Page 27

Then he went back. Back into the hands of the High Lady who’d tortured him since he was two years old and made him believe it was an honour and a compliment. Back to the killing and the maiming, to the life he’d realised he never wanted to lead again.

I swallowed and said, ‘Yes.’

‘After I strung him along for months,’ Lyn burst out, the words tumbling out at such speed now that I knew she’d kept them down for far too long. ‘After Tared told him … told him …’

‘Yes.’

‘And of course he’s an idiot! Of course he should stop playing the gods-damned invincible fae prince to the rest of the world, and of course he should have told us why he went back, should have told us how he’s been using his demon powers all this time, but …’ She sucked in a breath, rubbing her face. ‘He’s an idiot who sacrificed so very much, and I can’t keep punishing him for the mistakes he made a century ago if we wereallacting like fools at the time, you see? So it’s about time I stopped avoiding him. Especially if we’ll be travelling together for the next week and a half.’

I managed a laugh. ‘And despite that, Tared still agreed the two of you were going to join this journey?’

‘Tared was never the one who kept me away from Creon,’ she said with a slight tremble of her lips. ‘Don’t think that ill of him, Em. He’s not one to limit anyone’s freedom. If I told him I wanted to spend the night in Creon’s room from now on, he’d crumble, but he wouldn’t stop me. It’s just …’

‘You don’t want him to crumble,’ I finished quietly.

‘No.’ She pressed her mouth into a thin line, staring at the table to avoid my gaze. ‘You should keep in mind I knew Beyla before the Last Battle. Knew her when she was loud and cheerful and always up for a game. Justthinkingabout Tared going through such a change makes me—’

‘Wait – the Last Battle?’ I took two more steps forward and sat down again, definitively done with pretending I was about to start packing my bags. ‘I’m sorry, I know that’s not the point, but I thought it was Tared’s brother who died?’

‘She wasn’t bonded to Bered,’ Lyn said sadly. ‘Nothing past the early stages, at least. She mourned him for a while and then fell in love with a friend of ours a few decades after Skeire happened. Byggvir. Bonded to him.’

I gaped at her, understanding suddenly what was coming with a violent, overwhelming sense of nausea. ‘And then he died at the Last Battle?’

Lyn nodded, her eyes gleaming suspiciously.

‘Oh, gods. I … I had no idea.’

‘She carries both their swords. Lost her own the day Skeire was attacked, so Tared gave her Sunray – Bered’s sword.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of one freckled hand, still not meeting my gaze. ‘And she kept Icebreaker after Byggvir died, learned to fight with two blades. Training was the only thing that got her out of bed in the morning for decades.’

I tried to imagine Beyla being loud and cheerful, tried to imagine her huddled below her blankets and wishing she were dead, and didn’t manage either.

‘I’m sorry, Em,’ Lyn muttered when I stayed silent, rubbing the tears from her eyes again. Far too many tears for the tireless little phoenix I was used to. Good gods, how long had it been since she’d last voiced these worries to anyone? ‘You didn’t ask for this mess. I’m just trying to say … There’s a damn lot I’d do to keep Tared safe even if he isn’t asking me for it.’

‘But not avoiding Creon for eternity,’ I said slowly.

She gave a slightly blubbering laugh. ‘Even if I never wanted to shag him, hedoesmean a lot to me. So if he doesn’t hate the sight of me too much, I’d be happy to find out if we could be … you know.’ A strained shrug. ‘Friends?’

‘He doesn’t hate the sight of you,’ I said, because I wasn’t sure what else there was to say, and this at least seemed something that had to be said.

‘Oh.’ She swallowed audibly. ‘Good.’

We sat in silence for a while, staring at nothing, contemplating centuries of tangled history and endless misunderstandings.

‘I should probably start packing,’ I eventually said, and Lyn jerked from her thoughts as if I’d shaken her awake.

‘Yes. Probably.’

She looked small and forlorn, her chin resting in her hands, her sad eyes aimed stubbornly at the wall behind my head. I wanted to hug her, wanted to tell her it would all turn out just fine – but I doubted a hug could solve years and years of tiptoeing around the person she loved more than anyone in the world, and with my mind on Beyla’s eerie voice and shallow smiles, I didn’t trust myself to provide any reassurances with even the slightest degree of conviction.

So all I said as I got up was, ‘Thanks for everything, Lyn.’

‘You too, Em,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes. ‘You too.’

It took mere minutes to pack the bare essentials for surviving a few days in unknown territory: alf steel dagger, light clothes, the fuzzy sweater Naxi had given me for my birthday. A sturdy leather water bottle, a small blanket roll. My bag still felt light then, and even though I knew it would no longer seem half as light after a full day of walking, I couldn’t help glancing longingly at the small pile of books I kept on my bedside table.

Most of them were Lyn’s, of course, and she would never forgive me for dragging her precious treasures into the wet, sandy world outside. But at the top of the pile were the first two books I’d owned in my lifetime, both of them birthday gifts – a richly illustrated copy of theEncyclopaedia of Starsthat Creon had somehow gotten his hands on, and a well-thumbed, mousy brown edition of Phyron’sTreatises on Power and Privilege. The latter, which I’d been told was an influential masterpiece of Divine Era political philosophy, would have been mind-numbingly boring if it hadn't previously belonged to Agenor and contained his and my mother’s notes in the margins.

It was that smaller book for which I found myself reaching as I plopped down onto my bed, not yet entirely willing to face the rest of the household again. I opened it at a random page, which turned out to be the start of the chapter in which the acclaimed Phyron set out his thoughts on the fairness of taxation systems.