a moment, my heart breaks with the need to know her.
“It’s good to see you like this,” Julian says, putting both his hands on my shoulders, forcing me square to him. “I knew you’d find your way back to Mare, but I did have my fears for a while.”
I glance down at my feet, sighing. “Me too,” I say, chewing my lip. “And what about you? Why did you wait so long with Sara?”
Julian blinks. He is rarely caught off guard or unprepared for a question. “We planned to marry,” he says, searching for an answer. “Before my father—”
“I know that. It was in the diary pages. I mean after.” My voice catches and Julian pales. “After what Elara did.”
His lips thin into a grim line. When he speaks, his eyes lose focus, and he descends into memory. “I wanted to. I would have. But Sara wouldn’t let me tie my fate to hers so fully. She didn’t know what Elara would do, if she might decide to finish the job. Have her executed. She couldn’t bear the idea of me dying with her.” His eyes water, and I look away, giving him time to recover as best he can. When I look back, he forces an empty smile. “And now, well, we had a war on, didn’t we?”
I try to give him a smile of my own but fail. “There’s time for everything, isn’t there?”
“Yes. But we always have the choice. To let things get in the way, or to pursue what we really want,” he says quickly, with fervor. “I’m glad you read the diary. I know it could not have been easy.”
To that, I have nothing I can say. Reading the copy of my mother’s diary felt like ripping my flesh apart and sewing it back together. I almost couldn’t do it. But to have even a glimpse of her, no matter how painful—I owed her that much.
Julian’s grip on me lessens and he steps back, fading into the kindly uncle I know—and not the haunted man he is. “I have more to give you, of course. Not from your mother, but other writings, collections, what I can get together from the Royal Archives. Things to help you understand what you came from, both the good and the evil.”
Part of me quails at the thought of the pile Julian might force on me, but I take it in stride. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“Cal, it is a rare man who is willing to look at himself and see what truly stands. A rare man indeed.” I try and fail not to blush furiously, heat smoldering in my cheeks. Julian ignores my embarrassment, or he simply doesn’t care. “You would have made a good king, but never great. Not like you are now. A great man who needs no crown.”
My insides twist. How can he know who I am? What I might be in the future? Who I could become?
It is a worry, I suppose, we all carry. Me, Mare, even my uncle. We are chosen to some kind of greatness, and cursed to it.
“Thank you, Julian,” I force out, overcome again.
He claps me on the shoulder, voice dropping. “This isn’t over, but you know that, don’t you? It won’t be for years. Decades, maybe.”
“I know,” I reply, feeling the truth of it in my gut. The Lakelands, the Silver Secession. No matter how strong this alliance is, there will always be someone to challenge it—and the world we’re fighting to build.
“History will remember you, mark my words,” Julian says, now steering me toward the terrace. Outside, Mare has Bree by the scruff of his collar, forcing him to bend down so she can shout at him.
“Make sure it remembers you well.”
FARE WELL
Maven
I would turn this horrid little room to ash if I could, but the Silent Stone is a poison and an anchor. I feel it working in me, spreading beneath my skin like black rot. My limbs ache, weighted down by the sensation. Everything feels wrong in me, my very nature denied. The flame is extinguished, or at least it is far beyond my reach.
This is what I did to her. It’s only fair they do it to me. She was kept in a different room, but I feel her here just the same. I almost smile at the thought of just punishment, of balancing my sins. But that would be impossible. There is no penance I can make to wash me clean. I am stained forever,