Page 115 of The Mask Falling

“I cannot change the oath,” he said. “But I want you to know that I regret jeopardizing our trust. I regret causing you pain. You have endured more than enough.”

So we were having this out now. I tucked my hands into my coat to keep them warm.

“I’m going to admit something I thought I never would,” I finally said. “I don’t wholly blame Terebell.”

Darkness obscured his features, so the flames of his eyes were all I could see.

“In the colony, I was angry. Justly so. I’d been torn away from another home, stripped of my name and freedom,” I said. “We both know I was looking for reasons not to trust you. If I’d found out you could become more monstrous than I already thought you were, I wouldn’t have listened to explanations. The rebellion might never have happened.”

He didn’t contradict me.

“I know myself. The ways I’ve changed, the ways I haven’t. I’ve died a hundred deaths since then, lived a hundred little seasons,” I murmured. “You’ve changed since we first met, too. Somehow you seem both more and less human.”

“And yet,” he said, “I am not human at all. This will not be the last time our values and beliefs come into conflict.”

“I’ve never forgotten what you are,” I said. “I see your true face. I can accept it.”

Somewhere below, a piano struck up a mélodie. Strains of a sweet voice drifted up to us.

“The truth about the Emim doesn’t change our aims,” I stated. “We’ll just have to be careful who we tell, and how.” I shot him a look. “And you’d better not get the half-urge near me.”

“In two centuries, I have never succumbed to it.”

“Good.”

We both listened to the music for a while. Even in the dark, he cut a solid figure, deeply etched onto the night. Nothing like his faded husk of a dream-form.

For the first time, I imagined what the war must have done to him. Long before Nashira had mutilated his body, having to drain those weaker than him to survive would have ripped his dignity to shreds.

“I know how much the Ranthen mean to you. You fought a war with them, and I would never expect you to always put me above them,” I said quietly. “But you and I started this revolution, and we owe it to everyone risking their necks to lead it properly. If we’re to do that—if we’re to stay friends—there can’t be any more secrets between us.”

“No.”

In the hush that followed, all I could hear was the citadel.

“You told me once that there was something that proved you were always on my side,” I said, breaking it again. “Something that would betray you . . . if anyone but me could see.”

“Yes.” Even in this cold, his words were smokeless. “Have you worked it out yet, little dreamer?”

With a reluctant smile, I shook my head. I knew he would never tell. This was his puzzle for me, something I was meant to solve alone. I could allow him that.

“Perhaps I can prove it in another way.” Arcturus held out a hand. “By your leave.”

Curious, I accepted his hand. With the other, he cupped the side of my face, his thumb light against my temple.

“This must be spoken in Gloss,” he told me, “but I will recite it to you first.”

“If you could.”

When he gently tipped his forehead onto mine, I grew still. This close, I saw every small detail of his face. The bow of his lips, cut as if with the tip of a knife. The eclipses of his eyes.

“Let the æther bear witness,” he said. “I will never keep from you what you should know.” I closed my eyes. “I will never conspire against you, nor betray you by word or thought or deed. I will never, by choice, abandon you to your enemies, nor forsake you in adversity.”

The cord shivered. I could feel the heat of fever in my breath, caught in the space between us.

“In body and spirit, I am bound to this oath.” He clasped my hand to his chest. “Seo í mo mhóid shollúinte.”

I looked up in surprise. When he started again in Gloss, all of the nearest spirits gave a faint stir. Then came a chilling tremor, so subtle I could almost have imagined it, and a current between us, as if the æther—or something beyond it—had witnessed and hallowed the oath, sealed in our first languages.

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