Then they were running, her heart hammering, and suddenly she was shimmying up the side of a house and onto the roof.
22
We’ll be safe here,” Haern said. They sat cross-legged before each other. The city stretched all around them, enclosed within the great wall. He gestured to his right, where the street was safely hidden from view.
“No one can see us passing by,” he said.
Delysia nodded. She rubbed her arms with her hands, feeling both cold and afraid. The past few days were a whirlwind of pain and confusion, and all she wanted was to curl up somewhere warm and sleep. Yet Haern kept looking at her with his blue eyes, so intense in their desperation. He wanted something of her, but what, she didn’t know.
“Why did you come for me?” she asked, hoping to pry it out of him quickly so she could go back to the temple.
“Because I… it’s about your father.”
Delysia winced.
“What about him, Haern?”
Haern sighed and looked away. His mask helped hide his emotions, but it didn’t erase them completely. He was reluctant and embarrassed. Delysia felt her fear hardening in her stomach. Whatever Haern had to say, she sensed she would not like hearing it.
“I helped kill your father,” Haern said suddenly.
Delysia didn’t move. Her thoughts returned to that day, but she remembered no boy. She only remembered tears, the surprised cries of the crowd, and then running far away so she could cry alone. Still, Haern’s ache was too real to be a lie.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you help?”
“Because my father asked it of me,” Haern said. “That’s not all, Delysia. I had a mission, one I failed. You were my target. I was to kill you.”
Delysia suddenly felt paralyzed with fear. She thought back to her talk with him in the pantry. What if she had been a fool to let him out? He’d been stopped on his way to finish the job, and now here she was, helpless atop a roof with no way off other than a long fall.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, praying to Ashhur that the boy didn’t draw his daggers.
“I followed you that day,” Haern said. “You didn’t see me, but I followed. I listened to you pray. It broke my heart. Do you understand? Listening to you cry, listening to you pleading so helplessly with your god, I couldn’t…”
He stood and turned away.
“I couldn’t let myself become such a monster. I’ve come close. I won’t do it.”
Delysia stood. The trouble inside him was so great, and her inner nature won out. She reached over and put a hand on his shoulder and turned him back to face her. Tears were in his eyes, wetting the cloth wrapped tight about his head.
“I want to know how to pray like you did,” he said. “I want to have that kind of faith. Your father was dead, and you still believed. I’ve tried, but people died. I feel hollow and fake. What is it you know? What is it you do? Please, tell me, Delysia. I need this. I need something to cling to, otherwise I’ll be lost forever. I’ll become what my father wishes me to be.”
Delysia blushed. She felt so young and foolish, and yet he was coming to her for help? She tried to think of all her father’s lectures. The memory of his kind words and warm smile only hurt her more.
“Give me your hands,” she said. There was one thing she remembered, one moment that nothing could ruin. It was the nightly prayers her father had said with her whenever she felt scared or lost. Tears in their eyes, she knelt, her fingers still interlocked with Haern’s. The boy knelt with her.
“Bow your head,” she told him.
“What now,” he asked.
“Close your eyes.” He did, and then he waited.
“Think of everything you love,” she said. “And pray it safe. Don’t think about to whom you pray. Don’t worry about whether it’ll be heard or not. Just pray.”
Haern opened his eyes and looked at her.
“What if I have nothing to love?” he asked.
The question pierced Delysia’s heart. She’d once asked that same question to her father after they’d had a bad fight. She gave Haern the same answer he had given. Never in her life had she missed her father so much.
“Then you can love me,” she said.
Her body lurched forward. Her mouth opened in shock. Blood seeped down the front of her dress as she fell, a small arrow shaft sticking out