed to deepen. He could smell the eagerness on her.

“I said the same to your father, decades ago.” The wound opened again, a tear through his heart. Dom winced against it, carrying on. “When he raged in his way, frustrated, a mortal boy among living statues, who could not make his flesh into stone no matter how hard he tried.” His breath caught. “I am sorry you had to grow up with no one who knew your blood, what it demanded. What it makes you,” he said quietly.

This time, she did not scold him for the apology. Instead her face turned hard, and her eyes were shuttered windows. Whatever she looked for, she could not find.

“And what of my father, raised by immortals, who could not even fathom what it is to live in mortal flesh?” she said. “If you pity me, you must pity him too.”

The sting burrowed deep, a needle of white-hot pain. Dom flinched and looked away. He heard Corayne stand, her feet rustling the grass like a rough wind.

“Elders don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t age,” she bit out, standing. “But you bleed. Can you love? Did you teach my father to? Because he did not love me.”

“There is not a creature in any realm who cannot love,” Dom answered hotly. His ancient temper flared and guttered. It filled him; it hollowed him out. Anger was still foreign and corrosive in his body. Without knowing it, he crossed the grassy hill, until he stood over Corayne, tall as a mountain.

She held her ground.

“And I certainly loved your father,” he said. “Like a brother, like a son. I was there for his first steps, his first tooth, his first words, screaming as they were. The first drop of blood to fall.” Inside he roared, seeing it all over again. “And the last.”