Her sister was gone. Wido was gone. Tierri was free. The country would be hers. So why did she feel so hollow? There was no triumph in this, only a great, aching void that she didn't think she would ever be able to fill. Five names that would bounce around in her head for the rest of her life, five people who had sacrificed themselves for the good of the many. A sacrifice that, Rayne decided, wasn't worth it. She would give it up—all of it—to have them back.
Tierri knelt beside her. “We rallied and ran them off,” he explained. “The Knights are gone.” Then he lowered his voice and leaned closer, his breath hot on her ear. “We have a chance, a real chance at this now.” He put a hand on her back but she shrugged him off, not looking at him, not wanting to see the hurt there. But she couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't care for anyone else, not when she could lose them so easily. Not when loving her would cost them so dearly.
“Go,” she whispered to him.
“But—”
“Go!” Her voice echoed in the stone room, bouncing off the walls, sounding like it came from a hundred different places at once. “Just go.”
And he did, taking the guards with him, and Edlyn's body, wrapped in a white sheet and draped over his arms, the tulle of her dress dripping to the floor like a ribbon of crimson blood. Then they were gone, and she was finally alone, surrounded by her ghosts. By Madlin, small and soft-spoken, blood creeping around her sides. By Merek, with his ever-present smirk, his hands bound behind him. Tamsin, kind-hearted and gentle, killed by a soldier's wayward blade. Imeyna, fierce and protective, her lips blackened by poison. And Edlyn, impossibly stubborn and loyal, blood like a blooming flower staining her chest. And Rayne, the old Rayne, the one who only ever wanted to love and be loved, with a gaping hole in the place where her heart should be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sibba
Sibba's boot crunched on the fallen leaves that coated the forest floor. A breath of salt wind teased the short hair at the back of her neck and she turned her face into it. The bow in her hand was heavy but familiar, the wood worn smooth by use.
But that couldn't be right, could it? She had broken the bow, fallen on it when—
Through the trees, she saw a flash of sun on a golden hide, the five-point horns of a buck frozen in place, his wide, glassy eyes on her. Behind him, the skinny brown trunks thinned until she thought she saw a slash of gray-blue ocean. She was on Ey Island, she was sure of it. But that was also wrong. This was all wrong.
A branch snapped and she turned, expecting an attack. Expecting Gabel with his meaty hands ready to wrap around her throat. Or Evenon with an arrow pointed at her heart. But it was neither of them. Instead, not two yards away, stood Tola, her red hair looking like fire in the sunlight that streamed through the bare overhead branches. The kohl around her eyes was smudged and ran in rivulets down her freckled cheeks.
“There you are,” Tola said. She wore her black cloak clutched tightly around her.
“Where am I?” Sibba asked.
Tola closed the distance between them. “You brought me here.”
“No.” Sibba shook her head. She had purposely not called to Tola, had purposely shut her out to keep her out of danger.
“You can't control everything,” Tola said as if in response to Sibba's unspoken protests. “Especially not my mother.”
“Your mother.” The woman with the shadow staff, the one who had looked so much like Tola, only dark and wicked, powerful in a way that Tola seemed to keep locked up inside of her. Sibba had seen it once, as the waves had reared up against her, in a vision of a flame-haired girl on a cliff. A girl who had controlled not just the water or the wind but the very night itself.
“I'm coming for you,” Tola said, pulling Sibba out of her reverie. She focused once more on the Tola that stood in front of her. Suddenly the vala's face was clear of kohl, wiped clean as Sibba had never seen it before. She was just a girl, just a stunning, stubborn, mysterious girl with eyes as light as field grass on a summer day. Sibba wanted desperately to touch her. She had tried to keep her distance, scared of being too close to someone, of opening herself up to the same kind of pain that Estrid had dealt her. All those chances wasted. Time she would never get back.
“No,” Sibba said, twisting her fingers together to keep herself from reaching for Tola. “It's too dangerous.”
Tola laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. “You think I don't know? I grew up in Ydurgat beside Isgerd the Younger. Those women raised us. I know exactly what they're capable of.”
Sibba remembered then. The fighting pits. Chief Isgerd and her daughter and the hardness behind their beautiful eyes. Her brother, Jary, and the way he had called out to Isgerd the Younger, the vulnerability on his face. Sibba wiped a hand down her face, trying to push the memory away. “I didn't mean for any of this to happen.”
“You shouldn't have gone without us.” There was hurt on Tola's face and it made Sibba's chest clench with guilt.
“Evenon left. He betrayed us again. I tried, Tola. I tried to trust him like you told me to, and look where it got me.”
Tola shook her head. “You got yourself there. But I will get you out. And maybe then you'll believe in me.”
She couldn't stop herself. Sibba dropped the bow and rushed forward to clasp Tola's face between her hands. Her skin was soft and warm in spite of the chill in the air. The vala lifted her own hands and grasped Sibba's wrists, but did not push her away. “I do believe in you. You don't have to prove yourself to me. You never will.” Her thumbs brushed the girl's rosy cheeks and Tola whimpered, closing her eyes. Her long, pale lashes brushed the tips of Sibba's thumbs like butterfly wings. A tear slipped from the girl's eyes, as black as kohl, staining Sibba's fingertips. “Don't come. Don't come here. Wait for me.”
Fear pulsed inside of Sibba at the idea of her friends in this dangerous place. She already had to get herself and her brother out; she couldn't be responsible for two more people. Sibba leaned her forehead against Tola's and closed her own eyes, listening only to their tandem breathing, savoring the feel of Tola's breath on her lips.
“You still don't believe in me,” Tola whispered. Their noses brushed, their lips nearly touching. They were so close that when Sibba's heart beat against her ribs, she was sure that Tola could feel it.
“I do.”
“If you did, you would want me beside you.”
Sibba shook her head, not daring to look at the vala. “I can't.”
“You can't what?”
Can't lose you, too. Can't give myself up again. “I can't.”