Page 35 of Of Sword & Silver

Oh. He’s answering my question.

“Left?” I attempt to scoff, but it comes out high-pitched and shaky. I cough. “I freed you. You didn’t just waltz out of there.”

The slight stiffening of his shoulders tells me he’s irritated by my comment, and I don’t expect him to respond… but he does.

“Yes. You freed me before… I didn’t expect to be freed.”

My eyes widen, and I glance behind me at the direcat, who’s bringing up the rear like this entire expedition is the most normal thing in the world.

Maybe it is. I don’t know what direcats get up to.

I make a mental note to do some asking around on direcats at the next town we hit.

“I told you before, I deserved to pay penance for my crime against… your sisters.”

He drags the last word out, like it’s foul on his tongue but he can’t quite get the taste off.

“I’ve never understood that,” I interrupt. “The Sisters of Sola. The Sisterhood.” My mouth twitches to the side. I wanted him to talk to me, and now I’m the one cutting him off. Typical silver tongue bullshit. I shrug one shoulder because I might as well say my heretical piece. I doubt that bitch goddess Sola is listening anyway.

Maybe we’re too far down the barrow for her to hear.

“They were never sisters to me,” I continue, babbling now, sudden nerves getting the best of me. “Or brothers. Never family. They made me watch—” My throat gets thick, but there’s something about the blue wode light that keeps me talking. Or maybe it’s simply having Sword as a captive audience. Maybe it’s simply feeling like I need to finally say it out loud. “They made me watch, you know? When they killed my family. Told me: ‘Look, little girl. See how they can’t help you now. We’re the only ones who can help you now, Silver Tongue. They’d be your servants and slaves, they would hate you, but we’ll teach you control.’”

I draw in a long breath, trying to comfort myself, trying to ground myself in this moment, because I don’t talk about that. What the hells has gotten into me? I don’t get nervous and just drop that memory.

I’m off kilter, out of sorts… and I wonder if the curse is to blame.

“Fucking Sola,” the Sword rumbles.

His curse surprises me. Not the hatred in it, because that’s never been in question, nor the disgust, because he’s made that clear as well.

But the pity in the two words—for me.

“Why? Why did you swear to her? Serve her?”

“I chose to live,” I answer simply, without a second thought. “I could have let them kill me too, any number of times. And it’s selfish, and I know that, but I chose to live. I chose me, and I’m going to keep choosing me.” I swallow, the fear in my mother’s eyes—green eyes, like mine—still haunting me after all these years in forced service to Sola.

The last word she mouthed at me, her voice silenced by the knife wound in her throat.

“Live. Kyrie, live.”

The sisters called it a favor to me. Made me work for them to pay my debt to them, my debt for freeing my family from my… peculiar Sola-gifted magic.

I wipe the back of my hand over my cheek, unsurprised to find it wet. Tears are a weakness, the sisters said. Tears are punished.

“And still you weep for them,” the Sword says, face curious.

It’s not until then that it dawns on me: I must have spoken the last bit out loud, too.

“Your tears are not wasted on the dead. Your compassion is not wasted on the living,” he says softly.

I want to make a joke, to reclaim some of that hard shell that’s mysteriously failed me, but I don’t. I’m too empty, like the memory’s hollowed me out and scraped me to the bone.

It must be the curse at work.

“Here,” he says abruptly, and the blood-soaked memories disappear back into the past where they belong. “We’re here.”

My eyes go wide, because holy pantheon of Heskan gods, this is the sort of treasure room I would have staked my life on to access.

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