Page 28

Thea

U pstairs, in our bedroom, the early morning sun was a shy band of light peering through the slightly parted drapes. It was reassuring to know that night was still able to shift into dawn, that the birds still chirped their daily song, and that the snow-drizzled mountaintops were still thawing under spring’s brilliance. So many strange things had happened lately I’d been afraid the world beyond the high walls of the Castle had crumbled too.

At the sound of the lock clicking, I veered to find Hector leaning against the closed door. “Hello,” he rasped, his voice desert-dry.

“Hello,” I muttered.

He bowed his head, but there was no real apology in it. “You’re furious with me, aren’t you?”

Furious was not the right word. Incensed wasn’t satisfactory either. In fact, words were too plain to convey the magnitude of my wrath. “I thought you were going to die.”

Hector blew out a breath. “I thought I was going to die too.”

“Then why did you agree to it?” I demanded, my nails carving crescents in my palms. “Kaladin is just a power-hungry fool, and you gave in to his whim—”

“I needed to earn their respect,” Hector interjected sharply, holding out his blood-stained hands for me to see. “This violence was necessary, not just to prove me the strongest amongst them but to show me capable of exceeding the boundaries of my own power. I bled for them tonight, and I survived. And so at dusk they’ll bleed for me in return. I will have their oath—”

“I don’t care about the bloody oath! I care about you !”

Silence. Bleak, unfillable silence blanketed the room.

Again we’d given each other wounds, and now… What was going to happen to us now? In the stories I’d read, people always kissed and made up. In the stories he’d read, someone always died. I did not think the middle was possible for us.

He didn’t say anything for so long I began to fear he’d open the door and leave me here to stare at his absence.

But then the faintest murmur, “I know you do.”

“Do you?” I snapped. “Is that why you sent me away?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Anything but this . You told me not to listen to destiny. You told me to never let other people decide for me. And then you went ahead and stole my choice.”

He surged forward, narrowing the distance between us. “And what a great choice that would have been.”

“It was not up to you to decide!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he mocked, “I didn’t realize you wanted to see me beaten to a pulp so much.”

“What I wanted was to stand by your side!”

“And then what? Do you honestly think they would have let you go had I died tonight?”

“They wouldn’t break the treaty just to harm me!”

“They already have! They poisoned you!” he broke out, clutching at his heaving chest. “I didn’t ask Arawn to take you away to diminish you. All I wanted was to keep you safe, and you would understand this if you weren’t so—” His jaw clenched as though he was biting down the words.

“What?” I prodded, throwing back my head. “I’m what , Hector?”

“Stubborn and prideful—”

“ I’m prideful?”

“A nuisance at best.”

“You certainly go to great lengths to protect someone you find so vexing,” I bit out, furiously trying to move past him. His hand closed around my arm and pulled me back. I hissed. I wanted to wrench myself free, but my body refused to do anything but stay in his hold.

“Yes,” he muttered, his voice lower now, measured. “Yes, you are vexing. Sometimes. And other times…”

He never finished that sentence. He drew nearer, and I found myself retreating, step by step, until my back hit one of the bedposts. His hand grabbed the pole above my head, his face slanting over mine. Even like this, bloodied and haggard and maddeningly exasperating, he managed to steal the breath from my lungs, quicken the beat in my veins.

“Do you remember what you wished me on my sixteenth birthday?” I asked, much more composed than I felt. “ Be difficult in everything you do , you said. Do not make anyone’s life easy but your own. Now you’re mad at me for it?”

“I’m not mad,” he whispered. I had never heard his voice so soft. “Not in the way you think, at least.”

His eyes fell to my lips. My pulse leapt to them.

We were so close that the only thing separating us was a lonely ray of sunlight streaming through the window. Under it, I could see each tiny golden speck in his eyes. I could feel the living warmth of his body enveloping mine. I could smell the blood on his skin, the metallic scent as overwhelming and dizzying as the force of our proximity.

I felt myself lift to my toes, ready to swallow the sunlight, the fragment of space between us, but Hector pulled back, blinking like he was waking up from a long, confusing dream.

“I’m covered in blood,” he rasped. “I should…” Vaguely, he gestured toward the bathroom.

I forced myself to nod, my cheeks blazing. “Right.”

He lingered by the door, a shadow carving out his cheekbones. “I don’t think Kaladin will try something again, and the sun is out, but…” He tangled his fingers in his hair, heaving a sigh. “Don’t go far from me.”

Don’t go far from me. The words were a gentle pull into the past. Ever since that day we got separated playing in the Dragonfly Forest, we used these words like a secret code. A greeting. A goodbye. A veiled I love you . Now, surrounded by enemies, it seemed impossible to find true comfort in them.

“Hector?” I ventured warily. “What did you say to Espen earlier?”

Hector’s eyes became steady once more. “That he should talk to his son.”

Confusion sloshed in my exhausted mind. “You think Roan killed Camilla?”

“I know when I see a man willing to do anything for the person he loves,” he said.

“But Roan was not in the room when I got poisoned.”

“I still believe it was Camilla who poisoned you,” Hector clarified. “She did it to break me, to prove me incapable of choosing between the duty I have to uphold vampire law and the duty I have to my heart. I think she and Kaladin have been in contact for years now, waiting for the shift in power. Camilla was no fragile, heartbroken girl. She used Kaladin. She used everyone. She wanted the Castle and she would have manipulated the gods themselves if that meant she could have it. And then, of course, there is what Dahlia said about Camilla spewing all kinds of lies about the Valkhars to Espen. She didn’t want Dahlia and Dain to get married because the families would have grown closer. It would have been a matter of time before Espen found out what Camilla and Kaladin were planning. Espen… he can be hard to deal with at times, but he was fiercely loyal to my mother. He would have exposed Camilla if it meant keeping the peace between us.”

I considered it for a moment, following the same tangled thread as Hector, but somewhere deep inside me I had the sense that something much greater than a simple grab for power was at play here. I couldn’t shake off this feeling of wrongness. It seemed to crawl out of every room, seep out of every wall, haunt the Castle day and night. The Castle that should have protected us but hadn’t. Or perhaps couldn’t.

The magic stirred in my veins, forcing my mind to poke at something I couldn’t quite bring into focus. I didn’t feel like I was on the verge of having a vision. I felt like I was on the precipice of some life-altering revelation. But just as the scene, the hunch, whatever that sinking feeling was, breached the threshold of my consciousness, it slipped away from me, an eel floundering underwater.

The frustration must have been evident on my face, for Hector’s expression twisted with concern. “What is it? Another vision?”

I shook my head. “Go,” I rasped, tipping my chin at his bloodied hands. “The longer it stays on you, the harder it will be to scrub off.”

Light braced his eyes. Unexpected. Sizzling. Alluring as a flame. “Would you like to assist me, Dorothea?”

I glared at him, crossing my arms across my chest. “Don’t be charming. I’m still mad at you.”

He softened at that, his eyes like ambers melting into mine. “I’m sorry,” he said, and this time I knew he meant it. “I keep making the same mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“You think it’s pride, and perhaps it is, but mostly, I’m afraid to be vulnerable.” He exhaled, letting his weight fall against the doorframe in a sort of surrender. “I always push you away when I need you the most so you don’t see me break.”

This was nothing I didn’t already know. Still, to hear the words spoken aloud made me want to confess my own sins, take my part of the blame, no matter how hard or painful it was.

I steeled myself, gathering courage. “Every time things got hard, I ran away. I ran from my parents to you, from you to Thaloria, and every single day from myself. I used to think that if I kept running, I couldn’t fail at being me. I don’t want to be this girl anymore. I don’t want to wander aimlessly through life looking for myself. That’s why I wanted to stay here so much. That’s why I suggested this ridiculous ruse. I promised myself that I would not leave this time. That I would stay by your side no matter the cost.”

I didn’t feel as exposed as I’d expected saying all of this. My confession didn’t strip me down but strengthened me the way only truth could strengthen things, like a sandstone getting clarified under fire.

Hector took an uncertain step toward me. “Thea…”

“Just go. We can talk later,” I said, brushing my damp palms over the folds of my skirt only for them to come away smeared with dirt. “And make it quick. I have to wash too.”

Suddenly, a giant brass bathtub popped by the fireside. Curls of steam rose sleepily from the foamy surface, filling the room with a gentle scent of lavender. Next to it, a large silver tray materialized atop a pink footstool, holding a stack of fluffy towels, a crystal jar of bath salts, a bowl with several pastel- colored bar soaps, and a fresh rose swimming inside a small vase. After a moment, a table rolled itself into the room and settled next to the bathtub, crammed with all kinds of sweet and salty treats, pots of hot chocolate and tea, as well as my forgotten copy of the latest Lorn Verlion with a bookmark wedged amid its pages.

I let out a contented sigh and thanked both Hector and the Castle for their generosity.

“Knock on the door when you’re done,” said Hector, his fingers already working through whatever remained of the crisscross drawstrings at his collar. “Unlike you, I respect people’s privacy.”

I swiveled on my heel, huffing. “ That was an accident. How am I supposed to know you wander around the Castle naked when no one is around?”

“Well,” he drawled, cracking the bathroom door open. “Now you know.”