Page 95 of Of Blooming Embers
“Melina did something to me. Maybe she thought I’d escape eventually, and she didn’t want to risk the truth. You know how obsessed she is with Gav. But she took a memory from before Ma was culled. I was thirteen, and I overheard them arguing. Ma had a dream. Said that my brother had to bury a rune above his heart.” He pressed the base of his palm into his, and my own lurched. “You want to know why, Ser?”
I shook my head, ember and goosebumps skittering over my skin.
“I’ll tell you anyway. To block your bond. Your fuckingfated khordabond.” He spat the words at my feet as if they tasted bitter. “I alwaysthought that my parents were fated. You could see it in their eyes. Could see it the day my father died, not long after Ma. He wanted to go to her. To be near her again.”
I stopped breathing. Laughter and music flicked around us as my mind crumbled within my skull. A flicker of something akin to regret and trepidation tapped at the back of my ribs. Something that wasn’t my own, a shadow that slipped in when I wasn’t paying attention. I turned to look behind me as if someone were there, but Kaden’s barbed words stung me. My torso slumped as I regarded him, waiting for the stone to smash into my back.
“And Gavrel did it, didn’t he? He buried that rune above his heart. Then ran off and joined the Order, never wanting what the Fates had planned for you.” Again, he swung his hand out toward his brother. “Yet you chose him anyway.”
“Kade, you know I didn’t know, but it doesn’t change what happened between us. We wouldn’t have been more even without …” Something he’d said pecked at my temple. My mouth fumbled as I fisted the hem of my tunic. “You know … youknew. When?” I whispered raggedly.
He rubbed one hand along the back of his neck. “Maybe it didn’t change us, but it definitely didn’t help the—” He stopped mid-sentence. “What did you say?”
“When did she take that memory?”
He stepped back, licking his lips. “Right before she tossed me in that nightmare prison,” he admitted quickly, voice raised.
I swallowed, bile rising in my throat. “So, you both knew all along. Youbothkept this from me?”
Pinching his lips together, his face fell. For one moment, he looked as devastated as I felt. But then he crunched his eyes closed before slipping his mask back in place. “Ser, I?—”
I held a shaky palm up and left him among the scattered flowers.
I’d never known him to be cruel. But he wasn’t himself now. He hadn’t been for a while.
Numbly, I stared at my boots, thoughts slamming around my mind.
Gavrel’s scar.
His secrets.
He’dknown.
My best friend had kept something so monumental from me. Why? Because he was envious? Because he was terrified of losing us if one of us died … like everyone else he loved?
Fated Khorda.
Whatever threads were holding me upright snapped, and I curled in on myself, arms wrapping around my center to hold myself together.
Slowly, my gaze locked with Gavrel’s. Surely everything I felt—the riot of confusion and doubt and grief—poured at his feet.
His breath hitched, the deep line between his eyebrows severe. He stepped toward me, but I stepped back.
I wished I could just vanish. Fly into the aether and burn alive like a star. Raze the feelings that had festered within me over the turns. Even when Melina had tried to snatch them away.
Because there was no doubt that I loved Gavrel.
I loved him.
Loved him so much I wanted to tear my bloody heart out of my chest and tuck it behind his ribcage for safekeeping.
Gavrel winced as if he’d felt the surge of my emotions.
But he’d broken his vow again. Hadn’t he?
Did Ieverhave a choice?
There’s always a choice, Ser. The Fates can bugger off, Letti had once said. Ancients, I missed my sister. I wished she were here. But the only one here was Gavrel. And he was holding my bleeding soul in his palm while it slipped through his fingers.
