War Storm (Red Queen) - Victoria Aveyard Page 0,140

oldest friend, his skin going pale, dying faster by the second. Red blood on his chin, his chest, his clothes. All over my hands.

The king doesn’t say anything, holding his tongue. With a great burst of will, I look back at his face to find him staring, eyes wide, lips pressed into a grim, thin line. The concern is clearly written on him, in his furrowed brow and tight jaw.

I force myself to move again, my path taking me back around. Closer to his chair, into the circle of familiar heat.

“We got him to a healer in time,” I say as I walk. “He’ll be all right, same as you.”

When I pass behind him, I bite back the urge to touch his shoulders. To put one hand on either side of his neck and lean forward, bracing myself against him. Letting him hold me up. Now more than ever, the need to let go and rest, to allow someone else to carry my burdens, is difficult to resist.

“But you’re here with me,” he whispers so low I almost don’t catch it.

Instead the words linger, smoke between us.

I have no answer for him. None I’m willing to give or admit. I’m no stranger to shame. I certainly feel it now, as I stand in his bedchamber, with Kilorn recovering miles away. Kilorn, who wouldn’t be here if not for me.

“It isn’t your fault,” Tiberias pushes on. He knows me well enough to guess my thoughts. “What happens to him isn’t on your shoulders. He makes his own choices. And without you, what you did for him . . .” His voice trails off. “You know where he would have ended up.”

Conscripted. Doomed to a trench, or a barracks. Probably dead in the final gasps of the Lakelander War. Another name on a list, another Red lost to Silver greed. Another person forgotten. Because of people like you, I think, forcing a deep breath. The bedroom smells like salt air, fresh from the open windows.

I try to take some comfort in what he says. But I can’t. It doesn’t excuse anything I’ve done, or what Kilorn has become because of me.

Though I suppose we’ve all changed since last year. Since that day when his master died and he stood in the dark beneath my house, trying not to mourn his life as it was snatched away. I swallow hard, remembering what I said. Leave everything to me.

I wonder if we changed into who we were supposed to become, or if those people are gone forever. I guess only Jon would know, and the seer is long gone, far out of reach.

Clearing my throat, I change the subject with little tact. “I hear there’s a Lakelander fleet on the horizon.” I put my back to him, turning to face the exterior door, the one leading back into his receiving chamber. I could walk out right now if I wanted. He wouldn’t stop me.

I’m just stopping myself with every single breath.

“I hear that too,” Tiberias replies. Then his voice drops, deepening. It wavers in fear. “I remember darkness. Emptiness. Nothing.”

Reluctantly, I look over my shoulder to watch him stand, shedding the last of his armor. Avoiding my gaze. He’s still tall, still broad, but lesser without the weight of the battle-worn steel. Younger-looking too, just twenty years old. Tipping on the edge of manhood, parts of him still clinging to youth. Holding on to something as it disappears, just like the rest of us.

“I went into the water and I couldn’t get back up.” He kicks the pile of steel on the floor. “Couldn’t swim, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.”

I feel like I can’t breathe either.

Tiberias shudders as I watch, a tremor that starts in his fingers. His fear is terrifying. Then he forces himself to look back at me. With his feet planted and his hands firmly settled on his hips, he is rooted. The king won’t move unless I do. He’s going to make me surrender first. It’s what any good soldier would do. Or he is simply letting me choose. Letting me decide for both of us. He probably thinks it’s the honorable thing to do.

“I thought of you before the end,” he says. “I saw your face in the water.”

And I see his corpse again, suspended before me, dappled by the shifting light of a churning sea. Afloat, at the mercy of a foreign tide.

Neither of us moves.

“I can’t,” I bite out, looking anywhere but his face.

He responds quickly, with force.