Helping the Saints kill Elodie might not be righteous. But it was right.
And, he recalled suddenly, the Saints would likely have access to a copper Smith who could heal the rust phage, too. The poison Nyx had drank, the toxin that she had then transferred to the Destroyer during her torture, had smelled of hemlock and copper. It had to have been a magical tincture, which could only have been sourced from one of the few copper Smiths who were not members of the metallurgy class. Which meant if Tal went home, the Saints there might be able to save his life in more ways than one.
Decision made, he lay his head back. He didn’t sleep, though. He had to stay awake at least until he’d built the fire up enough to last the night, and also, he did not want to face the possibility of another vision. Two years ago, his god had betrayed him to the Destroyer with a promise that he would be the one to save her, and save the kingdom through her. Tal’s new plan to have her killed instead would likely not meet with the Unforged God’s approval.
He didn’t care, he told himself. His god had betrayed him. Perhaps this was the way to make him sorry for it.
He closed his eyes and rested.
Weight. Quiet. A silent darkness dazzling with possibility, with the presence of something unfathomable—like being cradled in the womb of the earth.
Or like being entombed.
Despite his efforts, Tal had fallen asleep, and now a vision was coming. He could feel it humming at the corners of his consciousness. It felt oddly urgent, trembling in its desire to be birthed. He caught glimpses of it: tall trees, crimson moss draped across branches, a starlit night.
Like lightning from nowhere, the numb, distant shock he’d been feeling flashed to fury. The last time he had allowed a vision in, it had led to him rescuing the Destroyer instead of his own sister. And now his god wanted in again. To do what—to enforce Tal’s oath, to make him cease his plan for justice against her?
No. No. “NO,” he bellowed into the darkness, with his voice that was not a voice here in this dreaming place. He wasn’t sure if his god could hear him—there had never before been any real indication to that effect—but Tal suddenly, fiercely hoped he could. “I will not listen to you any longer,” he said, his silent voice rebounding throughout his sleeping self. The words built quickly in him, roiling like a tsunami headed for a disastrous landfall, one that he could not and, he found, did not wish to stop. “I will not be manipulated by your purpose any longer. I am not the naïve boy I used to be, to still believe that you are good. How could you be after what you have done to me? Is it only the Destroyer who you care for? Am I but a tool to you, too?”
The emotion rending through him was no longer fury, but a dark and sudden pain. It had been trapped beneath the layers of his soul for two years and would be denied no longer. Like an old, badly-healed wound, it had broken open under new strain, and now he was bleeding out.
A sob tore from him. It startled him, and he realized that the tsunami of his pain was indeed making landfall but not in the way he’d thought it would. His ghostly dreaming self didn’t move, but faintly he felt his real body double over, his head knocking against the stone as another sob wrenched through him and then another, until he was weeping without relent.
The weight surrounding him tightened slightly but it did not feel like a reprimand. It felt like being held. That was worse. Tal tried to shove it away, but moving beyond this place and avoiding the waiting vision would take more concentrated effort and he was too emotionally compromised to summon it.
Then, from outside of his dream, he felt a hand land on his arm. The touch was familiar in a way that thrust him immediately into consciousness. He opened his eyes.
The Destroyer stared down at him, those impossible brown eyes framed by the loose dark curls that fell across her shoulders as she knelt over him. They looked at each other silently for a long moment while Tal registered the tracks of wetness on his cheeks and the way his body shuddered with the aftereffects of weeping.
He’d been sobbing here as well as in his dream. Had he been shouting here, too? Quickly, he retraced his words, trying to recall if he’d said anything that might have alerted the Destroyer to her true identity or to his purposes for her.
Her hand was still on his arm, warmth slowly seeping from it into him. “You were having a nightmare,” she said unnecessarily. “I hope I didn’t offend in waking you from it. I…I was having a nightmare myself earlier and I know that I would have wanted to be woken.”
There was no censure in the words, only an awkward sympathy. She pulled her hand back quickly as if she’d just remembered she was still touching him, and that he had asked not to be touched.
Humiliated to have been found in such a condition—especially after years of successfully hiding the majority of his tears—he opened his mouth to snap at her. Was there no part of his life that she wouldn’t insinuate herself into? Could he have no privacy even in his own emotions?
Then suddenly his plan returned to his mind, and he closed his mouth. He was supposed to win her trust. There was a wary set to her mouth already, her weight balanced so she could stand back swiftly in case he shouted at her. Which he had indeed been about to do.
He needed to change her opinion of him if he was going to
