But she cannot move.
She isn’t sure how long it has been when the door opens and Sammerin steps out. He gives her a cold stare.
“Are you going in?”
She takes a long time to answer. But finally she says, “No,” and has never felt like more of a coward.
Sammerin turns away. “Good,” he says, and leaves her there alone in the hall, listening to her friend weep.
The war is over. But there are still prices to be paid. Thousands died in the city of Sarlazai, whether in the initial attack or in the chaos that ensued afterwards. And Maxantarius Farlione is to be held responsible.
Nura hears of the charges against him when sitting in her room in the Towers. She is still in a wheelchair, and still helpless.
“Not his fault,” she says to Zeryth. She hates Zeryth — hates him, now, more than she has hated anyone, except perhaps for herself. “You know.”
Every word is hard-fought, her voice raspy.
“He never had trouble controlling it before,” Zeryth says. “The actions were still his. Besides, the world can’t know about Reshaye. You know that.”
This is the first time she realizes that Max never told anyone about what she did. It stings.
“He did…the right thing. Ended the war. I’ll… I’ll testify.”
“Testify? You can barely speak.”
“I. Will. Testify,” she grinds out.
And she does. She sits before a council of fifty judges, one from every district in Ara, and from her wheelchair she answers question after question. She speaks excruciatingly slowly, so the hearing lasts for hours. But she enunciates every single word, spinning a tale of a capable captain who did the best thing for his soldiers and his country, even at great personal cost. By the end, she is spitting blood into the cup of water they had given her. But she has convinced them. When she wheels out of that room, Maxantarius Farlione is a hero, not a criminal.
Nura does not care when the title she wanted more than anything is given to the person she hates most of all. Zeryth Aldris does not earn the title of Arch Commandant. It is handed to him for the dubious honor of being the last remaining candidate. Maia Azeroth is dead. Nura’s injuries forced her to withdraw from consideration. And Max may have escaped Ilyzath, but heavy restrictions were still placed upon him by the Orders, forbidding him from pursuing the title.
Not that he has any desire for such a thing, now.
Nura goes to his apartment a few months after. When he opens the door, she cannot explain everything that wells up in her. Words are too complicated. And so, like they used to a lifetime ago, instead they throw themselves at each other. Perhaps they both think they can reclaim some shred of comfort from the warmth of each other’s bodies. But even their bodies are not familiar anymore, permanently marked by everything that has destroyed them. She sees only a flicker of sadness cross his face when she tears her shirt over her head and he sees the full extent of her burns. Then it is gone beneath feral, ferocious hunger.
Their tryst is a soulless pantomime of something broken that they had done a hundred times before. There was no love in this, only anger and hurt and the desire to outrun the present. When their climax fades, Nura feels nothing but shame.
She rolls over and looks at him. His eyes are different — milky-blue, as if they had somehow been consumed by cataracts — but that isn’t the thing that strikes her most. It’s the hateful emptiness in his gaze that slides between her ribs like a knife.
This has been a mistake. What did she come here for? A chance at reclaiming something that they had once had? There is nothing left to save.
She doesn’t say a word to him — he wouldn’t want to hear anything she could say, anyway. Instead she gets up, throws her clothes on, and leaves. They do not speak once.
Nura lives through the years as if they are merely something to be endured. She recovers and becomes stronger than she has ever been. She fulfills her role as Second to the Arch Commandant with ruthless efficiency.
She will never let anyone know how woefully lonely she is, and how often she thinks of those she has lost. Nor will she ever let anyone know about the records that she quietly searches, looking for one familiar name, or that every week she reads the lists of unidentified bodies found in alleyways or Seveseed dens, praying she will not find a dark-haired young man with peculiar eyes.
There is only one thing that brings her peace. Every week, on her days off, she visits another city and wanders the streets. She watches people live their lives, content. The country is whole again. People are safe and happy.
She did a terrible thing. But she did it for the right reasons, and for this, it was worth it. There is nothing — nothing — that she loves more than she loves Ara.
Still, she is haunted by the past. Every so often, when the nightmares get particularly bad, she goes to the part of the Towers that only a small handful of people can access. She goes into a room of pure white, and looks down at the shriveled up man strapped to the table. His eyes remain sightlessly staring at the ceiling. He is breathing, but other than that, he is barely alive.
And yet the most powerful magic in Ara — perhaps the most powerful magic in the world —
