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Daxeel is quiet behind me, a soft-footed shadow. He keeps to that silence as he follows me through Kithe.

I leave the tavern in Forranach’s hands, Rune’s, too, and Hedda with Leif.

I don’t have a direction in mind—and I don’t need to know where I am going for Daxeel to follow me. He simply does, and my steps take us all the way to the dirt path that winds up the hill to Comlar, the ruins of it.

Daxeel hasn’t once asked why we are going there, he hasn’t asked anything at all, not spoken a mere word. Gods, he hasn’t even breathed too hard or stepped too firm on the ground.

He is quiet, and I sense he is scared to disturb my peace, scared to spook me—because it might mean that I push him away again.

That hush keeps as we reach the ruins.

I stand at the border, debris all around my boots, and I take it all in.

A place I came to with so much hope in me, now a dust-smeared field of debris. I flick my gaze from the decomposed bodies, mostly bones now, to the mound of sloped stone.

The tower.

What’s left of it.

I push into a careful climb.

My boots are cautious with each landing on uneasy stone, my measurements calculated as I jump to higher piles of rubble.

Daxeel is close behind me, the glowjar in his grip swaying through the darkness.

I feel it, I feel him, so near my back—as though prepared to catch me if I fall.

I don’t fall.

I climb the sloped remains of the tower without a slipped boot, and I find a levelled edge to stand on.

I look out at the destruction of a place I was once so thrilled to come to.

That life, that version of me, seems more than a lifetime ago, it seems so much like it never happened at all. The memory is so faded, so unrecognisable that I can hardly grasp it in my mind.

I recall, faint, that I had to lie and hide my excitement from Father, that we were to come to Comlar, that I would see Daxeel—and I would win him over with petulance and sex.

“I should have told you,” I say, soft, and run my gaze along the bones protruding from a tall rockpile. “When I first came here, I came with strategy.”

Daxeel perches on the edge of the stone, next to my boots, so close.

“My strategy should have only been the truth.” I scoff, and my shoulders jerk with the bitter gesture. “If I had just told you then that Father forced me to betray you, that he beat me that night—and locked me in the basement and that I faced the threat of the Grott… That might have changed everything.”

Daxeel is quiet for a moment. Then, soft, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your scars?” I hit back at him, but it is less of a strike and more like a lifted mirror we both are forced to look into. “We kept parts of our lives hidden from the other. I think we both painted versions of ourselves and hid the ugliness.”

Daxeel lifts his chin—and looks up at me.

I keep my gaze ahead. “I wonder if we were afraid to be true to ourselves with each other. I wonder if, what we really feared, is that we find ourselves unlovable.”

He sets the glowjar down on a flat edge of stone.

I sigh. “I lured you with sex because it was what I had to offer. It is all I considered myself to be.”

His mouth twists.

“I never truly saw my own value,” I confess, “and I never understood myself beyond the mask I wanted everyone to see—including you.”

His hand reaches out for me, fingertips grazing my calf. It is a soft touch, cautious, and though it is shielded by my breeches, I feel it alight my body.

I swallow, thick. “There are things I need to learn about myself, Daxeel. There are things I must do alone.”

His touch stills.

I feel his surge of panic ice the air.

“I want to run the tavern, for Eamon. I want to live my life with Hedda, independent of a male. I want to make friends that are true. I want to be better… but worse, too.”

His hand slips away.

The crushing weight of his despair brings the taste of salt into the air, a faint touch of a stray tear.

He doesn’t wipe it away.

I look down at him. “I love you.”

His throat thickens.

“But I do despise you, and I resent you. It is not healthy for us to start again in that pain.”

He nods, his cheeks glistening in the faint light of the glowjar.

“I will meet you here.”

His lashes flutter, a silent question.

I sink to the rubble’s edge to sit beside him. “One Quiet, each week, we will meet here—and…” My shrug comes with a gentle sigh. “Over time, the pain might fade, our love might grow. But we must get to know each other again, Daxeel. Our true selves. I can’t imagine being with anyone but you,” I smile something pained at him, “but I can’t imagine being with anyone right now.”

His smile is small and wet, a tuck of the mouth.

The thickness of his lashes glisten over cerulean eyes. And I think he is the most beautiful male I have ever seen; but not beauty in the way that Eamon was.

It is something strong, powerful, terrible—and sanded down into absolute rawness.

Daxeel looks at me now, a broken male.

It is lovely.

I lift my hand for the softness of his inky curls.

His eyes shut as I brush my fingers through his hair. “You may court me in your designs. But I want you to be authentic, Daxeel. Not this—” I draw my hand back and gesture to him, his lovely, beautiful pain. “—just to appease me. That is a lie.”

“It is no lie,” his murmur is firm, as is the gaze he locks onto me. “I am broken. I am suffering. But I promise I will not lie to you about who I am.”

I nod, faint. “I return that promise.”

I bring my hands to flatten on the stone. My weight sags as I watch the dark spiral, a funnel of pain that we created. Hand in hand, we brought the worlds into our suffering.

The shame of it springs an idea.

Our shames.

I tell him a shame of mine. “I had no friends.”

The surprise has his cerulean eyes turning on me.

“All my life in the light lands, I had no friends at all. They didn’t like me, the others I studied with in lessons, those I danced with at the High Court. I sometimes tried to be better, but it didn’t stop their dislike of me. Sometimes, I excused it as disdain for halfbreeds. But the truth,” I say with a bitter smile, “is that I threw tantrums, I never shared, I was rude and cocky—and I slept with males even when they had lovers.”

Daxeel’s mouth turns down at the corner.

“I needed to be loved,” I confess. “And so I sought it out in the ugliest of ways, in the darkest of places. Then I met Eamon. I turned of age for the High Court, and I met him, the recruiter whose smile was true whenever I spoke.”

My face crumples.

I lift my hands to my cheeks and hold the tears cascading there.

Daxeel is quiet for a moment before he swallows, thick. The faint wisp of tears coats his voice, “After you harmed my heart at the High Court… I rode straight to Hemlock House. I had one thing in mind—get to Samick before I shattered. I made it to the porch before I collapsed, and Samick was there, holding me through the pain.” He looks at me, the shame creeping along his cheeks. “I wept, on my knees, like a youngling.”

My smile is watery, but sincere.

It might not seem much of a shame, but if he shares it, and his cheeks are hot as flames, then I accept it as a deep shame he reveals to me.

And it is enough.

Those shared confessions soothe us for a while. We sit, side by side, on the ledge of the old, fallen tower, and watch the thick darkness slowly spiral through the air.

The Quiet is nearing us when I think to ask, “Where is Dare?”

Daxeel stills beside me. “I do not know.”

I turn a blank look on him. “

“We were in the same unit,” he tells me, “but we didn’t make it to the end of the mission together.” The look he turns on me is pinched with worry. “Samick isn’t back, either. But I received word that his unit is returned.”

His head drops as his mouth thins.

The shame he shares, the worry he blatantly shows me.

I watch him crumble.

I take no joy from it.

The same fear spreads through my chest, an echo.

A worry for Dare.

Daxeel slides his hand over the stone towards mine. Fingertips touch mine…

I look down at the join of our bodies.

He threads his fingers through mine.

I let him.