She stepped forward again, hand outstretched. “You are angry.”
I jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
Reshaye pulled back, cold curiosity behind Tisaanah’s eyes. “And after so many years you still dream of the dead. Even though they made you weak.” Curiosity hardened into hurt. “You had no one but me. And still, you dreamed of the dead.”
They were the best part of me, I wanted to say. How dare you speak of them that way.
“You don’t belong here,” I said.
“I will always be here. Just as I will always be in you.”
She reached out again, and again, I jerked away, my hands on Tisaanah’s shoulders.
“Do not touch me.”
But she just looked at me, eyes wide, searching, angry. “Why do you talk to me that way? I made you strong. I gave you love, I—”
“Love?” I scoffed. My anger bubbled over, scorching. “You don’t know what love is.”
“To love is to want,” she shot back. “To love is to covet. To desire. Do you think I do not know what that is? And do you think I did not see it in you? All the things you coveted, Maxantarius. All the things you wanted. If it is love to crave a heartbeat of another, then I do know it. I love her. And I loved you.”
For the first time in nearly a decade, I felt something else as I listened to Reshaye, something other than hatred or fear.
I felt pity.
“It must be agonizing,” I hissed. “Existing this way, so close to humanity and yet understanding none of it. All you can do is mimic a shade of a shade of a shade of what you might have been, once, a long time ago. And all you can do is destroy, because everything else is beyond your reach.”
Tisaanah’s face lurched into an uncharacteristic sneer. Her hand reached out for me, even though I kept her at arm’s length, fingers brushing my jaw. I could feel magic there, pulsing beneath her touch.
“I gave you everything. Everything, Maxantarius, And yet you mourn them, and you reach for her, and your heart turns elsewhere, just as hers does. I feel the pain in it. I see how she aches at the thought of losing you tomorrow. Just as I see how you hurt for people who cannot even see your grief. It makes you both weak and still you cling to it above all else. Why?”
The question hung in the air, sharp both with anger and with an odd, childlike confusion. And in the seconds after, she searched my face, as if she was really looking for an answer.
Instead I slowly pulled her hand away.
“I told you not to touch me.”
Her jaw set, and she stepped back, though her eyes did not leave mine.
“She’s stronger than you are,” I said. “I wasn’t, but she is. But if you hurt her, Reshaye, I will put you in that white room you love so much. And I’ll make sure you stay there forever. Forever. Do you understand?”
Her hand lifted and pressed to her chest again, over her heart.
“Something has changed, you know,” she said, quietly. “Far underneath. Deeper than… than all of this. It feels like…” She frowned. “As if something is searching. Reaching. Trying to see me. But I do not think I wish to be seen.”
I had no patience for Reshaye’s incoherent ramblings. Especially not here.
“Do you understand, Reshaye?”
Mismatched eyes fell to me, first dull with hurt, then bright with anger, and then sparking with an eerie, inhuman glee. A smile spread across her lips.
“Do I understand?” she repeated. “Of course I do. We always did understand each other’s darkest shadows, Maxantarius.”
Chapter Nine
Tisaanah
Max left the next day.
Zeryth hadn’t wasted any time assembling his division. I was with him when he saw them for the first time, from the balcony at the upper levels of the Ryvenai outposts. A sea of green and blue and golden coats.
Here, it all became so dizzyingly real. Max and his army would travel to Antedale, to conquer one of the most heavily fortified districts in Ara, and after that, Lishan. In between, he’d be taking a few other smaller cities as well. And from here, I’d be doing the same — fighting, conquering.
I wasn’t as worried about my own battles as I was about his.
I did not need my magic to know what Max was thinking. His hands were clasped tightly together in front of him, shoulders square, jaw set, as he watched the army prepare. He was wearing a military general’s uniform. The sun was rising, outlining his strong profile in gold. Perhaps to an onlooker, he looked every bit the noble military leader, lost in concentration.
But I had been there to watch him button that uniform jacket up and then stare at the mirror for thirty long seconds, seething resentment written over his face. And I’d felt the way his hands squeezed mine before we arrived, in a silent plea or apology, or some combination of the two. I knew that I was seeing dread, not strategic determination, in the hard lines of his expression.
I was watching him live his worst nightmare.
And it was all because of me.
We had only a few minutes alone together before his departure. When he turned to me and I knew it was time for a goodbye, my heart swelled into my throat. A tangle of Aran and Thereni words choked me.
I’d always been able to conjure pretty words when I needed to. But it was moments like these, moments when words weren’t beautiful noise but raw, ragged truths, that they overwhelmed me.
I gave him a weak smile and said, “I promise that I will stay alive if you will.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be an incentive?”
“Of course,” I replied, casually, stepping closer. “The best kind.”
“I’m glad that recent events have done nothing to dull your ego.”
The lump in my throat grew so large that I couldn’t speak. Max’s smirk had slowly faded.
I
