Page 77 of The Sunlit Man

Wit, naturally.

“Of course.”

So what are you being a fool about?

“These sunhearts,” he said, tapping the sliver with his fingernail, “worked on Elegy because everyone on this planet is Connected. I’m not sure how or why, but their souls see one another as the same. They can share heat with one another. It’s become deeply embedded in their culture. But they couldn’t do it with me, even when I wanted to. So…”

So this sunheart can’t draw strength from your soul, because it’s from this planet, and you aren’t.

“Exactly. Linguistic Connection isn’t enough. I’d need something more to be able to draw upon this.” He could feed off their power,like he could almost all forms of Investiture. But the sunhearts refused to let him put anything back in, to lance his soul, because they didn’t accept him as one of them.

It’s useless to you, then?

“I could maybe hack it with some rare devices,” he said. “Which I don’t have access to here.” With a sigh, he heaved himself from the seat.

He had been so very close to escaping the Torment in some small way. Realizing it was impossible felt like hitting a wall.

He wanted to be moving. Physically, not just in a vehicle. He entered the back room, but there wasn’t a lot of space here for pacing. Zeal and his team—except Hardy, who was napping by the wall—had huddled together and were munching on some rations, laughing.

How do they take such joy? the knight wonders. They’re right on the edge of destruction.

“They’ve always lived on the edge of destruction,” Nomad replied. “I suppose they learned to find happiness in the moments between disasters.”

Then…what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do that?

Auxiliary asked it without malicious intent; Nomad knew him well enough to tell that, even without vocal inflections. It still felt like a dagger to the gut.

He closed his eyes to the laughing people and settled down on a bench near the wall.

“They know me too,” Elegy whispered.

He glanced to where she sat, chained. He knew some women caretakers had helped her with physical needs earlier, but he felt a stab of shame for the raw skin at the sides of the manacles and theway her outfit—that long open-fronted robe and trousers—hadn’t been changed since they’d pulled her out of the mud.

She was focused on Zeal and his team, her eyes…confused? Her expressions were tough to read.

“They keep looking at me,” she continued, “as if expecting to see a spark of familiarity. Like…I don’t know. I used to have words to describe such things. I no longer do.”

“They did know you,” he said. “Everyone in Beacon did.”

“I don’t remember them, yet they all remember me,” she said. “Yes…theyrememberme, but they don’tknowme. Not anymore.”

“There are some,” he said, “who would find that liberating. You’re completely free from who you used to be, Elegy. You can make of yourself whatever you want. There are many who would like to abandon the burdens of their pasts.”

“You?”

“No. Not me.” He looked up at the ceiling, wishing he could see the stars. “I don’t particularlylikewho I am, but I cherish what I’ve learned about myself. It lets me trust in certain truths.”

“I don’t know what to trust or believe,” she said. “The voice in my head was so confident…”

“Do you thinkitknew you?” he asked. “Who will you follow, Elegy? The person who demands you kill? Or the person you used to be?”

“I don’t know that person.”

He nodded toward the others. “That person you used to be, she inspired all of this. Everything these people have done to be free? That was her, the old Elegy.” He shrugged. “You can’t be her, but youcantrust that she knew what she was doing. By the ideals and community she helped create.”

She slunk down, lowering her eyes. “The voice,” she said, “might come back. I feel it building, whispering at the edges of my mind. It might corrupt my heart again.”

“Then use this,” he said, taking out the sliver of sunheart Rebeke had given him. He pressed it into her chained fingers. “Keep that. If the voice returns, speak the words: ‘Bold one on the threshold of death, give this sunheart my heat that it may bless those who still live.’”

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