Page 104 of Children of Virtue and Vengeance

It feels like pushing two mountains apart with my bare hands, but staring into his eyes, I manage to open my throat. Roën’s touch softens as I inhale, sucking in a feeble, strangled breath.

“That’s it.” He moves his thumbs back, stroking the skin behind my ears. I stare at him, gasping until all the air in the room returns.

“What’re you doing here?” I ask. The ache in my chest magnifies as Roën pulls me up and sits me down on the bathtub’s edge.

“The elders summoned me. The lot of them pooled together every resource they had just to hire me to help.”

He grabs a rag and cups my cheek, gentle as he wipes away the blood and dirt coating my face. I close my eyes and lean into him, inhaling his honeyed scent.

“He’s gone.”

My lips tremble as I speak the words. It sounds so strange to say it out loud. I only met Mâzeli two moons ago. I don’t know how he burrowed himself into my heart.

“I never had a Second.” Roën wrings out the rag. “But I had a partner. The day I lost her is still the worst I’ve ever had.”

He keeps his voice even, but his words don’t hide his scars. It’s strange to see this much of him. To peer into the heart he pretends not to have.

“How’d you meet her?”

A small smile rises to his pink lips, but it doesn’t last long. “She found me digging through trash. That girl practically dragged me out of the dirt. She’d probably still be alive if she’d just let me starve.”

New tears well in my eyes and I have to turn away. I wonder where Mâzeli might be if we hadn’t met. If I’d escaped across the sea. I never wanted this war. This clan. After Baba died, I didn’t want anyone or anything.

I just wanted to be free.

“I have to get out of here.” I shake my head, pawing away my tears.

“Out of the sanctuary?”

“Out of the kingdom.”

It feels like a betrayal to utter the words, but I can’t lie to myself. I was a fool to think that freedom lay on the other side of this war. The only thing I can count on is disaster and death. It follows me everywhere I go.

Staring at the red bathwater, I know I can’t keep doing this.

“I can’t keep burying the people I love,” I whisper.

Roën’s hand hovers over my cheek as he digests my words. He avoids my gaze, dipping the rag into the water before moving to the blood on my hands.

“Is that really what you want?”

I nod, and Roën looks down at the floor.

“If you really want to go, now is your best chance.”

I tilt my head at his coded message. “How do you know that?”

“I can’t say more.”

As he brings the rag to my arm, I stop him by grabbing his hand.

“Talk,” I demand. “What do you know?”

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

AMARI

IHAVE TO MAKE THIS RIGHT.

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