Page 82 of Once the Skies Fade

“What?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what?”

“You’re looking at me strangely,” I said, cocking my brow suspiciously.

Isa angled her head at me and pursed her lips for a moment before finally saying, “I’m merely waiting for you to answer my question, which you still haven’t done.”

“You look like you’re expecting me to answer a certain way,” I noted.

“Were you checking on a certain foreign general?” Isa eyed me almost eagerly, like she was hoping that was exactly what I had been doing. If only I could answer her honestly without giving her the satisfaction of being right.

“What if I was? It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Isa said through a slowly widening grin.

“Why?” I asked, not caring how childishly defensive I sounded. “Why does it matter?”

Isa shrugged smugly. “No reason. But”—her gaze darkened with a tinge of worry again—“I want to see you happy again, friend. I know you say you can’t love again, but maybe, with the right match, you could. And that’s all I want for you. Another chance at love.”

“Oh, is that all?” A hollow laugh tumbled from me, and I offered her a weak smile. “That’s what best friends are for, right? Believing in us when we can no longer do it ourselves? I can’t get hurt again, Isa.”

She reached forward and rested her hand on mine. “But you can, Calla. As long as you draw breath, pain is possible—perhaps even inevitable—but life isn’t about avoiding hardship; it’s about being the good in someone else’s life, so they don’t have to endure any of this shit alone. You cannot avoid heartache, but you’re not alone in it either.”

My eyes misted against my will, and I swiped my free hand across them.

“Fucking stars, Isa. Why do you have to do that?”

“Do what?” she asked, her voice cracking under her own emotional weight as she wiped away her own tears.

“Make me feel. You know I’d rather just be numb.”

“Numb or angry, you mean?” She laughed when I shrugged in agreement.

“That was a bit of a stretch, though,” I said, and she shifted her gaze to the ceiling as if backtracking through our conversation in her head. “Since when does checking on an injured guest indicatechance at love?” I emphasized the last three words with a wiggle of my fingers in the air between us.

Isa rubbed the back of her neck slowly as she studied me. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“Thank—”

“Or it wouldn’t,” she interrupted me. “Had you not ridden in on your shadowy horse and saved him.”

I had to fight to keep my mouth from falling open. What would she have had me do back there? Let him die?

I was about to ask her just that when she noted, “You’re different with him.”

Groaning, I rolled my eyes. “I’ve barely been around him.”

“But youhavebeen around him,” she said, arching one brow. “That’s more than can be said for any of the other competitors.”

“Except Graham,” I said, but she was already shaking her head before I finished saying his name.

“Even Graham. You may have spent time with him before these games, but have you since?”

“At that first dinner he talked to me in the corner,” I said, a tad too triumphantly.

“You mean, after the general rushed over to protect you from a shadowy disaster by dancing with you?”

“I also saw Graham in the forest.” I realized my mistake too late.

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