Page 71 of Artemysia
“I’m not scared—” I lie, protesting the truth because it’s too hard to admit.
“You should be scared!” His temper flares again, and his voice rumbles against the hollows of the cave. Something farther in the cave flutters, and we turn our heads. Bats?
He continues, his tone strained. “Don’t you ever give up? I asked you to leave and ride to safety with the others. Instead, you risked your life for me. What if you’d been thrown off my elk, too? Do you ever just stop? Any survival instincts screaming, ‘Hey, let’s watch out for ourselves?’”
He stops to catch his breath. “Don’t involve yourself with someone like me.What if I’m just one of them? You could have died back there, and for what? Would it have madeanydifference?!”
A wounded gasp comes out of me. This hits deep into my greatest fear—that I’mnotmaking a difference. That we all sacrifice so much but that it changes nothing. When I speak, I trip over my words. “I was thrown off! I landed on my damn feet, but I got back on. I try to do what’s right.” I hate the way my voice wavers.
“Dammit, Delphine! Youalwaysdo what’s right. All the fucking time. You don’t put your own needs first.”
“That’s what a good leader does.” I jut out my chin, reining in my emotions. I’m a damn captain; I don’t lose my temper. I’m sensible. Levelheaded.
But it seems to piss him off more.
His tone rises dangerously. “You just keep going, like a cheerful maniac, strong and stupid brave. What scares you? What upsets you to the core?”
The hollowness expands in my gut, triggering my deepest fears.What scares me?I fight down the answers surfacing from a dark abyss in my soul. Never-ending death and loss. A meaningless fight for survival.
Losing everyone I love.Violet, blue, green, gold, crimson.Crimson washes over me, drowning me in the idea that all I do is in vain, drowning me in my failures—past, present and future.Crimson.
I don’t even realize I’m mouthing the colors to calm down until he says, “What’re you mumbling?”
His temper erupts when I can’t answer.
“Doesn’t anything make you want to scream with fury? Cry until you’re hoarse? Don’t you want out? To escape it all? I do!” He scoops up a rock near the fire and pitches it against the wall. It sparks silver as it shatters.
Difficult emotions well up in my throat, but of course, he’s right, and I don’t show it.
I push it aside to stay strong for others.
My face crumples into that pathetic expression I know it makes before I burst into tears.
“For me, it eats away at my heart, what I have to doevery singleday. Every mission. Every fight. But it keeps our city safe, our people alive. It keeps those I love alive. What else would you have me do? Sit around andwaitto be killed? Like my mother?”
No longer able to contain myself, I grimace as tears well up and stream down my cheeks. I don’t care if I look broken, because I am neither strong nor whole in this moment. How we escaped the most Syf I have ever encountered, I have no idea—except if Riev hadn’t destroyed more than half the band like he did, giving us a fighting chance, we would all have died.
No one would have known.
Our bodies would’ve decomposed in the forest. My father would never know what happened to me. Syf would continue to attack without an end in sight.
“Who’s going to make it all better? There’s just me.” My voice is unnaturally high, punctuated by gasping sobs. “If I break down and cry like I am now, how is anything fixed? That’s what I’m scared of. That everything I do is for nothing, andnothingwill ever get better.”
The tidal wave of feelings overwhelms me. Feelings I’ve never shared with anyone, and they spill forth like a winter flood, gaining momentum.
I’m wiping away snot, but I am also shouting back at him now.
“When I’m old—ifI live to be a crinkled old woman—will I still sleep with a dagger and sword next to me in case of a Syf attack? Will this just go on forever? The killing on both sides? I can’t stand to think of it. So I tell myself I’m taking the right steps to change things. But you’re right. I don’t know if it’s helping. In the end, maybe all we do is meaningless. I try anyway.In case it’s not.”
I hiccup and my shoulders convulse. I’ve never cried like this in front of someone.
Riev reels back as if slapped. “Curse the gods. I’m such an asshole. Elphie, you don’t ever show fear or defeat. I didn’t know you ever felt like this.”
He moves to grasp my hand, but I step back out of reach, flattening against the wall of the cave. Ivy’s fire flickers and cracks next to us.
The crestfallen look on his face hurts me as much as my own fears.
His brows lower, but his eyes drill through me. “Listen to me. You and I are but souls trapped in a cage. I scream into the dark while youmake wishes on the moons above.”
