“I have no intention of allowing him to do that,” I said. “Nismae said to ask the shadow god where Atheon is. If I make myself useful to the king, I can get him to ask the shadow god for me. I can still find the Fatestone and rewrite everything.”
“You’re out of your mind. You’ve just pledged yourself to his service. That gives you no leverage at all.” Hal’s voice rose.
“What other choice do I have left? I have to at least try.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “Ina can’t be reasoned with. The king has a plan, and honestly, I’m a little more comfortable helping someone who isn’t going to stab me out of nowhere—especially if it means there is a chance I can stop the battle from ever happening in the first place. If you have a better idea, speak up now or stand by my side.”
Hal hung his head, massaging his temples with his hands. “I don’t have any ideas. All I can think about is what will happen if you rewrite the past.”
“You mean, when I fix things to prevent the king from killing Nismae and Ina or our kingdom from going up in flames?” I asked, not bothering to rein in my sarcasm.
“You don’t understand!” Hal leaped to his feet. “Yes, I want those things, but I don’t want a world to exist in which I didn’t meet you!”
I stared at the floor, the frustration shocked out of me.
“Have you thought through that possibility?” he asked. “I suppose you have, if you’re so certain this is what you should do. Maybe you even have some half-baked plan about how we might stop everyone who lied to us from doing so in the first place. Restore harmony, birds, butterflies, all that nonsense. Make the world all perfect and pure the way you think it should be.” He gestured broadly, rolling his eyes.
A fresh surge of anger made me rise to my feet. “Stop it. I never said that!”
“Stop what? I’m telling the truth. You have this rosy vision of what the world should be, and it just isn’t like that. You can’t make everything perfect. That isn’t how the world works. Where there is light, there must be darkness. Goodness only exists in contrast with evil. Until you accept that, life is only going to disappoint you.”
“Life has already disappointed me,” I said bitterly, trying to flex my injured hand. The fingers barely moved.
“So what are you going to do about it?” He stepped closer. “What are you going to do about the fact that life is terrible and unfair?”
“I need the Fatestone. If I can get the Fatestone, I will have the power to decide.” The more I thought about it, the more certain I was. I didn’t know exactly what the version of the past was that I wanted to write, or how to mitigate collateral damage, but I knew I could change the past to create a better present than the one I lived in now, even if evil and darkness still existed in the world.
“Giving your blood to the king was really the only way to do that?” he said darkly. “And now you’re definitely going to write a new past?”
“Stop pushing me. I don’t have everything figured out yet,” I said. I had done the best I could under the circumstances.
He stepped nearer, almost as close as he’d been to me last night. “I need to know. Your fate is tangled up with mine now. At least until you rewrite the past.”
I stood my ground and met his eyes. They were warm and liquid dark, looking for answers I didn’t have. I took a deep breath and then another, feeling the tension between us crackle like sparks from a fire. Part of me wanted to throw him out of my room immediately so I could think clearly again. Another part longed to close the distance between us.
“I don’t want this,” I said, deflating.
“Don’t want what?” His expression grew colder, more guarded.
“To be at odds with you,” I whispered.
Some of the tension ebbed out of his body, and an emotion flickered over his features that I couldn’t quite put a name to.
“I missed you last night. I could hardly sleep,” I admitted. A tingle of nervousness raced through me.
I saw a shock travel through him. Then he smiled sadly, just the smallest upward quirk of his lips. “I missed you, too.”
We sat down side by side on my bed, tentatively renegotiating the closeness that had once been so comfortable and easy between us. His body was coiled, not like he wanted to spring up, but as though all he wanted in the world was to be closer, and when he got closer, it still wouldn’t be close enough.
I knew that feeling well, and had never thought it would find me again.
“This is hard,” he said. He looked away, and seeing him was like gazing into a mirror of how Ina had made me feel sometimes.
“Hal,” I said. Just his name, a simple thing. I let the fingers of my uninjured hand wander down his jawline, then brushed my thumb over his lip like he’d done to me the night before. His breath hitched in a way that made a dangerous wave of desire rise in me.
This time, I couldn’t help but give in.
I leaned forward and tentatively pressed my lips to his—and then my breath caught, too, as he tenderly kissed me back. We explored each other with the familiarity of friends and the strangeness of new lovers, delighting in the ways we could make each other feel with even the lightest touch. Eventually he laid me down on the bed, his deepening kisses waking a slow-burning hunger in me that I thought had died forever after Ina broke my heart. And just as surely as Ina had shattered me, he put me back together piece by piece until the fire he ignited burned brighter than any she had ever called.
For the first time since leaving Amalska, I felt like I was coming home.
CHAPTER 28
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER A BRIEF TALK WITH EYWIN about my abilities and what we hoped to accomplish, he sent Hal and me into the forest to collect some of the rarer ingredients he hadn’t managed to cultivate in the castle gardens. I took the opportunity to steal kisses from Hal all afternoon as we walked hand in hand through the woods, though the Fatestone was never far from my thoughts. The sounds of the city faded into a distant hum the farther away we went.
“So what’s your plan for the battle beyond what you’ve discussed with Eywin?” Hal asked.
“To make sure it doesn’t happen,” I said. I’d have to endear myself to the king quickly if I wanted him to speak to the gods on my behalf. I doubted he’d do so for any random person who asked, but I was the only bloodscribe. His inkmistress. I wasn’t dispensable, and that gave me power.
“But what if you can’t find the Fatestone? What if you can’t stop it?” He frowned. “I don’t like all the ways this could go wrong.”
“I at least have to try.” I had to stop Ina from killing the king—especially now that I knew the kingdom would fall apart if she did. “If I try, there’s still hope of bringing back the people of my village. It’s my fault they’re gone.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Hal said.
“No, I know I’m responsible. I can feel it,” I said, my voice resolute. But he’d seeded doubts. What if I changed the past and the bandits destroyed Amalska on a different day? What if Ina found the dragon on her own, and some other series of events led her to embark on the same murderous quest she’d ended up on now? Could I truly plan for all those potential paths?
“If you’re sure this is the only way, then I’ll help you if I can.” He kissed me again, and a little stab of guilt went through me when I pulled away and saw some of the levity gone from his eyes. I knew he was thinking again about what changing the past might mean for us.
“Either way, it isn’t a bad idea for me to work with Eywin and start using the smaller aspects of my gift again.” I’d given it some thought. The king was right. I needed to be able to match Nismae enchantment for enchantment, whether the battle came to pass or not. This was my blood. My gift. I had to be its greatest master. I had to be the most powerful, not because I wanted to hurt anyone, or needed to win, but because this power belonged to me. Only I could make sure that it was used for good and not evil.