Page 57 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

“I know.” He’d suffered so much. Losing his family. The compulsion. Everything Marcus had put him through, whatever torture he’d endured since Raif had shoved the vanquicite sword through his chest. And now this. But she couldn’t deny him. Not ever. “We can try.”

He held out a hand, and settling her palm into his was as familiar as breathing. “Shall we?”

Zylah could follow the path of his evanescing anywhere, but she didn’t tell him that. Only relished the feeling of his hand wrapped around hers, the trace of his thumb as he pulled them through the aether together. They reappeared just north of Virian in the trees that lined the road into the city. Not too far from where he had taken them the first time they’d entered the city together, and she let herself believe he remembered that.

“I think Ranon is charging his orb for the blood moon,” he said, without releasing her hand.

Zylah looked up at him. It was a possibility. “My blood didn’t restore him as it should have,” she murmured. “You think he’s trying to regain his strength?”

“Aurelia was weakened. I think she’s been allowing her father to syphon off some of her power.”

Zylah considered that for a moment. “Her paralysing touch. Still fucking hurts, though.” Holt’s hand tightened around hers at her words, and she wished she could bottle that little moment of comfort. “And she could still evanesce, last I knew.”

“Could. Ranon drained that from her, too.”

Zylah allowed herself to feel relief at that, evanescing them both to the next point, just at the base of the Rinian mountains.

“Can we make an exception to one of our rules?” Holt asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he glanced down at her and then to the forest beyond. Their breaths clouded the air, the forest quiet save for the occasional bird cry.

“That depends,” Zylah said, holding back a smile of her own, their hands still entwined.

“It isn’t cheating.” He held his free hand over his heart, waiting for her response.

Zylah grinned. “Go on.”

“Can we skip ahead in the story to the maze? Just so I know what we’re walking in to.”

A fair request. Rhaznia was the reason she might never see with her own eyes again. But she didn’t want to spoil the lightness that had settled between them, not yet. “Fine,” she told him, injecting as much warmth into her smile as she could to disguise the grimace.

Holt evanesced them again, stopping at the perimeter of a property, a small cabin nestled between trees. Zylah’s hand slipped from his when she realised where he’d brought them, her heartbeat like a caged bird fluttering in her chest.Hiscabin.

“I thought it might trigger a memory,” he told her quietly. “But we don’t have to stay.”

“No.” Zylah shook her head. She wasn’t ready to explain her relationship with Raif to him. Not yet. “We can stay. It was a good idea.”

Holt turned to the forest, examining the trees as if his memories might come to life amongst the boughs. “Raif died here. I know that much. I came back here to look for him, but his body was already gone.”

Zylah wrapped her arms around herself, fighting back the wave of emotions rolling through her. Guilt. Regret. Anger at herself for fucking everything up. Sadness. Pain. Holt had been hers all along and she hadn’t known it, had made a mess of everything so badly before she left Virian.

“Hey.” Warm fingers curled gently around her arm. “You’re shaking. Come inside.”

She let Holt lead her, willing herself to keep it together. Zylah wanted to tell him this wasn’t about Raif, but that wasn’t entirely the truth. She didn’t think she had it in her to tell him everything, not without screwing it up, without fumbling her words and giving Holt the wrong impression. It had been difficult enough the first time around when hewantedto be with her, when he knew what they were to each other. But he already knew she and Raif had been something, once.

“You were here when he died,” he said, guiding her to the lounger and wrapping the blanket that rested over the back of it around her shoulders. Not a question, but perhaps not a memory, either. Zylah could only nod as he lit the fire, an ember falling from his fingertips in that way she’d witnessed so many times before, more of his magic coming back to him, more little pieces of himself he was pulling back together.

“Did he hurt you?” Holt asked, fingers digging into the mantle above the fireplace so hard Zylah thought the stone might crack.

She forced herself to answer him. “Physically? Never. He…” She swallowed. “He kept something from me. Something very important to me.”

Holt threw a log into the fire, embers spitting onto the hearth. It still turned her insides to think of the way Raif had used her. Still made her palms clammy. Holt had told her he’d understood, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t felt his hurt. His pain. And she wasn’t sure how to explain it all to him without that understanding turning to blame.

“Did you get it back?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“The important thing.” He dusted his hands, and Zylah was vaguely aware of him moving as she watched the flames curl around the wood.

“For a short while. Yes.”

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