I wouldn’t lie. Not anymore.
“I recognize it. You traveled with it for hundreds of miles.”
“Yes.”
“It’s nothing special to look at. But when I wielded it, I could tell that it was magically enhanced.” He flipped it in one smooth movement, grabbing it by the hilt. “Well made. Deadly. Which was fortunate.”
Deadly enough to take off the Sightmother’s head with just a few strokes. Fortunate indeed.
“The Arachessen take their jobs seriously,” I said. “It had to be good enough to kill quickly.”
“Kill a vampire warrior quickly.”
I was prepared for this, I told myself.
I knew it was going to hurt.
I blinked behind my blindfold, ignoring the faint prickling. “Yes.”
I wouldn’t defend myself. Wouldn’t explain. What could I say to him? He had already seen the truth.
From the moment I had disobeyed the Sightmother’s orders, I was ready to die for it. I preferred that it would be by his hand.
He stood up, and I did the same, bracing against a wave of dizziness that greeted me with the movement.
His brow rose, looking me up and down, and I answered his unasked question with, “I prefer to meet death standing up.”
Another flippant echo of our first meeting. But this time, I had to say it past a lump in my throat.
He scoffed, turning the dagger in his hands again. “You think I’m going to kill you.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I do.”
“Do you know how long you’ve been asleep?”
I shook my head.
“Two days. Two very busy days. And yet, as I was clearing the Salt Keep and claiming the palace and solidifying my hold over this kingdom, do you know what I was thinking about?” He paused, like he expected me to answer. When I didn’t, he said, “I was thinking about you. Your lies. Your betrayal.” His gaze lowered to the blade. “I was thinking about this dagger.”
Then those eyes speared me right through the chest, deadlier than any blessed weapon.
“And I thought about how you had used it,” he said. “To protect your people and mine. To save my life. To slay your kingdom’s tyrant.” He dropped the knife to his side, knuckles white around the hilt. His words were rougher now, like they bubbled up from somewhere deep inside himself. “I thought about killing you for the crime of carrying a dagger you did not use. And I decided I couldn’t. I told myself a million reasons why, but the truth is one I didn’t want to admit.”
My throat was so tight, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat hammered against the inside of my ribs as he stepped closer, his stare fire.
“I cannot kill you because I know you, Vivi. I know every moment you lied to me, because I know every moment you told the truth. I know your truth. I can’t ignore it. Even though it would be far easier if I could.”
Weaver, I was prepared for death. Wanted death, compared to this—compared to the way every word he spoke drove another strike through the most vulnerable parts of my heart.
I felt each one deep inside myself. So terrifyingly true that every instinct told me to run.
I said, voice raw, “There is nothing I can say to erase what I did.”
“I don’t need your words.”
He was so close now I felt his breath on my face. Felt that truth on my skin.
“So show me,” he murmured. A command. A plea. Somehow both giving and taking, in equal measure. “Show me I’m right.”
It went against everything I had always been. I wanted to cower from it. Wanted to hide.
Instead, when Atrius’s hand rose to my face, I reached to the back of my head and untied my blindfold.
The little strip of silk fluttered to the ground.
I opened my eyes.
Arachessen were never without their blindfolds, not even in sleep. The air was cold and foreign against my eyes. My eyesight had been destroyed long ago. I had never even tried to examine the scraps of whatever remained.
But I could see Atrius.
Barely—just a little. I could make out the shape of his form, blurry and silhouetted, and the dim suggestion of his pale skin and silver hair.
Almost nothing. And yet, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed. Beautiful in an intangible way that made me think of scraps of paint flying out over the sea.
It is the sea.
I opened my mouth to say something—wasn’t even sure what—but what came out was only a garbled sob.
Atrius nodded, as if he still understood exactly what I meant, and he cradled my face between both hands. I closed my eyes, and he kissed one, then the other, catching the beginnings of tears on his lips.
His presence surrounded me, warm and stable and firm, such a perfect mirror of my own, scars and all.
I choked out, “I’m not afraid of death.”
But I am afraid of this.
Atrius, of course, already knew.
“Me too,” he murmured, the words warm against my lips, and I wasn’t sure who moved first, only that our kiss was long and fierce and brutally honest with all the words we didn’t say.
My arms wrapped around him, and his around me. Our bodies intertwined. All lies withered in the space between us.
I kissed him and wept and kissed him some more, and I was so happy, I couldn’t even be terrified.
49
I stood in the gathering room alone for a long time before the Sisters were brought in.
First I walked through it without my blindfold, reminding myself of the differences between the version of myself now and the one who had last sat at this table. Not that I could see much of anything with my eyes in a room this dark, not even shadows. Still, there was something about feeling the air here on my open eyes that brought me clarity.
I had been dreading this meeting.
Atrius had first suggested it a week ago, and though he was the first one to voice it, I had been turning the idea around in my mind from the day I woke up in this new, infant version of my kingdom’s new life. With the Sightmother dead, the Arachessen was a scattered and headless organization. The Sightmother’s two oldest advisors, the only holders of her secret, had been killed when they foolishly attempted to recapture Atrius after the gods departed. But the rest of the Sisters remained here, in the Salt Keep. Atrius’s men had captured most of them during his initial takeover, though some who had been away on missions hadn’t been heard from since. They’d been treated well, though guarded very carefully, since then, while Atrius and I dealt with the immediate pressing needs that went along with taking over a kingdom.
But I knew I would have to come back, and sooner rather than later.
Every time I had sat at this table, I had felt so exposed—deeply connected to my Sisters and ashamed of what that connection might unwillingly reveal. I loved my Sisters, or at least I thought I did. Now, I pitied that version of myself, for whom love meant hiding so many different aspects of herself.