The memory of him flashes through my mind. A small man, still and foreboding as the surface of undisturbed water. Orrec Cygnet. “My father and I were away when he raised the shores of the Hud, pulling water out of the bay to flood our village and wipe it from the face of his kingdom.”
“They drowned,” I murmur.
Her voice never wavers. “Reds across the country were inflamed by the Drowning of the Northlands. My father told our story up and down the lakes, in too many villages and towns to count, and the Guard flourished.” Farley’s empty expression becomes a scowl. “‘At least they died for something,’ he used to say. ‘We could only be so lucky.’”
“Better to live for something.” I agree, a lesson I learned the hard way.
“Yes, exactly. Exactly . . .” She trails off, but she takes my hand without flinching. “So how are you adjusting?”
“Slowly.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“The family stays around the house most days. Julian visits when he isn’t holed up in the base lab. Kilorn is always around too. Nurses come to work with my dad, get him readjusted to the leg—he’s progressing beautifully by the way,” I add, looking back to Sara, quiet in her corner. She beams, pleased. “He’s good at hiding what he feels, but I can tell he’s happy. Happy as he can be.”
“I didn’t ask about your family. I asked about you.” Farley taps a finger against the inside of my wrist. In spite of myself, I flinch, remembering the weight of manacles. “For once, I’m giving you permission to whine about yourself, lightning girl.”
I sigh.
“I—I can’t be alone in rooms with locked doors. I can’t . . .” Slowly, I pull my wrist from her grasp. “I don’t like things on my wrists. It feels too much like the manacles Maven used to keep me a prisoner. And I can’t see anything for what it is. I look for deceit everywhere, in everyone.”
Her eyes darken. “That’s not necessarily a terrible instinct.”
“I know,” I mutter.
“What about Cal?”
“What about him?”
“The last time I saw you two together before—all that, you were inches from ripping each other to shreds.” And inches away from Shade’s corpse. “I assume that’s all settled.”
I remember the moment. We haven’t spoken of it. My relief, our relief at my escape pushed it far into the background, forgotten. But as Farley speaks, I feel the old wound reopen. I try to rationalize. “He is still here. He helped the Guard raid Archeon; he led the takeover of Corvium. I only wanted him to choose a side, and he clearly has.”
Words whisper in my ear, tugging on the back of a memory. Choose me. Choose the dawn. “He chose me.”
“Took him long enough.”
I have to agree. But at least there’s no turning him from this path now. Cal is the Scarlet Guard’s. Maven made sure the country knew that.
“I have to go clean up. If my brothers see me like this . . .”
“Go ahead.” Farley shifts against her raised pillows, trying to adjust into a more comfortable position. “You might have a niece or nephew by the time you get back.”
Again the thought is bittersweet. I force a smile, for her sake.
“I wonder if the baby will be . . . like Shade.” My meaning is obvious. Not in appearance, but ability. Will their child be a newblood like he was and I am? Is that how this even works?
Farley just shrugs, understanding. “Well, it hasn’t teleported out of me yet. So who knows?”
At the door, her nurse returns, holding a shallow cup. I move back to let her pass, but she approaches me, not Farley. “The general asked me to get you this,” she says, holding out the cup. In it is a single pill. White, unassuming.
“Your choice,” Farley says from the bed. Her eyes are grave as her hands cradle her stomach. “I thought you should have that, at least.”
I don’t hesitate. The pill goes down easily.
Some time later, I have a niece. Mom refuses to let anyone else hold Clara. She claims to see Shade in the newborn, even though that’s practically impossible. The little girl looks more like a wrinkled red tomato than any brother of mine.
Out in the ward, the rest of the Barrows congregate in their excitement. Cal is gone, returning to his training schedule. He didn’t want to intrude on a private family moment. Giving me space as much as anyone else.
Kilorn sits with me, cramped into a little chair against the windows. The rain weakens with every passing second.
“Good time to fish,” he says, glancing at the gray sky.
“Oh, don’t you start mumbling about the weather too.”
“Touchy, touchy.”
“You’re living on borrowed time, Warren.”
He laughs, rising to the joke. “I think we all are at this point.”
From anyone else it would sound foreboding, but I know Kilorn too well for that. I nudge his shoulder. “So, how’s training going?”
“Well. Montfort has dozens of newblood soldiers, all trained. Some abilities overlap—Darmian, Harrick, Farrah, a few more—and they’re improving by leaps and bounds with their mentors. I drill with Ada, and the kids when Cal doesn’t. They need a familiar face.”
“No time for fishing, then?”
He chuckles, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “No, not really. It’s funny—I used to hate getting up to work the river. Hated every second of sunburns and rope burns and stuck hooks and fish guts all over my clothes.” He gnaws on his nails. “Now I miss it.”
I miss that boy too.
“The smell made it really hard to be friends with you.”
“Probably why we stuck together. No one else could handle my stink or your attitude.”
I smile and tip my head back, leaning my skull against the window glass. Raindrops roll past, fat and steady. I count them in my head. It’s easier than thinking about anything else around me or ahead of me.
Forty-one, forty-two . . .
“I didn’t know you could sit still for this long.”
Kilorn watches me, thoughtful. He’s a thief too, and he has thief’s instincts. Lying to him won’t accomplish anything, only push him farther away. And that’s not something I can bear right now.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “Even in Whitefire, as a prisoner, I tried to escape, tried to scheme, spy, survive. But now . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure I can continue.”
“You don’t have to. No one on earth would blame you if you walked away from all of this and never came back.”
I keep staring at the raindrops. In the pit of my belly, I feel sick. “I know.” Guilt eats through me. “But even if I could disappear right now, with everyone I care about, I wouldn’t do it.”
There’s too much anger in me. Too much hate.
Kilorn nods in understanding. “But you don’t want to fight either.”
“I don’t want to become . . .” My voice trails away.
I don’t want to become a monster. A shell with nothing but ghosts. Like Maven.
“You won’t. I won’t let you. And don’t even get me started on Gisa.”
In spite of myself, I bite back a laugh. “Right.”
“You’re not alone in this. In all my work with the newbloods, I found that’s what they most fear.” He leans his own head back against the window. “You should talk to them.”
“I should,” I murmur, and I mean it. A tiny bit of relief blooms in my chest. Those words comfort me like nothing else.
“And in the end, you need to figure out what you want,” he prods gently.
Bathwater swirls, boiling lazily in fat, white bubbles. A pale boy looks up at me, his eyes wide and his neck bared. In reality I just stood. I was weak and stupid and scared. But in the daydream I put my hands around his neck and squeeze. He flails in the scalding water, dipping under. Never to resurface. Never to haunt me again.
“I want to kill him.”
Kilorn’s eyes narrow as a muscle twinges in his cheek. “Then you have to train, and you have to win.”
Slowly, I nod.
At the edge of the ward, almost entirely in shadow, the Colonel keeps vigil. He stares at his feet, not moving. He doesn’t go in to see his daughter and new grandchild. But he doesn’t leave either.
TWENTY-THREE
Evangeline