Page 86 of Kissed By the Gods
Then my right knee starts bouncing. Then the left. My shoulders inch higher with every breath. My jaw locks.
Einarr lets out a low, drawn-out chuff as if to sayyou’re not doing it right,and I snap.
“I’m not good at this!” I shout, lurching to my feet like I can physically throw off the frustration clawing at my chest.
The words echo over the cliffs, swallowed by the ocean breeze. Ryot doesn’t flinch. He watches me, unruffled. I pace a few steps, dragging my hands down my face.
This is supposed to be the easy part. Sitting. Breathing. But I’d rather be bruised and bleeding from the sparring ring than try to wrestle with this silence, than give my thoughts space to wander. I turn toward Ryot again, expecting more correction, a lecture on the importance of control. Instead, Ryot sighs, rolls his shoulders back, and lowers himself to the ground.
“Watch,” he says, voice softer now. He closes his eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out. Something in the air around him settles. Einarr, too, settles. He lowers to his knees, wings tucked against his sides, and lowers his head, eyes closed. Despiteeverything, despite the ache and the noise and the weight in my chest, I sit again, next to Ryot this time. Our knees brush.
“It’s not about perfection,” Ryot says. “It’s not even about letting go. It’s aboutstaying. Right here, with yourself, wherever that might be. It’s about meeting yourself where you already are—nowhere else. If it’s somewhere loud, then it’s loud. If it’s somewhere broken, then it’s broken. You don’t fix it by forcing silence. You heal by being willing to listen—even when all you hear is the storm.”
His eyes stay closed, but he must know I’m watching him. He breathes like it’s the only thing that matters. I close my eyes and inhale. Even with my eyes closed, I feel his smile.
“I used to fight it, too. I thought if I wasn’t fighting with my fists or my sword that I was failing or wasting time,” he says. I peek open one eye to look at him, barely, enough to see him through my eyelashes.
“Aren’t we?”
“No. Any Altor can fight with a blade, but if you can’t control your mind—if fear rules you in the quiet—then it’ll own you in the battle. This. This is the training that counts.” He opens his eyes then and they meet mine, steady and unflinching. “This is how you win before the fight even starts. You have to learn to hold your ground when everything turns unfamiliar. When the world shifts and nothing feels real. You don’t slash through that with a blade. You breathe through it. Anchor to something—your breath, your body, your name. That’s how you stay you, even when the dark tries to take that from you.”
He closes his eyes again and exhales, soft and even. “Don’t wait until you're lost to start learning how to stay.”
Why does that feel more like an omen than a warning? His chest rises, falls. Intentionally. I match his rhythm without meaning to. Inhale as the waves roll back. Exhale as they crash forward. I close my eyes again and focus on my breath. My bodysoftens by the tiniest margin. I manage to uncurl my fingers, to rest them gently on my knees. I roll my neck back and forth, and the tension that lives there goes sharp and then softer. The storm inside doesn’t vanish, but I float on the waves instead of fighting them. Suddenly, I’m drowning.
When we both finally open our eyes, the sun has dropped lower in the sky, casting gold across the water. My breath feels deeper. My shoulders lighter.
“You’re getting it,” he says eventually, his voice quiet. I glance down at my hands, curled gently in my lap. We sit in silence for a while. The kind that doesn't ask to be filled. Einarr is still nearby, wings tucked in, his watchful eyes half-lidded.
Ryot is the one who breaks the peace. “What was your family like?”
I let out a tired laugh. “Didn’t we swear to forsake all that?”
He nods. I expect him to tell me never mind, that it’s time for weapons training or survival training or field medic training. Instead, he says, “I must have missed the part where we swore to forget it.”
That’s dangerously close to blasphemy. Not quite crossing the line, maybe, but straddling it. “You really don’t care about the rules, do you?”
He gives me a half-smile. “I care about what matters.”
“I don’t want to talk about them.” I’ve curled my fingers back into my palms without thinking about it.
“I get that. It’s hard to think about what you’ve lost.” He says it like he understands. He lets it be, looking out over the horizon. I study him, the way the fading sunlight has softened the sharp lines of his face, the way the wind brushes through his hair, leaving it tangled and messy. He’s so often all hard edges and order, but right now, under a sky fading to pinks and purples, he looks almost human. Breakable, even.
“Tell me about your family. Before you were an Altor.”
He answers without hesitation. “I had six sisters,” he says, with a wry grin. “They ruled me, like queens in our own little kingdom.”
My eyebrows lift. “Six?”
He huffs out a laugh. “It was chaos. Braids and ribbons and squeals and secrets. I barely made it out alive.”
That makes me laugh. “Were you close to them?”
He nods. “The older two were like second mothers to me. Fierce. Loud. Gods, they could fight.” He lets out a breath, almost wistful. “I used to think if I could survive dinner with them, I could survive anything. The younger ones would follow me everywhere. I loved to pretend to hate it.”
“But you didn’t,” I whisper, because I can see it all so clearly.
“No,” a sad smile ghosts over his mouth.
