The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,177

chided Sven, telling him he’d better perk up soon, because she couldn’t take much more of these stony faces, then eyed all of us, trying to prod us out of our gloom. She kissed his cheek. “That one’s on the house,” she said. “The next one will cost you.”

When I encouraged Rafe to eat something, he nodded, but still ate nothing. Please, I prayed to the gods, please, let them have a few last words. Don’t leave Rafe with only this.

Gwyneth walked over and sat on the side of Rafe’s chair, slinging her arm around his shoulder. “You may not be able to hear him, but he can hear you. That’s the way these things work. You should talk to him. Say what you need to say. That’s what he’s waiting for.” Tears filled her eyes. “You understand? We’re all going to leave now, so you two can talk alone.”

Rafe nodded.

We all left the room.

I went to check on him an hour later.

Rafe sat on the floor asleep, his head tilted back against the side of Sven’s bed. Sven was still unconscious, but I noticed his hand lay limp on Rafe’s shoulder as if it had slipped from the bedcovers. Or maybe Rafe had placed it there.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

I watched from the upper gallery, hidden from view because I couldn’t bear for my mother to see me, to catch my eye. To know that I knew too. She and my aunts played their zitaraes, the haunting music plucking at my ribs, my mother’s wordless song a mourning dirge drifting, skimming, seeping into every cold vein of the citadelle. It was a song as old as Venda’s, as old as evening mist and faraway valleys soaked in blood, a refrain as old as the earth itself.

I hadn’t forgotten my vision, the swirl of blood, the cry of battle, the whir of an arrow. More death lurked. I saw it in the deadness of my mother’s eyes. She’d had the same vision as mine. My brothers’ squads. I leaned against the pillar. The citadelle already overflowed with grief, the funeral pyres just behind us yesterday. In two days we would leave for Sentinel Valley. Nurse the rage. I tried to with a blinding zeal, but the sorrow crept back in.

The Dragon will conspire,

Wielding might like a god, unstoppable.

Unstoppable.

How much more was there still to lose?

The truth sank in, the gluttony, the grip, the reach. The Komizar was winning.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall, and I turned to see Rafe finally returning from Piers Camp. Yesterday he’d gone straight there after the funeral pyres had burned out, his eyes fierce again, attending to preparations with vengeance. He’d been there all day today too. I’d only just gotten back myself. It was late. Dinner would be waiting in my room. But when I heard the zitaraes—

I looked back at my mother. This was another reason she hadn’t nurtured my gift. Truth had sharp edges that could gut us whole.

The footsteps paused at the gallery. I was tucked in the shadow of the pillars but Rafe had spotted me anyway. He walked over, his stride slow, tired, and he stopped at my side, looking down into the hall below us. “What’s wrong?”

I looked at him uncertainly, not sure what he meant.

“I haven’t seen you idle since we got here,” he explained. His voice held a weariness I had never heard.

I didn’t want to explain my fears about my brothers. Not now, when Sven barely clung to life. The physician hadn’t given much hope for his recovery. Whatever last words Rafe had whispered to Sven, he had to trust Gwyneth’s claim that Sven had heard them.

“Just taking a moment,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

He nodded, then updated me on troops, weapons, wagons, all the things I had already checked on, but this was the language between us now. We had changed. The world was beating us down into something we had never been before, molding us day by day into two people who had no room for each other.

I watched him, the smoothness of his brow, the stubble of his cheek, watched his lips moving, and I pretended he wasn’t talking about supplies. He was talking about Terravin. He was laughing about melons and promising to grow one for me. He was licking his thumb and smudging the dirt on my chin. He was telling me that some things last, the things that matter. And when he said we’ll find a way, he wasn’t