your parents. I pictured my father’s eyes, a frozen blue that mirrored my own. The stern gaze that turned soft with wrinkles when he smiled. My mother’s warm embrace that always welcomed me home. The smell of fresh-baked bread somehow constantly present in the folds of her clothes. If I were to die, they’d be heartbroken. I was their only son. And yet…
This war would never end while I still breathed.
Rocketing to my feet, I stripped the armor from my body and cast it to the ground. In a simple tunic and light breeches, I was entirely unprotected. A gentle breeze kissed the exposed skin of my arms, and it felt like home. Like affirmation. With my armor went the blade, and I paused for a moment at the lack of its weight. But no—where I was going, weapons weren’t needed. And then I started walking with more purpose than I’d felt on the battlefield that morning. This war would end tonight. I’d make sure of it.
I walked until the muddy marshland shifted to sediment-filled banks of black sand. We hadn’t destroyed the entirety of Rhyne’s forces, and those who’d retreated were in the midst of loading gear and bodies onto ships. Flickering fires cast the beach in an orange hue, and the quiet murmurs of soldiers created a lull that competed with the ocean waves. For a moment, I paused and focused on that sound. On the ebb and flow of the tide creeping over the sand and washing away the remnants of the war. Of the blood and horrors these people had faced.
Raising my hands above my head, I walked to the first campfire I could find. I had no delusions they’d take me alive. I’d offered my imprisonment before to end the war, and they’d spit on the letter and sent it back, sealed with the wax and emblem of the royal family.
This would be different. A strange sense of peace flowed through to my fingertips, and for the first time in years, relief relaxed my lips into a gentle smile.
* * *
The first thing I saw was darkness. A maelstrom of shadows that varied from slate to onyx to sable, all somehow unique. They were gentle in their touch, and it was then I realized I could feel my fingers. My limbs. My body. There wasn’t any pain. There wasn’t much of anything at all. The total and complete silence was deafening and yet comforting. The sounds of war and death, gone. Here there were no whispers or judgments threading low through conversations.
And then there was a pinprick of light—a pale gray that hinted at smoke. It grew until it devoured the expanse, blanketing out the darkness and bringing with it sounds. A rustling of bodies and hushed words. Voices I didn’t recognize and couldn’t piece together through the veil of mist. And then a fiery heat bloomed in my chest, and my heart, which had been still, beat once against my ribs. Searing pain cracked through me like a hammer battering brittle wood. Light blossomed behind my eyes and white sparks danced in my vision. Again my heart beat, this time with less anguish but more vigor, and more flickers of light erupted in the gray.
The voices grew impossibly loud, and suddenly I could feel. I was flat on my back somewhere, blades of grass tickling my neck. My clothes were damp, as if my body had been soaked at one point and was only beginning to dry. The cool air was thick with pine, and as I took a staggered breath, the fresh scent of earth and blood skated along the back of my tongue. My eyes flew open. The world of gray traded for an indigo expanse dotted with millions of stars. Treetops towered high like jagged spears against the sky. And darkness. Thin tendrils of shadows unrelated to the night snaked through my peripheral, as if they’d always been there. As if they belonged.
Someone knelt beside me and placed a hand over my chest. A man I didn’t recognize peered down, his curling hair the color of weathered bark falling about his shoulders. Framed by heavy wrinkles, his dark eyes held nothing but wisdom—and perhaps a glimmer of pity.
“Where am I? What happened?” My words were a harsh rasp, and I desperately wished for water.
The man didn’t move. “You’re safe. You’re still in Lendria.”
“Did you heal me?”
“No, I didn’t heal you. You died as you intended, and I merely brought you back.”