Page 132 of Shadow & Storms

Thea gave a rough laugh. ‘There hasn’t been much time for talking yet… And you’ll have to be more specific.’

After a moment, Wilder said, ‘It wasn’t your fate stone.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Thea chewed on her lower lip, deep in thought. ‘It doesn’t feel right to celebrate it – that my life isn’t over… Not when it cost Anya hers.’

‘I understand.’

‘Truthfully, I don’t know how I feel about any of it yet. That for all those years, I let a fate stone that wasn’t mine influence how I behaved, the choices I made…’ She looked up at him. ‘But how can I regret anything? How can I be sorry when everything led me to you?’

Wilder saw the conflict in her eyes, the unbroken swell of a summer storm. He wished he could take that pain, that guilt away, but he knew better than anyone that it was her burden to bear, that only she could free herself from its confines.

‘But I’m grateful,’ she said suddenly. ‘Grateful that it’s not the end, grateful that I get this time with you. That we have our lives together ahead of us.’

He stroked his thumb down the back of her hand. ‘As am I.’

Thea smiled at him then, and for a moment, it was as though the war had never happened, as though shadows had never ruled. She shone brighter for him than the sun.

‘Gods, I love you,’ he told her. He had promised himself he’d never hold back from saying it again, that when the words rose in his chest he would say them to her, wherever they were, whatever they were doing.

‘I love you, too,’ she said.

But her smile froze as his cabin came into view, and she stopped them in their tracks.

Wilder followed her gaze to his home.

Scorch marks scored the once-quaint porch. What had not been burned away was splintered and broken, including the front door.

‘Wilder…’ Thea breathed. ‘I’m so sorry…’

Shocked, he said nothing, but approached the cabin, dread turning his stomach leaden. Inside, the place was no better. Parts of it had been set alight. The roof of the bedroom had caved in. His belongings were scattered across the floor in pieces, his potted plants either missing or ruined.

Wilder ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘I don’t think this was done by wraiths and reapers…’

‘What then? Howlers?’

He shook his head. ‘I think this was done long before Thezmarr was taken by the enemy. It must have been after Notos, when I was declared a fallen Warsword.’

Thea seemed shocked. ‘You think Thezmarrians did this?’

Wilder huffed a laugh. ‘You’re forgetting your own anger so easily. Remember how you felt? Imagine that in the birthplace of Warswords…’ He crouched by a bit of missing floor, where dirt and ash met splintered timber. ‘This isn’t recent. The embers here haven’t been hot for a long time.’

Thea made a noise of despair, hugging her arms to her stomach as though she felt physical pain at the broken sight before them. ‘Your beautiful home…’

‘It’s just a building, Thea,’ he told her. ‘You’re my true home.’

‘But…’

Shaking his head, he went not to her, but to the untouched cupboard against the wall. There, he rummaged through the shelves until he found what he was looking for.

He held out the arrow to her, and when she took it from him with a look of disbelief, he smiled.

She turned it over in her hands, eyes wide. ‘You kept it?’

It was the arrow he’d shot at her when he’d found her spying on the shieldbearers in the Bloodwoods. The arrow that she’d gripped in the tree above her as he’d fucked her for the first time.

‘Of course I kept it,’ he told her. ‘It’s always been you, Thea. And as long as I’m with you, you’re the only home I’ll ever need.’

Wilder took her in his arms then, his gaze drifting back to that broken patch of floor, noting a speck of colour for the first time.

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