Page 99 of Of Flames and Fallacies

“Yeah, I know! I…it’s just that they have always been so proud of my brothers. I’ve always been the one with the least success. I could never make it in war with throwing knives. And my brothers have been rising in the ranks and…it just…happened. I know I shouldn’t have.” He buries his face in his hands.

“Shh, it’s okay, Arch. You just wanted your parents to be proud.” I rub a hand up and down his uninjured arm before squeezing his shoulder.

He unveils his face. Tears glisten at the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill down. “I just feel like I’ve been living a lie. All I’ve ever wanted was to make them proud. As soon as I turned eighteen I enlisted. It’s been years. I’ve been trying to train and become better at sword fighting, but my training hasn’t been what I thought it would be. I thought I would’ve been promoted to Arterias by now. I feel like I’m nothing but a let down.”

My fists clench. He doesn’t have to mention Darian for me to know why his training has been less than ideal.

“You’re not a let down, Arch. We’ll work on it. I’ll do everything in my power to help you.” I lock eyes with him, willing him to listen to me. “Look. I’m proud of you. Cole is proud of you.”

He snorts, looking away from me. “Cole had to save me. He had to turn back and risk his life and everyone else’s to save me.”

“Yes, butyousavedmefirst.”

A powerful silence settles between us, but he still won’t look my way.

I grab his chin, turning his face toward me. “You saved me, Archie. No one else would’ve been able to do that. Cole couldn’t. The rest of the squad couldn’t. But you did. That rebel would have slit my throat in the forest if you hadn’t stepped in.”

The words land and stick, his panicked breath slowing as he processes my words. The watery glaze of his eyes lessens.

“You saved me,” I repeat, wrapping my arms around him in a hug. He melts into my embrace, leaning his forehead into my shoulder.

“I’m proud of you,” I whisper. Pulling back away from him, I wipe a stray tear from his cheek. “Now, get some rest because you’re going to need it to recover if we’re going to get you promoted to Arterias.”

He smiles and dips his head. “Thank you, Kat. You’re a true friend.”

I return to the healer’s quadrant. It’s oddly silent, and there’s less patients than when I left with Archie.

“No one else came?” I ask Marge.

“A few, but you did such a good job, not much else was needed,” she answers.

I swallow, a smile tugging at my lips at her subtle praise.

“Come here,” she commands, patting an empty bed.

I obey and take a seat. She brushes a clean rag to my forehead, and I wince as pain sizzles in my skin. The rag comes back bloody as she blots my head. I must have been injured at some point, though I don’t recall a moment I had been.

“This is a little deeper than I expected. Let’s stitch it up, just in case.” Marge retrieves the materials and lowers a needle into the flame of a candle.

I watch her with interest and a slight nervousness, but I’m unable to pinpoint if the root cause is the needle or flame.

She must notice how wide my eyes get because her expression softens as she murmurs, “Not a big fan of needles?”

“No,” I confess, though not fully.

“The trick is to look away. If you can’t see it…” her fingers rest on my forehead in preparation, “...you can’t feel it as much.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I whisper. The needle pierces my flesh, the sharp pain pricking my forehead. I focus on the candle resting on the counter instead, absorbed by the flickering flame.

“Fear accentuates pain. So if you don’t pay attention to the emotion, you’re better off to process the sensation.” She stitches me up quickly, then leans back to look me in the eyes. “Are you okay?”

The question catches me off guard. I flinch, pulled out of a haze. “I—I think so.”

I try to not think of Cole and the way his eyes burned. The splatter of blood against his face, and the dead man’s fleshsquelching under his blow, again and again. Nor how close we got to losing Archie. I draw in a deep breath, pushing the racing thoughts back into a box and closing the lid.

Marge rests a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you head back to your room and get a good night’s rest? You’re dismissed for tomorrow. I’ll take care of any stragglers that come in.”

I shake my head, opening my mouth to argue with her.

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