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Hearing my croaking voice, he tossed me the last of the water we’d found in the corner. We sat on opposite sides of what remained of the room, backs pressed to the walls. If we stretched our legs out fully, our toes could barely touch.

I kept mine hugged to my chest. He had one folded up, an elbow resting on it.

Tolek sighed, and it was layered with such a heavy pain, I almost wanted to take back the request. It sounded like he balanced on a precipice, though. So, I waited.

“Every time I fall asleep at night,” he finally began, “I have nightmares of myself being responsible for your death.”

I blinked at him, trying to process his confession and figure out how it made sense with his current behavior. “Tol, you didn’t—I’m fine. You protected me at the trench.” I curved my fingers around the fresh scar beneath my tunic. “You always have.”

Not only at the trench, but during the Battle of Damenal, on the journey to the Undertaking when he jumped in front of that ax.

“No, Alabath. You don’t get it.” He shoved himself to his feet, and in shock, I stood, too. It only took him two steps to be looming over me, my back against the cold stone, spine arching at the contact. “Every night, long before the fight at the trench, when I close my eyes, I see myself holding the knife that ends your life.” He placed one hand to the wall above my head, the other pressing over my wildly beating heart. “It goes right here, and in every one of those nightmares, I am terrified and fighting it, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“I—” It came out a rasp. I swallowed over my dry throat. “I don’t understand.” He dreamed of killing me? No, Tolek couldn’t. He’d never hurt me.

“It’s my greatest failure.” He hung his head, hair flopping into his eyes.

And I understood it, then. This truth he’d hid rained down between us, drops sharp and icy like a fresh winter storm. How his father had treated him as a child, and the guilt Tolek carried his entire life because of it. How he’d grown up thinking he was not good enough for anyone’s love because he’d nearly been the cause of his mother’s death. How the Undertaking and the torture he suffered with Aird had latched on to those beliefs and twisted them until they haunted him.

Until they found the thing he loved most and made him believe he was the reason he would lose it. Lose me.

And, Spirits, I’d asked him to take a dagger to me at the trench. He’d seemed so distraught and frenzied. I’d brought those nightmares to life.

My bones chilled, skin prickling. I tried to gather my thoughts around the freezing, murderous rage and swarms of sorrow building inside of me.

His greatest failure.

“There is nothing about you that’s a failure.” Cupping Tol’s cheek, I forced his gaze to mine. “I know you can’t easily rid yourself of these thoughts, but Tolek Vincienzo, you are anything but a failure. You’re my saving grace, and no matter what nightmares the Spirits show you, you are so worthy of love. You’re worthy of being seen and cherished.” A resigned shadow dimmed his eyes, almost like he didn’t see the point in my words. And that?—

That wasn’t Tolek. It wasn’t the cheerful, exuberant warrior he showed to the world, eager for adventure and thrills, but it was the true him. The one he hid because he was afraid he didn’t deserve love. Didn’t deserve to be chosen.

It was the pieces of him that needed someone, not the pieces that wanted someone. Perhaps those sides were two different beings within us all, fighting for attention. Or they were interwoven threads forming the tapestry of our souls. Whatever his soul was—no matter the shades of strands comprising that piece of art—it belonged with mine, to be treasured and tended.

“There is nothing you could do to make me view you as a failure,” I continued. “And I choose you. I did in Damenal, I do now, and I will every day forward.” I brushed my thumb across the scruff on his jaw. He leaned into my palm as these fears finally unspooled between us, unknotting the tension we’d brewed.

“It’s fucking terrifying, Alabath. Thinking of losing you. Even worse when I imagine it’s my fault.” He sighed, and my heart thudded a desperate beat with the sound. “That’s what the Mindshapers did when they had me. They dragged up that guilt and fear. For those days I was their prisoner, all I saw was myself being responsible for your?—”

His sentence cut off at the last word. Death.

Fury heated my chest. This was the final piece he’d been keeping from me, too scared that if he spoke it, I would somehow agree.

“Swear it to me on the Angels right now, Vincienzo: Do you believe there is a world in which you would be capable of hurting me?”

He shook his head. “Not in this life or the next. But what if it’s unintentional?”

“Accidents happen, Tol. I may be thrown from my horse while we race one day or you may slip up while we spar and leave a scratch on me, but you would never do something as severe as what haunts you.”

“You don’t understand.” His hand dropped from my heart to my hip, gripping it bruisingly, like he had to solidify my presence. “If anything happens to you, and I fail to protect you, I may as well be twisting the blade or casting the Angelcurse myself.”

Using both hands to turn his face to me, I searched his gaze and found the boy who’d been convinced his entire life that he was a killer. The one who thought he had to hide these tormented pieces of himself, that he deserved beatings and disdain.

“You’re not another curse in my life, Tolek. And if you were, you’d be the one I’d gladly carry.”

He met my eyes. “If I am a curse, then you’re my remedy, apeagna.”

I was what kept him present when the fears were too great, as he did for me. Tolek Vincienzo was the cure to all my curses, his unyielding love the healing to each broken piece of myself.

“What nearly happened to your mother was not your fault, and Angels forbid, if something does happen to me one day—an act of nature or the Spirits or someone else’s blade—that will not be your fault either. You’d spend your last breath protecting me.”