29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A few hours later, Zylah stood at the edge of the lake waiting for Enalla, Kopi in his spot on her shoulder. She hated that she had to leave him behind again, but taking him back to Ranon’s maze wasn’t an option.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” she told him quietly. “You’re fierce, but Rhaznia has both web and venom in her arsenal.”

Kopi’s little trill in response told her he’d understood, but her tiny friend didn’t leave. Zylah knew why, had felt his presence since he’d left the line of tents closer to the shelter of trees. Holt’s steps were silent, and though Zylah resisted the urge to walk towards him, she couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her mouth at the sight of him. But then she took in the sword strapped to his back—she’d seen him fight with two just as efficiently—the bag slung over one shoulder, and her smile faded. He was leaving.

Kopi didn’t have the same restraint; he flew towards Holt, a hand reaching out as if by memory to give the little owl a perching place.

“Traitor,” Zylah chuckled as Kopi nuzzled against Holt’s thumb.

“I wish I could say I remember you, too,” Holt said quietly, fussing over Kopi in his hands. The memory of his voice in her thoughts back in Virian had Zylah sucking in a breath, a hand pressed against her chest, and Holt’s eyes shot up to her face. He’d been pleading with her. Asking her to stop before she passed out from healing Nye, though she doubted he knew who he’d been pleading with.

Zylah swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Go, Kopi. I’ll be back soon.” She watched her friend fly away, watched Holt close the space between them and come to a stop a few steps away. She tilted her face up to his, taking in the slope of his nose, the cut of his jaw, the soft fan of his eyelashes when he closed his eyes for a moment as if he were trying to hold himself together just as much as she was. “You have every right to be angry with me,” she said quietly.

“Nye needed Enalla for another task. And since I’m too much of a liability in Virian, I’ll be joining you.” A muscle ticked in his jaw at that last part, and Zylah could have sworn she felt his disappointment at his predicament, but she couldn’t bring herself to match it, not if it meant he was staying. Not if it meant she got to spend time with him.

“Our magic is tied to each other’s,” she told him, because she couldn’t bear the thought of lying even by omission.

“I know.” He took another step closer, his warmth and his familiar scent washing over her, and Zylah had to shove her hands into her pockets to stop herself from reaching for him. “I was angry.” He swallowed. “But then I evanesced to you, saw you lying there in the street. And I was afraid.”

“And you didn’t understand how you could be afraid for someone you don’t know,” Zylah whispered, fingers twisting into the fabric of her cloak.

A nod. “Every day that passes away from that cell, from them, I feel stronger. Thanks to you. You saved my life, Zylah.”

“You’d have done the same for me.”

Holt studied her face, and Zylah wanted to soak up every moment of it. His brow pinched together, his eyes tracing over the cloth covering her eyes, her nose, lower. “What happened to us?”

Us. The word was like an arrowhead to the heart. I am yours . “Aurelia. But I can’t…” She looked away then, forgetting that he wouldn’t see the tears lining her eyes, that the cloth covered them and caught them as they fell.

“It’s like I’m burning,” he admitted, his voice strained. “Everywhere, from the inside out.” Holt clutched a hand to his chest, fingers grasping his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Zylah rasped, watching the way his fingers curled into the fabric and wishing she could soothe him, to ease some of his pain.

“I’m not.” The words were firm, certain, and Zylah dared to look up at his face again, his eyes glassy and bright. “It reminds me I’m alive. That I’m not trapped in that cell, going out of my mind. You remind me of that.” Zylah couldn’t hide the choked sob that escaped her at that. “And I know I’m not in a position to ask you for anything…”

There is nothing I wouldn’t give you , she thought, and his eyes widened as Zylah realised she must have said it to him in the space that was just for them. But he didn’t back away this time, didn’t flinch. Only nodded to himself as if he’d made a decision.

“You said you can pull apart magic.” Another pinch of his brow. “Do you think you can unpick whatever it is Aurelia did to me?”

Zylah wanted to tear the cloth from her eyes. For him to be able to see the truth in hers. “Not without hurting you.”

“I’m well accustomed to pain.”

“I know.” He’d suffered so much. Losing his family. The compulsion. Everything Marcus had put him through, whatever torture he’d endured since Raif had shoved the vanquicite sword through his chest. And now this. But she couldn’t deny him. Not ever. “We can try.”

He held out a hand, and settling her palm into his was as familiar as breathing. “Shall we?”

Zylah could follow the path of his evanescing anywhere, but she didn’t tell him that. Only relished the feeling of his hand wrapped around hers, the trace of his thumb as he pulled them through the aether together. They reappeared just north of Virian in the trees that lined the road into the city. Not too far from where he had taken them the first time they’d entered the city together, and she let herself believe he remembered that.

“I think Ranon is charging his orb for the blood moon,” he said, without releasing her hand.

Zylah looked up at him. It was a possibility. “My blood didn’t restore him as it should have,” she murmured. “You think he’s trying to regain his strength?”

“Aurelia was weakened. I think she’s been allowing her father to syphon off some of her power.”

Zylah considered that for a moment. “Her paralysing touch. Still fucking hurts, though.” Holt’s hand tightened around hers at her words, and she wished she could bottle that little moment of comfort. “And she could still evanesce, last I knew.”

“Could. Ranon drained that from her, too.”

Zylah allowed herself to feel relief at that, evanescing them both to the next point, just at the base of the Rinian mountains.

“Can we make an exception to one of our rules?” Holt asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he glanced down at her and then to the forest beyond. Their breaths clouded the air, the forest quiet save for the occasional bird cry.

“That depends,” Zylah said, holding back a smile of her own, their hands still entwined.

“It isn’t cheating.” He held his free hand over his heart, waiting for her response.

Zylah grinned. “Go on.”

“Can we skip ahead in the story to the maze? Just so I know what we’re walking in to.”

A fair request. Rhaznia was the reason she might never see with her own eyes again. But she didn’t want to spoil the lightness that had settled between them, not yet. “Fine,” she told him, injecting as much warmth into her smile as she could to disguise the grimace.

Holt evanesced them again, stopping at the perimeter of a property, a small cabin nestled between trees. Zylah’s hand slipped from his when she realised where he’d brought them, her heartbeat like a caged bird fluttering in her chest. His cabin.

“I thought it might trigger a memory,” he told her quietly. “But we don’t have to stay.”

“No.” Zylah shook her head. She wasn’t ready to explain her relationship with Raif to him. Not yet. “We can stay. It was a good idea.”

Holt turned to the forest, examining the trees as if his memories might come to life amongst the boughs. “Raif died here. I know that much. I came back here to look for him, but his body was already gone.”

Zylah wrapped her arms around herself, fighting back the wave of emotions rolling through her. Guilt. Regret. Anger at herself for fucking everything up. Sadness. Pain. Holt had been hers all along and she hadn’t known it, had made a mess of everything so badly before she left Virian.

“Hey.” Warm fingers curled gently around her arm. “You’re shaking. Come inside.”

She let Holt lead her, willing herself to keep it together. Zylah wanted to tell him this wasn’t about Raif, but that wasn’t entirely the truth. She didn’t think she had it in her to tell him everything, not without screwing it up, without fumbling her words and giving Holt the wrong impression. It had been difficult enough the first time around when he wanted to be with her, when he knew what they were to each other. But he already knew she and Raif had been something, once.

“You were here when he died,” he said, guiding her to the lounger and wrapping the blanket that rested over the back of it around her shoulders. Not a question, but perhaps not a memory, either. Zylah could only nod as he lit the fire, an ember falling from his fingertips in that way she’d witnessed so many times before, more of his magic coming back to him, more little pieces of himself he was pulling back together.

“Did he hurt you?” Holt asked, fingers digging into the mantle above the fireplace so hard Zylah thought the stone might crack.

She forced herself to answer him. “Physically? Never. He…” She swallowed. “He kept something from me. Something very important to me.”

Holt threw a log into the fire, embers spitting onto the hearth. It still turned her insides to think of the way Raif had used her. Still made her palms clammy. Holt had told her he’d understood, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t felt his hurt. His pain. And she wasn’t sure how to explain it all to him without that understanding turning to blame.

“Did you get it back?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“The important thing.” He dusted his hands, and Zylah was vaguely aware of him moving as she watched the flames curl around the wood.

“For a short while. Yes.”

He knelt in front of her, eyes roaming over her face. “But then you lost it again.”

“Yes,” Zylah whispered, willing her heartbeat to steady. There was no way he hadn’t heard it.

His hands came over hers, warm, solid, comforting. He was supposed to be looking for things to jog his memory, not soothing her. But she couldn’t bring herself to remind him of that, to say anything that might make him move away.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked gently.

Zylah sucked in a breath at the weight of that question. “Never.”

“Good.” His relief was palpable, shoulders loosening a fraction. “I’ll make you some tea. Honey and alea blossom?”

Another quiet huff of air escaped Zylah, and she dipped her chin in acceptance. Holt studied her face for a moment longer, the fire behind him casting him in shadow, his eyes the colour of the dark trees beyond the cabin. There was a moment she thought he might say something else, there and gone before he released her hands and pushed to his feet.

She couldn’t help but think of the first time he’d brought her there, of how he’d cared for her then, too. Always cared for her, even when he hadn’t known what they were to each other. Always offered her his friendship.

“Remember anything?” she asked when he sat down beside her and handed over a steaming mug of tea.

Holt toyed with the bracelet, watching as she blew at the hot liquid. “Some things. Little flashes.” He reached for her braid. “Like this,” he said, thumbing the plait. Zylah held her breath. “Things that feel familiar even though I have no memory of why .” He rested her braid back on her shoulder, the ends slipping through his fingertips. “Like you,” he said softly.

Firelight danced across his face, orange and gold ribbons brightening his eyes, the flecks of gold in them like tiny stars. Another little flutter of hope swelled in her chest.

“I heard you,” she told him. “When I was healing Nye. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Holt shook his head, eyebrows drawing together. “You saved my friend’s life. That’s nothing to be sorry for.” His attention moved to the fire, a heaviness settling over him. “Every day in the palace, I thought they were going to bring Nye in. Or Rin or Kej, or another of my friends. That I’d have to…” His voice thickened, and it was Zylah’s turn to rest a hand over his. “I feel like, like I have no right to how I feel. So many are dead because of me.”

“You have every right,” she told him, her thumb stroking over his in a slow, steady rhythm.

Zylah felt the moment his walls fell back into place, some internal war in his thoughts fought and won. Or perhaps lost, when he gently pulled his hands from hers and rose, leaving her to clutch at her tea for something to do with her hands.

“I’m going to walk around the perimeter, see if I can remember anything. Finish your tea. Then we should get going, get as far as we can before it gets dark.”

“Take your time,” she told him, her heart twisting as she watched her mate walk out of the cabin. Despite the tea in her hands and the crackling fire beside her, Zylah couldn’t shake off the chill that hung in the air, every inhale like a cold burn. Holt was safe. Alive. Even if… she couldn’t let herself finish the thought. It was enough.

It had to be.