“Don’t.” I crossed the room in two long steps, quickly enough to catch his hand. “Don’t touch it. You are hurt.”
His head rolled, eyes opened barely enough to peer at me. They were a mossy green — a color unseen among the Sidnee.
He yanked his hand away from my grasp with surprising force, letting out a wordless grunt as he pushed himself to his elbows. His neck was craned, looking down at his decimated wounds.
“Stop,” I said again, when he tried to touch his dressings. “It is to help you.”
But when I reached for him again, he shook his head and pulled away.
“I need to see,” he choked out, his voice barely more than a wheeze. And when he drew back two of the bandages and violet blood began to bubble over, he just watched it spread, even though I uttered a curse and looked around for a healer, more gauze, something — anything — to stop the sudden influx of blood.
“It was real,” he said, barely louder than a whisper.
There was something in his voice that made me stop. His gaze flicked to me, raw and angry.
“Yes,” I whispered, and the word stung.
“How…how many left?”
“Nineteen, including you.”
A wince shuddered across his face. The blood was now rolling over the pale valleys of his abdomen, blooming over the sheets. I cursed.
“Stop moving.” I pressed the bandages back down over his wounds. Surely it was agonizing, but he didn’t react.
“You’re safe here,” I said, and his stare darkened, as if I had said something appalling.
“Safe?” His voice was a serrated blade.
“Don’t talk,” I said, but he had already fallen back against the headboard, as if all of his strength had left him at once.
“It sounded like rain,” he murmured, and all at once his fury turned to utter, bleak sadness.
I did not know what he meant. He seemed as if he barely did, either. But that sadness just grabbed me and would not let go. I did not think. My hand covered his.
“It’s going to be alright,” I whispered, and by the time his gaze flicked back to me, it was empty and impassive.
He shook his head, barely a movement.
“It is not,” he murmured.
But by the time the words left his lips, consciousness slipped away.
I shouldn’t have been there. In fact, some might have considered it downright dangerous, for someone like me — someone rejected by the gods — to be in a holy place of healing.
But I looked at this man, and all I could think of was my visit to House of Stone all those years ago. All of those little houses, separated in the rain. Nothing sadder, than to be so alone. And alone forever, now.
And so, I stayed, my hand over his, until my lashes fluttered closed. And when sometime late into the night my eyes snapped open, my heart pounding with a panic, I reached through the dark until my palm met the cool solace of stone. I held it there, and I imagined that I was connected to them all: the warm flesh of the Stoneheld man against one hand, and against the other, a hundred thousand other people, and the Pales themselves.
Chapter Eight
Max
It was late by the time I returned to Zeryth. His guards waved me in. I hated their nonchalance. It meant they had been expecting me. It meant that Zeryth knew I would come back.
When the door opened, Zeryth was lounging at a desk in the library, looking dramatically unsurprised to see me.
“Maxantarius. What a surprise.” He smiled and gave me a face of overwrought confusion. “Did the end of our last conversation not sit well with you?”
“Moth Rethem,” I said. “He’s a new recruit. In Commander Charl’s division. I want him on mine.”
“A new recruit? But why—”
“Will he be with me or not?”
Zeryth shrugged. “Fine. I doubt Charl cares much either way.” Then he cast me a sidelong stare. “I take it then that this means you have officially accepted the title I’ve so graciously offered you, General Farlione.”
It made my skin prickle, to hear myself referred to that way. And that prickling intensified to outright crawling as I heard myself answer, “Yes. I accept.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Zeryth said cheerfully. I was already leaving.
Halfway down the hallway, I stopped short. Nura rounded a corner in front of me, and the two of us stared at each other in silence.
For a moment, I was struck by the bizarre realization that the last time I had seen Nura here, in this house, everything about our lives had been different. My family had been alive. And I had loved Nura, had trusted her implicitly. Now, that thought seemed like a cruel joke. Here, we were both surrounded by everything that war and Reshaye had taken from us. And we only stood here because of her.
“The great mystery solved,” I said. “So all of this, and it was just for a coup.”
Something flickered in her expression. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“It is? Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re prepared to kill thousands of people for — what? A crown? This is what Tisaanah’s life is for?”
“You say that as if I’m not giving her everything she’s ever wanted.”
I let out a breathless scoff. To think there was a time that I admired that quality in her, her ability to peel away emotion, her ability to be ruthless. She had always been a better soldier than I was. It just took me ten fucking years to realize how much it had cost her.
“I don’t understand you, Nura,” I said, turning away. “I don’t understand how you can be in this house and say that with a straight face.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I was already halfway down the hallway when Nura called out, “Max. Did you tell Zeryth you’d lead?”
I paused. Didn’t turn back. My silence was enough.
“It’ll be worth it,” she said. “I promise.”
I almost
