Page 126 of Lady of Ashes

And then there was Cassius. Perhaps the one person she did trust implicitly, without question or thought. Someone she’d only seen once since leaving Baylorin until she had to watch him be tortured nearly to death in front of her.

Don’t burn things to the ground in a ?t, Sorin. I’m ?ne. I’m on the beach.

He was already pulling a lightweight tunic over his head and opening a ?re portal as he replied,How long have you been down there?

No response came, and when he turned his focus to her emotions, he couldn’t separate them all. They were a swirling storm in her soul. He stepped onto the sand, immediately spotting her sitting a ways down the beach, letting sand sift between her ?ngers as she stared out across the sea. Within a minute, he was lowering to sit beside her while she scooped up another handful of granules. Her hair was swaying gently in the breeze off the water, and her shadows were freely ?oating around her as if she’d let them out to breathe.

After several moments of silence, he asked softly, “How long have you been down here?”

She shrugged. “A few hours, maybe?”

Sorin nodded, biting down on the frustration of her sitting on a deserted beach by herself for hours. Not frustration at her, not entirely anyway. More frustration with himself for not seeing this coming. For not feeling her get out of the godsdamn bed. For not being here for her these last few hours.

She’d done such things a few times in Solembra, going off by herself and wandering along the Tana River or disappearing to various rooms of the palace to be alone. Always on the hard days, when she was so lost in her grief, her guilt, her soul.

She hadn’t spoken much of what was done to her these past few weeks. She’d been chained to a wall, given little food and water, watched Cassius be used against her …

Then again, he hadn’t given her much time to tell him either. They’d had to deal with Cassius, then her own power. Then he’d been unable to hold back his own anger at the whole situation, ather, before she’d had to face the same wrath from the others when he had no idea what she was processing, what she’d experienced at the hands of her former master.

He sighed heavily. “I am sorry, Scarlett.”

She was reaching for another handful of sand, but she stilled at his words. “What could you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“For not giving you a chance to breathe before our discussions about your actions. For not giving you time to process before forcing you to—”

She held up a hand to stop him, and the words died on his lips. She said nothing for nearly a full minute, and he was about to speak again when she said, “You do not have anything to apologize for, Sorin. Your feelings regarding my choices are valid. What I made you go through … I needed to hear those things. From you. From the others.”

“Yes, but not as soon as you woke. Not when you were dealing with Cassius. Not without knowing what you had endured, what you were processing after your time with Alaric. To be honest, Scarlett, I was no better than Callan when you woke in Solembra,” Sorin said, his gaze ?xing on the horizon that was just starting to see the ?rst hints of the coming dawn.

She didn’t say anything in response to that for several minutes, resuming her sand sifting. The sound of the waves gently rolling to the shore was the only thing disturbing the silence, and her eyes drifted closed. He still couldn’t sort through everything she was feeling, although he was trying to avoid reading her emotions the way it was, wanting her to voice them.

“Actions have consequences, Sorin,” she ?nally said. “I am not exempt from that. I could even say the consequences are greater for me now because of who I am, the role I am in. You cannot shield me from the consequences of my actions.”

“No, I cannot, but I should be your reprieve from those consequences. I should be the place for you to breathe,” Sorin countered.

“And you are,” she said, ?nally turning to look at him. “You are that for me, Sorin, but that does not mean you are not affected. That does not mean that you are not allowed to voice those same feelings if you have them.”

“I should have waited.”

“No. Things needed to be said. We needed to have things outin the open between us before I met with the others. I know that’s why you did it. I understand why you insisted on that conversation when you did. It needed to happen, and when we did meet with the others, you were that place for me to breathe. I knew that no matter what the others threw at me, you were still with me. You were still in my corner.”

“I will always be in your corner, Scarlett,” Sorin said softly, getting lost in her eyes.

“I know, Sorin,” she replied quietly. “I know that I could set the world on ?re simply because I wanted to, and you would still claim me. You would still stand beside me. You would still be mine.”

She gave him a soft, almost sad, smile before she dropped down onto her back in the sand, her eyes going to the sky that was beginning to lighten.

“Do you ever wonder what the stars do when we cannot see them?” she asked.

Sorin stilled at such an odd question, glancing down at her before he moved to his back beside her.

“I suppose I have never thought about such a thing,” he answered.

She’d interlaced her ?ngers, stacking them on her stomach, watching the stars fade as the light began to overtake the darkness.

When she didn’t say anything after a few moments, he asked, “What drew you to the sea in the dead of night?”

“I think best by the water, and I’ve come to prefer the dark over the light. I am more comfortable in it,” she murmured.

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