But I did. I understood exactly.
“It’s not about you, Moth,” I said. I glanced back at the boy, took in the sight of him — round-faced, barely a teenager, still years away from so much as peach stubble. Then my gaze met Sammerin’s, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.
I felt vaguely ill, nausea warring with anger. Not at Moth, but at everything that led him here.
He was just a child.
And now what? What was this world going to do to him?
What is it going to do to all of us? a smaller voice whispered, in the back of my mind.
“It’s not about you,” I said, again, and went after Max.
I rejoined Max far behind the house. He had taken a sharp turn away from the main paths, veering to a secluded expanse of overgrown grass at the edge of the grounds. It was getting dark, and mist clung to the air, rendering the sky grey and flattening the distant mountains to silhouettes. Deep green forest spread out before us, and the house loomed behind.
Max stopped walking abruptly, head bowed, hands stuffed in his pockets, facing the tree line. We stood there together in silence.
“They will not send him out there,” I said at last, quietly. “Will they?”
“I don’t know. They took him. If they’re desperate…” He cleared his throat. “Last time, some of those soldiers were only fourteen, thirteen, near the end. Children.”
I did not miss the way his head twitched towards the house, as if he was going to look over his shoulder and thought better of it. The soldiers were not the only children claimed by the war.
A blink, and his memories — Reshaye’s memories — flooded me. Blood and fire and anger, and the lives of all those Farlione children discarded in one terrible night like crushed flower petals.
I reached for his hand, and his fingers twined around mine with unexpected force, as if he were a sinking boat and I was the only thing tethering him to the shore.
Or perhaps, the opposite.
“And this is what it was all for,” I muttered. “Zeryth’s throne.”
“I should have seen it happening.” He closed his eyes. “But of course I didn’t. I didn’t see any of it until it was too damned late.”
I knew he was talking about more than the crown. More than the war. More than Zeryth. He was talking about me, too. Reshaye stirred at the back of my thoughts. I shuddered.
“It’s not possible,” he said. “One life can’t be bound to another like that. He’s bluffing.”
I was silent.
I wouldn’t put it past Zeryth to manipulate us with a lie. And yet, when I thought of the strangeness of what he had showed us, the odd magic I felt in the air when he revealed it… I suspected it was not so simple. And I suspected Max knew that, too, and didn’t want to admit it.
“There must be a way to get out of your contract,” Max said. “I’ve heard rumors that there are ways to break a Blood Pact. If I talk to the right people, maybe—“
“Break it?”
“Of course. Do you want to be the one to put Zeryth on a throne?”
No. The answer rang out in my head, firmly. No, I don’t.
But out loud I said, “I don’t. But I will.”
Max’s gaze snapped to me. The betrayal in it gutted me. “That man doesn’t deserve to draw breath.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?”
“You think I do not hate him, too? Of course I do. He’s— he made me—“
I couldn’t even figure out how to finish that statement. What words were there? He had left me in slavery once, and now he dragged me back into it. He took my desperate desire to save the helpless and used it to make me a weapon of death. Now he tried to control my very life, and use it to control others. It made me so angry that I couldn’t breathe.
But then, the image of the refugees on the boat flashed through my mind. They way they looked at me — as if I was their last hope.
“But I made that pact for a reason,” I choked out. “That has not changed. I fight his war, so that I can go fight mine.”
“His war for what? For his ego?”
“When I spilled my blood on that contract, I thought it was going to be for Sesri’s ego. Is there a difference?”
Max gave me a look that said he thought there was a world of difference.
“Zeryth is the difference. Reshaye is the difference.”
“I controlled it,” I said. “I can do it again. I can use that power to make this war less bloody than it would be without it.”
“You sound like Nura.”
The words cut me open. I yanked my hand away from his, even though I could already see the regret spilling over his face.
“What do you want me to say to you?” I shot back. “Do you want me to tell you that I want to walk away from all of this? I do, Max. Of course I do. But there are so many people who cannot walk away. They are still there, suffering. Girls like me. You hate Zeryth for leaving me there, but you’re asking me to do the same thing.”
Something flickered in his expression. “That isn’t the same.”
“Why? Because they aren’t standing in front of you? Because you don’t love them the way you love me? Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and they are just as loved, just as important. It is a privilege to do nothing, Max. So many people do not have that gift.”
He looked at me, jaw tight, regret and sadness and anger all mingling in his eyes.
“No war can be fought with clean hands,” he said. “Not even the ones waged for the right reasons. Not even the ones you win.”
I knew he was right. In the Threllian
