Chapter 14

14

arwen

The knock at the door of our suite the next day was inexplicably familiar. Solid and controlled, nothing musical to it—not Mari, then. Kane’s was more demanding. Leigh’s little fists didn’t make as much noise. Ryder’s were more impatient. I finished rinsing my hands in the washroom and swung the suite door open, only to find the wrinkled, kind eyes I had missed so terribly the past few weeks.

I threw myself into Dagan with open arms, enveloping him in a hug I don’t think either of us expected.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my face pressed into his layered tunics. He smelled like black pepper and seawater. He must have just arrived in Azurine this morning.

“Hello to you, too, Arwen,” he said, patting me squarely on the back as if I were his associate.

That was all right, I’d take what I could get.

When I could feel Dagan growing uncomfortable with the length of our hug, I released him and peered up. He appeared happy to see me, but there was a deep sorrow behind his eyes. “I was very sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you want to come inside?”

“It’s been quite some time since you’ve last trained. I’d imagine you’re out of practice. Shall we fit a lesson in before you leave for the Peridot Provinces?” He turned to show me two glinting silver swords strapped to his back.

“What do you mean?”

I had run back to the castle last night and crawled into bed, eager to drown everything out. When I awoke to the breeze sending the white linen curtains into my room like sunshine specters, Leigh and Ryder were gone. The note on the table said they had tried to wake me but I couldn’t be roused, and they were spending the day at the shore.

“The king is leaving this evening to pursue the Blade of the Sun in Reaper’s Cavern. I take it you know the importance of the blade in the prophecy?”

I gave him a slight nod.

“Arwen,” he said, gentle but stern. “Shall we train?”

I drifted into the washroom to change before following him out into the open-air hallway. Servants and handmaidens milled through a hall marked with potted lemon trees and pearlescent fountains overflowing with fresh, clear water. Between the pillars I could just make out the pine-fringed coves and vine-covered villages in the distance. The morning breeze swept that scent of ever-present salty ocean—tinged with the roasting of pork and chickpeas—through the palace, but even the vibrant day and savory scents couldn’t salvage my mood.

Last night had been a catastrophe.

Kane and I—

I shuddered at the memories. “Only Kane and Griffin are going to Peridot? No soldiers?”

“The commander will remain here in the capital. But King Ravenwood is bringing Mari. Her powers may be needed to access the cavern that holds the blade. They hope to keep a low profile now that the kingdom is ruled by Amber. No battalion.”

Griffin wasn’t going with Kane? “And what about you? You just got here.”

“I am going to stay in Citrine with Eryx and Amelia for the time being and strategize on the battle that lies ahead. Back in the Fae Realm of Lumera, wartime strategy was part of my job as the head of Kane’s guard.”

“And you and Kane were always close?”

Dagan smiled mildly as we took a few shallow steps down to a courtyard of shocking green. It wasn’t as private as our glade back in Shadowhold, but the grassy annex was still slightly off the palace’s beaten path. “He is my king first, and my friend second.”

“So your king asked you to convince me to join them in Peridot because he was too cowardly to ask me himself?”

I knew I sounded sour. The sun was bright and hurt my eyes. I wanted to go back to bed.

“I requested to discuss the matter with you.”

I squinted up at him. “Why?”

“If you stay, it will give us plenty of time to work on your skills, both sword and lighte.” He gave me the closest thing he could to a comforting look. “But I fear training isn’t the reason you would avoid the voyage.”

“I don’t want to talk about him—it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You know I am glad to avoid that specific subject matter.” His face contorted with a grimace. “That relationship isn’t my utmost concern.”

“I really don’t need to go with them, though,” I argued, clinging to something, though I wasn’t sure what. “I’ll just wait out the rest of my days here, in the sun and the sand, and Kane can call for me when they’ve found the blade, the battle plans are ready, and it’s time for me to do the honors.” I mimed a stabbing motion, and then a suffering-a-terrible-fate-and-dying motion. Neither provoked even a smirk in Dagan.

Stones, I had missed him.

“The blade will beckon you to find it. Like a pig searching for truffles.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“They need you.”

“And I need to stay with Leigh and Ryder. We’ve only just found each other again.”

A palace maid walked through the grassy corridor with a high stack of linens, passing under the pearl arch behind us. Dagan examined my face, waiting for me to continue, somehow knowing there was more.

“And they’ve lost so much.”

I refused to conjure her face. Her auburn hair. Her dresses that smelled of sage and ginger—

“Let’s harness your lighte. We can discuss Peridot after, if you want.” Dagan unstrapped the swords from his leather holsters and leaned them up against a tan stone pillar. Then he sat on the grass beneath us and folded his legs.

I shifted on my feet. “Don’t you think that’s a little pointless?”

“Pointless?” He craned his neck to look up at me, squinting one eye against the sun. “The more you use your lighte, the stronger you will be, and the faster it will regenerate.”

“Even still, all I really need to do is to drive one blade through Lazarus’s heart. I’m not sure healing or . . . whatever it was I did that day on the ship . . . is going to help me.”

“You think harnessing the essence of the air and sun and wielding them in your favor will be useless in your effort to slay the mightiest Fae in existence?”

Well, when he put it that way.

“Point taken.” I sat down gingerly in front of him, blades of soft grass cushioning my ankles. “Where should we start?”

Dagan considered me, curiosity and maybe . . . sympathy in his eyes. Then, as if a light had gone on inside his mind, he drew in a breath that lifted his brows.

“What?” I asked, more edge creeping into my voice than I intended.

“You’ve given up.”

And with that, he stood, returned his swords to his back, and began to walk away.

“Hey!” I scrambled from the grass beneath me. “Where are you going? What do you mean?”

He didn’t turn as he headed across the courtyard, bougainvillea and full, plump peonies cascading around him. “I can’t teach you anything if you haven’t the spirit to fight. And I’ve heard Azurine has a delicacy made with giant clams that I’ve been hankering to try.”

“Dagan.” I tugged on his sleeve. “Stop.”

He whirled around with more speed than I anticipated, and I had to remind myself that he was the fittest elderly man I’d ever met. Maybe who had ever lived. He stared into my eyes for so long I became self-conscious and tried not to fidget.

“For someone so concerned about staying with her kin, have you thought of what your resignment might do to them?”

A wave of guilt slammed into me even as I said, “No. I mean, Ryder, Leigh, even Mari . . . They’re fine.”

The brief disappointment that flitted across Dagan’s hazel eyes cut deeper than a dagger. “Is it not cruel to make them suffer because they care for you?”

I fought the way my face wanted to crumple, how my limbs wanted to give out and reunite me with the ground at my feet. “I’m not making anyone suffer.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Stop answering me with questions. What if I don’t want to take care of everyone else anymore? I just want to be alone. To be free for a little while before it’s all over. Is that so wrong?”

“So staying behind while Kane and Mari travel without you is freedom now? Lonely, isolated, simply waiting for death? Wishing for it?”

“Dagan, will you drop it? I just don’t want to go. I—”

But he stepped closer. “Forcing everyone to abandon you because you are too cowardly to do it for them? Pushing and prodding, until they choose to—”

“Stop it,” I bit out, louder than I intended. Two birds flew from the cypress tree that bathed us in shade. For a moment all I could hear were my rushed breaths and water gurgling from distant fountains.

Dagan regarded me with curiosity. “When you first arrived at Shadowhold, Griffin, Kane, and I each tried our best to keep you at arm’s length. Do you know why?”

“Because you’re a curmudgeon, Kane was trying not to get in my pants—unsuccessfully, might I add—and Griffin doesn’t like people?”

Dagan stared at me in utter silence. He was making it impossible to keep the conversation away from pesky, painful emotions.

“No,” I conceded. “I don’t.”

“Only the three of us knew what you were destined for. We knew how painful it would be to one day tell you of your fate. How both realms were counting on you: a twenty-year-old girl from a small Amber town, with the weight of the world on her scrawny shoulders.”

I swallowed the lump that had lodged in my throat.

“We did not want to be vulnerable.”

My heart twisted for him—for the man who had lost his wife and daughter and didn’t want to let anyone else in. Kane and Griffin had also lost their families at Lazarus’s hand. Suddenly, Griffin’s difficulties around Mari, and people in general, seemed cloaked in tragedy.

“Just as you are avoiding leaving Citrine for fear of what the voyage may make you want. I told you once there is power in harnessing your fear. There is also power in vulnerability. It is what makes us human, and gives us something worth fighting for. Sometimes, that is also something worth dying for.”

I rubbed at my neck. “I can’t let myself want to live, Dagan. I can’t turn my back on the prophecy. As you said, look at all the people that are counting on me.”

“I know how frightening it is to allow yourself to want something you know you can never have. Sometimes, we tell ourselves that it’s easier not to care at all.”

I folded my arms and looked out toward the sea in the far distance. I tried to be there in my mind. All alone. An island. Where I wouldn’t have to face any of this.

“But there is power in hope too. You have no real knowledge of what is in store for you. It’s a long and winding road for all of us, prophecy or not. Do not spend what little time you may have left in this world shutting yourself out of it.”

“I can’t—” I heaved in a shuddering sigh. I hadn’t realized I was out of air. “I can’t be weak anymore. I was weak and afraid my whole life. It feels better to accept my destiny, to be strong.”

“Admitting you do not want this fate doesn’t make you the same timid girl you were when you arrived in Shadowhold.”

“Well, that’s not how I feel,” I said, my eyes finding the blades of verdant grass beneath my shoes. “I’d rather just keep my head down and move through each day until it’s time to do what I need to.”

“Move through the last year of your life?”

I bit my tongue against the nagging hurt in my heart. It wasn’t too different from what Kane had accused me of, and Mari, too.

“Much better than watching you walk through life like a corpse.”

“It’s not enough to just survive, Arwen. You have to actuallylive.”

“Fine,” I said, my eyes landing back on Dagan. “I’ll go.”

But his expression wasn’t one of satisfaction. “And what about Kane?”

I sighed. “What about him?”

“Do the same rules apply?”

Ire simmered in my veins. “Aren’t we done here? I agreed to go.”

But Dagan persisted. “You wish to deny what you feel for each other, lest you open up your heart only to be wounded again?”

“Are you taking his side? After all he kept from me?”

“I didn’t tell you of your fate or your lineage, either, Arwen.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t fall in love with you.”

Dagan stood there quietly, letting my words sink in.

A mild breeze carrying the freshness of the pines tossed my hair around my face. A single seagull, stark against the clear blue sky, pulled my gaze overhead. It rose over the shining castle spires and toward the sea.

I had never spoken the words out loud.

Not even to Mari.

But those feelings hadn’t died with Kane’s betrayal. With all of Lazarus’s men that I butchered. With my mother. The scars of what I had felt for Kane were as pronounced as the ones Powell left across my back.

“You did that on purpose,” I finally said, bitter.

“If you really are doomed as you keep saying”—Dagan’s lips curved with the faintest hint of a smile—“I have very little time to teach you quite a lot about life. I’m simply trying to speed up the process.”

“Now who’s making the dark jokes?”

Dagan loosed a sly laugh and sat back down on the grass. After a beat, I joined him.