I loved that about him. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself otherwise, he truly believed the world could be a better place.
But now, a knot formed in my stomach. I looked over my shoulder and gave him a weak smile, but all I could look at were his hands as he wiped the blood away, and those dark veins trailing up his arms that now seemed so much darker.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Aefe
I wasn’t sure how long we flew. My blood dripped down, down, onto the treetops far below us. My vision blurred. Every so often, I would blink, and suddenly the sun was higher in the sky. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, but they snapped open again when the branches sliced my cheek and the ground rose up beneath me. Ishqa and I lay there, exhausted. The bolt was still protruding from my back. Every time I breathed, pain slithered through my ribs. I didn’t care.
“No one trailed us.” Ishqa was beside me, but he sounded as if he was very far away.
I blinked and saw Ashraia toppled over, Siobhan’s dying gasps, Caduan falling.
“Get this thing out of me,” I said.
I rolled over, my face pressed into the dirt. I heard Ishqa’s movement. Then felt the faintest pressure on the arrow, and my throat released a whimper. The pain was breathtaking.
“This arrow was cursed,” he said.
“Athalena is a Wielder.”
“Was, I suppose.” Ishqa said it as if it were supposed to be some dark, humorless joke, but it just made my stomach turn.
“Just—” I ground out, but I didn’t finish speaking before the pain overtook me, so intense that it blinded my every sense. I thrust my face into the dirt so it would muffle my scream.
“It’s done,” Ishqa murmured, as I pushed myself up to my elbows, but I didn’t hear him over the sound of my own vomiting. When I was finished, I fell back onto my stomach, weak.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
They were all dead. Only Ishqa and I remained. Compared to the agony of that wound, the one between my ribs was a welcome reprieve.
“Are you going to kill me?” I murmured.
“Why would I go through the trouble of saving you if I was going to kill you?”
I craned my neck far enough to look at Ishqa. He seemed tired. Weak. Sad.
For perhaps the first time, he looked as if he were made of flesh and blood, not marble.
“The treaty,” I said. “Klein said—”
“I think we need to finish it,” Ishqa said coldly. “Regardless of what the treaty is or isn’t.”
Finish it. Finish the humans. I closed my eyes and slipped my hand into my pocket, where the letter Athalena had given us remained. It felt like a lifetime ago.
And what would we do, if we went there? Kill them all? Could I do that, this weakened? The thought seemed impossible.
Yet…
It was Caduan’s face that was seared into my mind. There is so much more than this, he had told me.
My fingers curled into fists, clenched so tight they trembled.
He had watched everyone he loved die. Those people deserved justice.
He deserved justice.
I couldn’t hold myself up anymore. I fell back down into the dirt.
“Rest,” Ishqa said. “You’re barely conscious.”
But I held myself up just enough to look at him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For Ashraia. For… everything.”
Something I couldn’t read shifted in his face. “Rest,” he said again, and by the time the word left his lips, it was no longer a choice.
I dreamed of the dead. But instead of their corpses, I dreamed of sunshine. Siobhan was sitting beside me in the pub, back in the Pales. We were in our typical spots. She held her typical drink. She was laughing at something, but I couldn’t remember what. In this world, Siobhan was not dead. The humans were not a threat. But I sat there and looked at her and felt this strange, eerie feeling, like the wind was whispering in my ear, It’s already lost.
I dreamed of Caduan. I dreamed I visited him in the House of Stone, if it had not fallen. I dreamed of it as it appeared in my fuzzy, half-remembered childhood memories. It was a beautiful city built of tiered stone temples with plants spilling over their sides. There were flowers growing on the vines — orange lilies, as striking as the sunset. There were grand balls and beautiful banquets, held by the nobles of the House of Stone. They were kind, and beautiful, and they never stopped smiling.
But it wasn’t there that I found Caduan. I found him in the library, surrounded by books. When I approached, he looked up and smiled at me as if I were a pleasant surprise. But then I settled beside him and his expression darkened.
“I don’t know why,” he said, “but I think that something terrible is going to happen.”
Don’t be silly, I tried to tell him. It’s a festival. Everyone is dancing. Let’s go.
But he simply shook his head, lost in thought.
“It isn’t over,” he said. And then his gaze found mine, suddenly alert, sharper than everything else in this dream world. “It isn’t over,” he told me, again, “and I don’t have enough time.”
He reached out and touched my face, as if to see if it was real. But I was already fading, even though I tried desperately to cling to the dream, to his touch, to his aliveness.
“I wish I had more time,” he murmured.
I did too, I thought. There would never be enough time.
My eyes opened. The sun was bright and hot. My neck ached. I was on my stomach.
It took a few wonderful, horrible moments for me to remember what had happened. All of the deaths. I closed my eyes and let them hit me all over again.
Then,
