He risked a glance at her. “Does anything else matter?”
The question caught Ivy off guard. She could not have said what she had expected, but it wasn’t that. “I…don’t know.”
“I won’t insult you by offering you excuses, but I wanted to say that to you first. I’m sorry. I mean it.”
As much as Ivy wanted to doubt his sincerity, she found that she couldn’t. “Helios…”
He shook his head even though the effort caused him obvious pain. “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I did what I did and I will face the consequences. You just—you deserved to hear that. I never lied to you, Ivy. Not once. And I’m not lying now.”
“Never lied to me? How can you say that?” Everything he’d ever told her had been a lie. Every moment since the first had been a lie. “When I asked you why you were helping me—helping us—you said you wanted to do the right thing. You said you couldn’t stand by while Tanith ripped the world to shreds. You said you watched her cut down her own people and it made you sick. Did any of that even happen?”
Helios’s mouth hardened into a grim frown. “It did.”
“Then why?” Ivy was struck by how badly she needed to know. “Why did you keep working for her? You could have come clean; we could have helped you.”
His expression shuttered, as if he were slamming down a window. “It doesn’t matter why.”
“It does,” said Ivy. “To me. If she threatened you—”
“It wasn’t me she was threatening.” For a brief moment, his countenance faltered and his face was an open book. He tried to gather himself, with visible effort, but Ivy had peeked behind the mask and saw the truth he seemed so determined to hide.
“Who?”
Helios shook his head again. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “Not anymore. He’s probably already dead. After what I did…”
“Helios, please,” said Ivy. “Tell me.”
Despair flitted across his face, as plain as day. “My brother.” Helios swallowed thickly. “She said if I didn’t do as she commanded, she would kill him. And it would be slow. She gave me that locket with his picture in it to remind me. The one I showed you in the garden. I used it to send messages to her. The same way you used that pendant to communicate with Dorian when you were being held captive in the keep.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Our parents died when we were very young. It’s always just been me and him. I couldn’t…”
He trailed off, and Ivy felt a tug in her chest, the gentle pull of compassion that drove her to study the healing arts, that guided her hands as she worked.
“I’ll see if I can find him,” Ivy said.
Helios opened his eyes to study her. “Why? Why would you help me after what I’ve done to you?”
Because it’s the right thing to do. But Ivy said nothing. She started packing up her supplies, her emotional reserves exhausted.
After a full minute passed in silence, save for the glass vials of salves and elixirs clinking as Ivy placed them back in her basket, Helios spoke again. “You should hate me.”
Ivy gathered up the folded bandages and placed them in the basket. She looped the handle over her arm and stood. She didn’t speak until she was at the door, one hand on the knob.
“I don’t hate you, Helios. And I don’t want to.”
She turned the knob and opened the door. Dorian was right outside, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. His eyebrows rose when he saw her. She wanted him to hear what she had to say too.
When she turned back to Helios, she found those sad, bright eyes boring into hers. “Hate is a choice. And it’s not one I’m interested in making.”
CHAPTER FORTY
It was unbelievable to think that Echo could be here, walking these halls so freely, when everything she had ever been told dictated that this was a place where she would never be safe. Wyvern’s Keep was the dragon’s den. The seat of Drakharin power. She would never be Avicen, but she had always been their ally, and this was the place they feared most, home to the most fearsome figure of Drakharin lore: the Dragon Prince. Echo knew him to be real, to be flesh and blood, as she was, but to the Avicen he was a monster of mythical proportions. He was the bogeyman they told their children about to scare them into their best behavior. She had not known what Caius was when she had first met him. He had told her that he was a mercenary hired by the prince, and she had believed him. She’d had no reason to doubt him. But the truth had outed itself, as it was wont to do. She had come to know him for who he was. She had come to know the truth of him—not his title; titles could be won and lost—but the solid core of him. After all this time, she liked to think that she knew what made him tick. He was fearsome, that much was undeniable, but he was also kind and loyal, possessed of a wit she grudgingly admitted was as quick as hers, if not quicker. He held within himself layers that a dark, secret part of her wished she had the luxury to explore.
But time was not on their side. Caius had assigned Dorian the task of weeding out those soldiers still loyal to Tanith and remanding them to the keep’s dungeons while Drakharin mages and scouts worked to track Tanith’s location. Echo hadn’t been given a task, and while she appreciated having a night off, she knew the reprieve would last only until morning.
She knew she should probably catch a few hours of rest, but her nerves were still electric, so she stalked the halls of the keep, relishing the free passage granted to her by the Dragon Prince himself. Within these walls his word was law, and while the guards she passed on her meandering journey glared at her with barely concealed suspicion, they would not raise their weapons to her or question her right to be there. Their rightful prince had spoken, and they would listen.
She was not sure where she was going. All she knew was that she needed time away from all the people crowding into the great hall—miraculously clean of blood, as if none had ever been shed—who were celebrating the return of their lost prince and his declaration of peace. As if they weren’t the reason he had been driven from these walls. His sister might have stolen the throne out from under him, but they were the ones who had allowed it to happen.
Echo trailed her fingers along the embroidered tapestries lining the walls. An aimless series of twists and turns had brought her to a quiet part of the keep. The voices of the celebration raging below had long since faded to silence. The corridor was dimly lit by sconces. The glimmer of firelight illuminated her path, undulating against the red runner that ran the length of the hallway.