Page 33 of Forged in Flame and Shadow

“Because Herrydan told me,” I say simply. “He waited until they’d all followed his orders, making sure each one had sacrificed themselves. He was in the central square with a knife under his chin when I got there. He told me about the rewards he’d been offered by the gods and about Ethira’s message to him. And then he slit his own throat.”

I remember it all too vividly. The red splashing in fat droplets onto the faces of his dead men lying at his feet. The triumphant light in his eyes slowly drained away, and I was left alone with the consequences of my actions.

Ana stands, unable to sit still anymore.

“So why didn’t you tell them it was an accident? Lestrides thought you did it on purpose, and you never corrected him. I saw what he wrote about it—that you said Palquir should be grateful for what you’d done.”

Those trips of hers to the library were more informative than I’d thought.

“What would be better?” I ask. “A ruthless ally who does something brutal to bring peace in the long run? Or a fae prince so wrapped up in his own strength that he massacres a town without eventrying?”

“You didn’t?—”

I cut her off, knowing her instinct will be to absolve me in some way. I saw it with my parents, my brother, and the rest of my unit. But I don’t want absolution.

“I might not have wielded the blades, but those people died because of me,” I explain. I step over to her now so I can lean forward and drive home the weight of my words.

“That’s why I want you to be careful, Ana. It’s why I want you to use your strength and power but never be a slave to it. Otherwise, you just might make a mistake like I did and end up being haunted by it forever.”

Morgana

I meet Leon’s eyes, trying to understand the weight of everything he’s just told me. I can see him there in my mind’s eye, alone in the morning light beside the piles of bodies. Rather than being sickened or horrified, I’m profoundly sad. So much bloodshed, so much loss. In the end, it was the price Trova paid to prevent even more killing. I wonder if the survivors of the war thought it was worth it.

And what about Leon? What did it cost him?

Death has been following Leon around for most of his life. In many ways, he and it are old friends. And when he’s in battle,when he’s wielding his blade and breaking open the earth to pour men into it, at least he’s meeting it on his terms.

Except he learned at Mistwell what death can be like when he’s not in command of it. When those rare forces stronger than him take hold and rip that control from his fingers. I doubt it happens often—he’s simply too powerful—but that early lesson must’ve stuck with him. And it’s clear to me now why he couldn’t leave things to chance and just hope I’d say yes if he asked me to come with him to Filusia. Not when his brother’s illness was one of those terrible specters he knew he couldn’t conquer with a sword or split earth. There was too much at stake, and he must’ve already felt an echo of the same terror he felt the day he woke in Mistwell surrounded by death.

He’s afraid for his brother, that’s obvious. But he’s afraid for me too. I believe that now, that he really feels he has to protect me, and to do that, I have to be by his side. He’s also afraid for himself—of what it will mean if he can’t keep both of us safe. Because maybe that would show he’s destined to repeat the tragedy of Mistwell. That must be a terrible burden to bear.

Terrible enough that I forgive him? That I forgivemyselffor the choices I made to let him into my mind and my body? I don’t know, but I do know I won’t be easily rid of Leon. He’ll be forever stalking through my thoughts or in the memory of his touch whispering across my skin. And now he’s confusing things even more.

Because the story of Mistwell and of Fairon both tell me so much abouthischoices. His lies to me weren’t just an act of cruelty or simple proof that he doesn’t care about my feelings. In many complicated ways, they were the desperate acts of a man trying not to repeat his past.

I reach out to touch his face, my fingers against his cheek, palm nestled under the strong line of his jaw. He goes still, eyes wide, and I can tell he’s worried him moving will make me pull away.

“Most of the people in my country grow up knowing your reputation as a killer, and nothing else,” I say. My eyes trace his features, watching the tightening of his lips and the flare of emotion in his eyes.

“But I don’t think that’s the full picture,” I continue. “What happened at Mistwell was a terrible mistake, but it only happened because you were trying to do the right thing. You said it yourself: You were trying to end things before anyone else died. That’s what you should remember, not the awful tragedy created by Herrydan’s broken mind and the prejudices of Palquir’s men.”

Leon closes the distance between us and kisses me.

I’m not expecting it. Maybe if I’d seen it coming, I would have stopped it. Or maybe not. As it is, any thought I have of resisting immediately crumbles under the heat of his lips. I open my mouth to him, letting his tongue caress mine, his lips urging me to succumb to the pleasure he knows exactly how to stoke in me.

As his hand slips behind my head, pulling me in deeper, I’m hanging onto a precipice. If I let go, I have a long way to fall.

I go still, freezing against him, and he immediately notices the change. He pulls back, dropping his hand, and I release a sigh.

Of relief, of course. I’mrelievedwe stopped before things got out of hand. Just like I’m not at all desperate to feel his skin against mine again.

He looks at me with a question in his gray eyes, and being under their scrutiny is suddenly too hard. It’s still there, his betrayal—the fact that he took from me the things he knew I couldn’t stand losing again. My power, my freedom. Understanding him a little better, and sympathizing with him a little more, doesn’t wipe out what he did to me. It sits there like a heavy, leaden weight between us.

“I have to go,” I say, shouldering my way past him and fleeing from the courtyard. Putting distance between us immediately makes it easier to breathe. I find myself relaxing a fraction as I move through the Lyceum, even if I still feel that kiss burning on my lips.

I find Tira teaching Stratton and Damia some Trovian card games in a grassy square near our rooms.

“No, you can’t beat me with that,” she says to Stratton as he lays his hand down on the lawn between them. “Two queens with a knave doesn’t get you anything.”

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