Page 150 of The Duke and the Disciple

There were only a handful of patrons inside. The pubkeep was busying himself drying glasses.

Rahn neatly stacked his coin on the bar. “Room three for a night, and a bowl of whatever you’re serving, please.”

The old man tossed his rag with a nod and moved to the uneven hooks on the wall. He reached for the key to room two.

“No. I wantthatroom,” Rahn stated, pointing at the paddle painted with the number three.

“Aye? Still need to clean tha’ one, if Tessa ever shows herself this week. Newlyweds, so cannae guess what we’ll find.” The pubkeep’s hand hovered between two and three, waiting.

“I prefer it as it is,” Rahn said and added another coin to his stack.

The pubkeep slid the key across the bar with a skeptical tilt, but his eyes were on the gold. “Aye, I remember ye now. Cauldron’s on the back hearth, still some stew. Serve yourself, much as ye like.”

“Thank you,” Rahn said, but as he imagined himself scooping the stew—eating the stew—he realized he wasn’t hungry at all. He headed upstairs instead.

The room was just as he’d left it. Bed unmade... old dishes gathering crust and dust on the table. Someone had collected Aesylt’s and Valerian’s belongings, but in the rush, things had been left behind. Woolen socks peeked from under the bed, and there was a nightgown hanging from the side of the privy curtain. He traced his hands over the familiar, soft fabric, misery splitting his chest.

Sleet hammered the frozen panes. Ice had already been forming on the trees when he’d crossed the village line, and it was getting worse. He cracked the window and grabbed the nearest chair and a blanket from the bed and dragged them over to watch the world frost over.

First, he counted the branches. Then the stars. One, two, a dozen, five hundred. His fingers ticked through the exercise, leaving room for nothing unwanted to creep in.

Adrahn, aren’t you tired of running?

“Five hundred and six. Five hundred and seven...”

You’ve been running since you were eight. You’re nearly thirty.

“Five hundred twelve...”

You know who you are now. This truth is yours. There’s no putting it back.

Rahn rolled his hands along the sides of his seat. His mother’s gentle admonishments continued, unaffected by his counting. But it wasn’t his mother, and he wasn’t the type to pretend. A man of science either believed in it wholly or not at all.

“I know it’s mine. I know there’s no putting it back,” he said. His breath curled in the icy air.

His mother went silent, but his inner monologue returned.Always running from, never to.

Rahn closed the window and left the chair behind. He paced to the table and back, the table and back. He watched Aesylt’s nightgown slide to the floor and dove for it, feeling properly foolish the moment he had it in hand. It was just fabric. Just a gown.

And she was just a girl.

“And I loved her.” Rahn wrapped his fists in the thin gown, bringing it to his face. “I loved her imperfectly, but I loved her utterly.”

Pack only what matters to you, Adrahn,his father had said the morning before they were set to leave on the massive ships in Mellendha Harbor. He’d never seen their like before or since, and the whispers among the adults had suggested there was magic involved in their swift construction. They were built on the instruction of the four Meduwyn sorcerers who knew all and could do anything.There will be a great fire,they’d told Carrow,and only those on the ships will survive to tell of it. Here, you are merely a duke. But there, you can be a king.

The following morning, snuggled between his parents, Rahn had watched his entire world burn from the deck, his baby sister sobbing her fear and confusion against his vest. Three nights later, they were all property of the ocean, and he was a murderer.

A murderer twice over. Now thrice over.

He regretted not the acts but the necessity of them—how smoothly he’d cut all three of them down without reluctance or remorse. It wasn’t natural. Men were supposed to revere life, not destroy it. Not one of his kills had been an act of self-defense. Not one had been necessary beyond his desire to see their lives end for what they’d done. But who was he to decide their fate?

And who were they to decide the fates of your mother, your father, your sister? Aesylt?

Aesylt understood him better than he understood himself. She’d blocked her own violence from her mind, not from remorse but from the same guilt Rahn had only just seen in himself. Survivor’s guilt. He was no more or less worthy of life than the ones who had lost theirs.

It was the night he’d arrived at Fanghelm that was the most vivid. She’d been cuddling Aleksy by the hearth while Drazhan and Imryll were warming their bedchamber. She and Rahn had exchanged a few awkward jests about it, but in her eyes, he’d seen the whisper of her own lust for life—her desires, unrealized, still forming. She was a puzzle, and he, a missing, orphaned piece that had clicked soundly into place, but only shehad seen it then. She’d known it that very night and waited, unwearyingly, for him to catch up and find her. The closer she came, the deeper he stuck his nose in the books that had kept his heart safe and dormant for so many years.

But no quantity of books or stars or classes or curiosities came close to lighting the flame within him as the warmth of her face in his neck or her arm bent over his chest as she cupped his cheek... the sound of her soft but deep voice whispering,And another with me,barely getting out the last word before she was in his arms, where everything, for once, felt like hope.

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