Page 63 of The Sundered Blade

“It is a foolish wish,” he admitted. “I would dream of a world in which I was a carefree second son, and you were the daughter of some noble house. We would both be free to take those walks in the garden without ever wondering who might approve or disapprove. Without wondering whether my feelings have the potential to destroy you, along with everything we care about. Or I might dream of being a farmer in Iria, or a mage in Farhall, and you a girl from the same village, where we might meet and make eyes at one another at village dances.”

Then he sighed and squeezed her fingers. “But they are not merely foolish because we cannot change who we were born to be. They are foolish because it is the very darkness of our pasts that has shaped us. It is all the suffering and injustice and dark moments of loneliness that have made us who we are and brought us here to a place where we have a chance to end that same suffering for others. I do not look at you, Karreya, and see someone I want to change to suit me. I see someone who was tempered in the same cruel forge. I see someone who can look at the dark and broken pieces of me and not turn away. I see someone who can walk into the fire at my side without flinching. And even if I might wish that no one had ever caused you pain, that you had never known suffering, I could never wish for you to be other than who you are, because every part of you is perfect.”

It was as if he had cracked open her chest, taken the jagged edges of her heart, and pieced them together, and it was the sweetest agony she had ever experienced.

“I love every piece of who you are,” Niell said simply, and the words fell over her like rain in the desert. “Every sharp corner, every polished blade. I love that you won’t let me get away with being absurd, and that you question everything I say. That you pummel me with honesty and heal me with truth, even when it cuts so deep that I bleed. I love your ferocity and your sarcasm and your fire, and most of all that you will never lie to me about how you feel. And because I love you…”

No. Just no. She refused to allow him to finish that sentence because he had finally said the only words she needed to hear.

Her fingers pressed against his lips, silencing his next words.

“Do not say any more just now,” she commanded. “Your words were beautiful, but only those last three were necessary.”

His lips curved beneath her fingers. “How necessary?” he murmured.

And Karreya felt herself begin to blush under his scrutiny.

“Necessary enough that I feared you might ruin them if you continued to speak.”

“But you cannot know what I meant to say.”

“Something noble and self-sacrificing and utterly infuriating, beyond a doubt,” she informed him coolly, and he grimaced in a way that told her she had hit the mark.

“I don’t know if there is any other possible end to this story,” he said soberly. “And I didn’t want either of us to leave this place still wondering…”

“I do not wonder any more, Abreian,” she told him. “Whatever is to come, I have what is necessary to guide my path.”

“That makes one of us,” he said wryly. “But I’m glad, if only because…”

The door burst open, nearly flying off its hinges with the force of its swing. Standing in the arched opening was Kyrion, eyes aglow, emanating fury and magic so strongly that Karreya nearly drew a weapon to defend herself.

“Modrevin is gathering the nobles on the steps of the palace,” the night elf growled. “He intends to deal with the prisoners—tonight.”

CHAPTER17

“Tonight?” Vaniell dropped Karreya’s hand and strode towards the door, stopping a few feet shy of the furious night elf. “Do you know what he intends?”

“No. Only that he has ordered them to be brought. The nobles are already assembling.” Kyrion’s eyes glowed and his hands flexed impatiently as if he were holding himself back by the thinnest of threads. “Come with me or do not, but I will stop him, no matter how many guards he throws in my way.”

And in that moment, Vaniell believed him. The night elf king overflowed with deadly magic, and in his hand, a blade was merely an extension of his body. He had been feared for a decade for many good reasons, and now that he had returned…

The palace steps might soon run red with the blood of anyone who dared to stand between the former Raven and the woman he loved more than his own life.

“I will come,” Vaniell said. “And I do not grudge you your revenge. But before you charge in without a plan, consider the cost. Consider the lives that stand between you and your goal. And consider most of all that it will take only a single arrow to cut you down.”

Kyrion took two steps forward and loomed over him with barely leashed frustration. “I will forgive you, Princeling, because you do not truly understand who I am or what Leisa is to me. But I will no longer wait. I will not hold back. Those who choose to stand between me and Leisa will remember why they feared me, and they will step aside or die.”

Perhaps Vaniell did not understand. But he did know the pain that had pierced to his soul as he watched the Garimoran army marching through the gates, realizing how many of them would never come home. He knew that he wanted to prevent more senseless deaths, even though the majority of these events were beyond his control. For so many years, he had felt helpless in the face of tragedy and injustice, and it was that frustration that clenched his fists and allowed him to stand his ground.

“We will find her, Kyrion, but I’ll be hanged before I throw up my hands and allow you to murder innocents along the way. Just because my people have been forced to live under Modrevin’s thumb does not mean they deserve to die!”

Kyrion’s lip curled, and he appeared to be on the verge of striking out, or perhaps shifting to his wyvern form and turning Vaniell into a pile of bleeding meat.

But it was Karreya who broke the tension—who stepped towards them, drew a dagger, and held it flat between them. “If you attack one another, you cut yourselves on your own blades,” she said coolly. “And the only ones who suffer are those you wish to save. We must go and discover the truth, not argue over blame for a thing that may never happen.”

Kyrion snarled under his breath, but he stepped back, breathing hard, and Vaniell ran a hand through his hair as he wondered how close to death he’d actually come.

“Right,” he said. “We should go. If we sneak around through the gardens, we can come up behind the crowd and hopefully remain unseen, but we’ll have to hurry.”

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