Page 21

Tristan sits beside me in the hallway, letting me work through my broken heart. I sense he’s trying to siphon some of my misery—though I remain overwhelmed with anger. Fear. Shame. It feels like there’s no painful emotion not pelting me, and every one feels justified.

No longer can I blame Kingsland for our violent history, or for shutting us out and protecting what they have. What else are they supposed to do when constantly attacked? We’ve tested the limits of their grace time and time again.

I wipe my eyes, distraught that it’s been decades of us trying to steal from them. Decades of us attacking them. All because we thought they were the monsters hurting us. We’ve been lashing out at the wrong people for someone else’s crimes.

The only thing giving me hope is knowing what these revelations could mean for our future. For peace. If the clans and Kingsland finally learned the truth about each other, that it’s all been a giant misunderstanding, could that end this conflict?

The biggest challenge would be convincing Father. In the clans, women have no place in politics, and even if they make an exception for my testimony, I only have Tristan’s word and memories to offer as proof. I can hardly hand over the papers I stole from Farron’s office. They’d only build the case that Kingsland is a threat.

Slowly, I drag my gaze to Tristan. His profile could be a painting. A beautiful boy waiting patiently for a girl. I hold out my hand, and he takes it, our fingers weaving together. The simple touch tightens the connection pleasurably between us, and with it comes the biggest epiphany yet: if I go home, even just to explain any of this to Father, I’ll be wed to Liam, which will only unify the clans for the purpose of attacking Kingsland.

It’s astounding to think it, but to help stop a war, I need to stay here.

Skies. My betrothal to Liam is over.

I feel awful at the tension that leaves my body. The relief. But then I remember that I never asked to marry Liam, nor he me, and now the shame over failing to reserve my heart for him can finally end. All I can hope for is that he understands. That he sees this as an opportunity for him to find love, because he deserves it.

We both do.

I stare at our clasped hands. “You know, I’d really like to trust you, but there is something holding me back.”

A wrinkle forms between his brows.

“When I caught you in the forest, that wasn’t the first time you’d seen me, was it?”

A wisp of his embarrassment wiggles into my chest.

“Show me.”

Tristan tips his head back, but a smile plays on his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His words ring false, and he knows that. “Liar.”

I fight a grin. “How many times have you watched my house?”

Tendrils of his worry that I’m upset drift over me like a puff of smoke. “You know, it was an assignment to watch your home, and Ryland, my cousin, did it just as often as me. We weren’t observing you specifically. Your father is the Saraf. The Golden Calf.?”

“The Golden Calf?” I repeat.

“Yeah, it was my dad’s idea. All the important players in the clans have a code name.”

And I’m the White Rabbit. “How many times did you see me?”

His eyes slowly roll to the ceiling. “Too many to recall.”

I knew it.

“Does that bother you?”

His thumb swipes the back of my hand.

Tingles race up my spine. I don’t know. It depends on what he saw. “Show me the first time it happened. I want to see.”

His face contorts like he’s in pain. “Haven’t I shown you enough already? How about you show me some memories?”

He’s being playful, and so am I. But there’s also a part of me that’s serious.

He exhales and lowers his head. “The first time I saw you was an accident.”

Then a memory floats to the surface of my mind.

I sit up as I recognize his father, a younger version of Farron. He’s got a finger pressed to his lips as he and Tristan hide behind a large bush. The view shifts to the mossy, wet soil of the ground as Tristan waits, heart pounding.

“When does the karnick plant bloom?”

With a start, I recognize the woman’s voice—my mother’s.

“Early spring to mid-July. Best picked when the leaves are dark green and have lost their fuzz.”

Who is that? My head pops out, and I see a flash of the girl’s face. Dad grabs me by the shirt and shoves me down.

Her hair is the lightest shade of blond, and she’s so close I could spit on her. There’s a cloth bag hanging from one of her arms and a bandage on the other.

My breath catches. That bandage was from a mishap with a scalding pan on my birthday.

My thirteenth birthday.

“That happened five years ago,”

I say, as the image in my mind dissipates like steam.

Tristan’s eyes dance with mischief, but he doesn’t offer anything more.

I poke him in the ribs. “Then what happened?”

“Nothing. I mean, I was curious about who you were. In Kingsland we have 634 people, and I know every single one of them.”

He shrugs. “But I didn’t know you.”

The space between us thins as I lean into him. “What did you want to know about me?”

He holds my gaze. “Everything. You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

There’s a powerful need to respond to his confession. To touch him—with my lips.

“But I was only fifteen,”

he continues. “Two years later, after I was trained in combat and reconnaissance, they let me try out for the elite guard. I was good at climbing, and I was fast, so I was one of the guards who got picked to stake out the cliff above your house. I didn’t see a lot of you. Mostly I took note of who came and went and when. Usually, the clan leaders gathered there before anything significant took place—good or bad, so that’s what we were watching out for.”

“But you did see me.”

His words drop to a whisper. “I did.”

One of his memories flashes in my head. It’s me, running out of the house clutching a blanket and a textbook. My hair is let down and flowing in the wind.

The scenes come in rapid succession after that. Me, wiping sweat from my brow while working in the garden.

Blink.

Freia yanking on my hand as I reluctantly follow her out the front door.

Blink.

My mother and me, returning home on our horses with our travel medical bags strapped across our chests.

In every instance, I feel the lurch of excitement in Tristan’s stomach at seeing me again.

“I could tell you were a hard worker. And caring. From the outside looking in, there wasn’t much I didn’t like about you—except for your father.”

The puzzle pieces finally fit together. It never made sense why his decision to save me—to marry me—had been so sudden and irrevocable. Why his feelings were impossibly deep after we’d only known each other for days.

I shake my head. “I never would have guessed any of this when I found you in the forest. In fact, I was pretty certain you would have happily stabbed me in the heart if given the chance.”

His eyes slide closed, and pain tightens his lips. “That day started seventeen hours earlier when a clansman killed a new soldier—Macfally—along the southern border of the fence during a drill. They hung his dead body upside down from a tree and waited until my father discovered him. It was a trap.”

I’m speechless at the savagery. The barbarity. Who besides Gerald would have done something like that? The problem with that logic: it wasn’t Gerald who killed Farron Banks.

“Once they struck my father down, they took him and ran. I knew it was likely that he was dead. But I needed to see for myself. And dead or alive, I was going to burn Hanook and all the other clans to the ground.”

His anger and grief sting like coarse salt, chafing against my heart. “That’s when I found you,”

I say. Me, the daughter of the man he was about to kill. His fury makes so much sense, despite any warm feelings he might have had for me.

“No,”

he says. “Something else happened first. I was attacked.”

I stiffen, but he continues. “A clansman shot an arrow, and my horse took it in the rump. She reared up, tossing me to the ground, and ran off. Before I could get my bearings, he had a knife at my throat.”

A snapshot of his memory flashes in my mind.

“Don’t look at that,”

he rushes to say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send that to you.”

It’s too late. I see it, and then recognize the face. The man Tristan fought is the Maska clansman I found dead in the forest.

“It’s okay. So you had to fight?”

Tristan nods. “He almost had me. But I drew the knife from his leg and . . .”

Slashed his stomach.

“We were around the same age. In another life, maybe we would have been friends.”

He swallows hard, emotion choking his voice. “I walked away from his body, this life I was forced to take, consumed with hate for the Saraf and all he stood for.”

His eyes meet mine. “How’s that for honesty?”

His hatred for my father pulses through me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I hated my father too.

“There was no question that the Saraf was going to die by my hands. I ran back the way I’d come, chasing after my horse, but Blue was gone. So I dumped my pack and heavy armor to lighten the load and took off on foot.”

He lets out a hollow laugh. “Then, I met you.”

Being connected like this means I not only feel the emotion that drove him to this place, but I’m also halfway to wanting to attack my father myself—a confusing position for a daughter to find herself in.

“I won’t lie. It occurred to me that I had an opportunity to take from the Saraf someone he loved, just as he’d done to me. I could make him feel this pain.”

He thumps a fist where his heart is, and it’s as if it goes straight through my sternum. “But I couldn’t. Because . . . I also . . .”

What? Cared for me?

I stare at him, incredulous. He didn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. I feel his intent inside me, and its roots are anything but shallow.

Burning stars, that’s why he didn’t fight me in the forest. He’s cared for me since before I even knew his name. The more his true intentions settle over me, the more my heart pivots toward him.

Tristan breaks our stare with a shake of his head. “I didn’t want to hurt you, that’s all I knew. Well, that and I realized if we talked, my resolve would soften and you’d probably change my mind about what I needed to do. But staying angry after finally getting to meet you was like holding my breath, and after hours of it, I just wanted to breathe.”

He bites his lip. “You were so smart and unpredictable and . . . very good with a knife. But there was still the issue of my father.”

I understand. My arms wrap around his neck, drawing our faces together. I need him to look me in the eyes. “Tristan, I’m so sorry for what my father has done.”

The words rise from the depths of me, a secret place, and flow into the cracks of his broken heart like healing balm. Maybe it’s the connection, or maybe it’s just the power of a heartfelt confession, but it feels like something is set right between us.

“You’re not your father,”

he says. “It just took you nearly dying in my arms to remind me of that.”

Dying in my arms.

My eyes slide closed as Farron’s final moments flash in my head. I pull back, but Tristan follows me, leaning. “What?”

I can’t look at him. “Tristan, there’s something I need you to see.”