Page 18 of HeartTorn

He looks up, catching my eye once more in that dark gaze of his. For a moment he says nothing. We simply watch oneanother. My skin prickles, and I can’t tell if it’s with hostility or attraction. Possibly both.

“You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?” he says softly.

Everything inside me goes still, like the sudden hush in the atmosphere before a storm. I feel the heat, the energy of pure tempest building in my core.

Slowly I lick my chapped lips. When I speak, I take pains to keep my voice level. “What do you mean, warlord?”

Taar draws a long breath. It’s strange . . . I’ve seen this man hurl himself into the most terrible dangers without a second thought. Memory of the ravening Lurodos, his face streaked black with virulium poison, astride his hideous reptant steed, flashes through my mind’s eye. Taar met him in battle without a qualm. Yet here, in this moment, he hesitates.

“Your sister,” he says at last. And nothing more.

Nothing more is needed.

The cake drops from my numb fingers,thunksin the dirt and lies still. I get to my feet. Stand a moment, staring down at him from across the dancing fire.

Then I turn and march away—away from the campfire, away from the Luin Stone. Away from him. “Ilsevel!” he calls, but I ignore him, my strides lengthening as I put distance between us. Night falls fast now, and my footing is not as sure as it could be on this rocky terrain. I don’t care. If anything, I pick up my pace, moving faster and faster, reckless, shoes kicking loose stones to roll down the incline in small avalanches.

I come to an abrupt stop, my toes just protruding over the edge of a precipitous drop. The last rays of the falling sun shines from the edge of this world, illuminating the carcass of the abandoned city far below. I stare at it, trying once more, almost unconsciously, to hear the song which must have once sung so clear from its streets, its towers, its bridges and walls. There’s nothing. A great, hollow echo of nothing.

Footsteps sound behind me. “Ilsevel,” Taar calls again, but I do not turn to face him. I wrap my arms around myself, shuddering but not with cold. He draws nearer, comes a halt. When he speaks again, his voice is deeper than before, tinged with darkness. “Zylnala.”

I close my eyes. I feel like a convict kneeling at the block, counting out the heartbeats until the blade drops.

“You understand, don’t you?” His voice reaches for me like a pair of strong arms, trying to draw me back to him. “What happened to your sister was a tragedy. But it was not your fault. You could not have prevented it.”

Of course he would think that. Because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t realize the truth.

I pull in a shivering breath, biting down on both lips to prevent a sob from escaping. A host of wild confessions crowd my tongue. Gods, I might as well just cast myself over this brink and break on the stones below! Maybe I will.

Or maybe there’s a simpler way to bring about my own demise.

“He was there because of me.”

Taar is silent for a long moment. Then: “What did you say?”

A smile rips at my face. Now it’s there, ready to come out: my declaration of guilt. It’s almost a relief to speak it, to let the words, which have been knotted in my throat all this while, finally unspool and tumble free.

“Mage Artoris would not have been at the Temple of Lamruil were it not for me. I wrote to him. I asked him to come.”

8

TAAR

Ice washes through my veins.

I knew they were connected, possibly more deeply connected than she’d let on. But this? This is more than I let myself imagine. She wrote to him. She asked him to come and he . . . gods damn it, he came at her request. He left behind the safety of Evisar and the mage-paths, allowed himself to be made vulnerable. Because she asked him to.

“Why?” The word erupts from my throat, a deep growl. “Why did you summon him?”

She tilts her head, her hard gaze catching mine. In the swiftly fading light, her features are mostly obscured, but the burning despair in her eye shines brighter and fiercer than stars. “I loved him,” she says.

Those words might as well be blows.

I take a step back then another, reeling. Thevelracord around my forearm tightens to the brink of severing bone. I want to scream, to tear it free, to turn and flee from this moment, this revelation, and all the while a voice in the back of my head persists,It doesn’t matter! She’s a stranger. She’s not your wife. You don’t even know her. None of this should matter to you.

But it does. Far more than it should. And I cannot, in this moment, believe that it is merely the inconvenient potency of thevelramaking me feel this way.

A smile curls her lips. “I loved him,” she says again. “And I asked him to come find me at the Temple of Lamruil. To run away with me.”

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