“If you can do it,” Max murmured, “I suppose I can do it.” Then his eyes met mine, so close I could see every vein, every cloudy shift of color. “And you have to. Alright?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I took his face in my hands and kissed him, long, deeply. My mouth felt cold against the air when we parted, and my fingers were achingly empty when his hand slipped from mine.
I stood with Zeryth up on the balcony of the military headquarters to watch him leave. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, not even when he was a spec of green and gold in the distance. He was barely visible when he turned around one final time and lifted his hand in a wave. My eyes stung as I returned it.
I felt Zeryth’s stare, but didn’t look.
“He’ll come back,” he said.
He’d better, I thought. He has to.
“Why him?” I asked. “Why do you want someone who hates you so much to lead your armies?”
“Because he’s good.”
“I’m sure you have many good generals.”
“Maybe I chose him because he hates me, and because I can make him.”
My gaze flicked to Zeryth. There was a twisted smile at the corner of his mouth, and he leaned casually against the wall, elbow propped on stone. On the surface, he seemed as nonchalant as a cat bathing in the sun.
But I looked closer.
There was something off about it all. The lazy stance of his was practiced and deliberate, the smile a little too forced, the tone of his voice sticky-sweet with manufactured drawl.
No. It wasn’t as simple as that. Not quite.
Zeryth’s head cocked. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Do you remember the first time we met? I must have been fourteen summers, yes?”
He chuckled. “Probably.”
“I was so excited to meet someone who looked like me. Even with some differences.” I gestured to the patches of gold skin on my face, raising my brows wryly. “I asked you to tell me of Ara, you took your knife and carved the shape of the continents into an apple. Threll and Besrith, even the Fey lands. You showed me where Ara was.”
His smile had gone distant. “I don’t recall.”
“I’m sure you don’t. But I kept it until it rotted.”
I still remember exactly how it looked, the white meat of the apple shriveled, the mottled skin of the “continents” fly-eaten. I tried everything I could to preserve it — impossible, in the oppressive heat of the Threllian summer. By the time I finally gave up and discarded it, it looked like a ravaged version of the world, blackened and decaying like the flesh I now rotted beneath my fingertips. Zeryth was long gone by then, of course, set off across the sea. And after I threw that apple into the trash, I returned to my little, windowless room with nothing but a dream of whatever lay beyond it.
“I was so young,” I said. “I thought that it was kindness, what you did for me. But you have always been so willing, Zeryth, to dangle a world just out of reach.”
Then I pulled my cloak closer around me, slid my chilly fingers into my pockets, and went down the stairs.
I understood, in an abstract way, that Max’s family had been powerful. But walking the halls of the Farlione estate put that into a whole new perspective. It was so different, seeing it in person rather than in the imprints of Reshaye’s memories. Those fuzzy images didn’t capture the scale of it, or the unfamiliar beauty. Max rarely spoke of his family. Now I realized exactly what the Farliones must have been, before their fall. This estate was befitting of a family only two steps from royalty.
The hallway was lined with paintings. I paused at a portrait of a woman with long dark hair and brown eyes that gazed into the distance. The half smile on her lips was the same one Max wore when lost in thought. His mother, surely. Beside her, there was a man with grey at the temples of his black hair and deep smile lines, and the angles of his face resembled Max’s so strongly that I knew I had to be looking at his father.
I heard light footsteps approach from behind me.
“We need to start working today,” Nura said. “Start strategizing. And training, of course. Taking Kazara won’t be easy with our forces split. We’ll have to rely on you heavily. And the sooner we take back the Capital, the sooner this nightmare is over.”
It was the first time I’d heard Nura say much of anything, let alone express such strong distaste, since she hurled blades across the dining room the day before. There was something else in her voice, too — a glimpse of a deeper discomfort. Even beneath Nura’s stoic ice, I had seen the expression on her face shift, ever-slightly, when we walked into this house.
I turned around. “Why did you miss when you threw those knives?”
Her lips thinned. “Did you think you were the only idiot to spill your blood over a contract?”
Ah.
Now that it was out in the open, it seemed practically obvious. How had I not seen it before?
“You can’t act against him.”
“I certainly can’t kill him.”
Her wording was different than mine. Noted.
“Zeryth and I… never got along,” she said. “And to be a Second is to be a failed competitor of the Arch Commandant, and the one to take power if they die. It made sense to build a loyalty protection into the oath. As much as I despise it.”
She looked as if the words physically pained her. I was sure she did hate it. I was also sure that it was the only reason Zeryth had made it this far alive.
“You and I are united in that,” she added. “It’s in both of our best interests to get this over with as quickly as possible.”
I didn’t answer. I took
