Chapter 58

I tugmy veil into place and step out of the library, my heart weighed down by the overwhelming need to see Asha.

She shouldn't have to face this alone, not after everything we've been through together. I quicken my pace, my slippered feet barely making a sound against the stone floors as I navigate the corridors.

I have to see Asha and tell her it will be all right. She's always been there for me, and now it's my turn to be the strong one.

I descend to the lower levels below the palace, where the air grows colder and damper with each step. The shadows seem to reach for me as I hurry down the winding stone staircase toward the dungeon.

Nerves tighten in my throat as I approach the guard stationed at the entrance and request to see Asha. He nods curtly, then leads me through the dim passages until we reach her cell.

My breath catches as I lay eyes on my sister. Asha sits hunched on a thin, dirty mattress in the corner. Dark bruises mar her face, and a thick bandage wraps around her right arm, stained with the faintest hint of red.

My heart drops to my feet at the sight of her injuries, knowing how fiercely she must have fought. But despite it all, fire still smolders behind her eyes as she lifts her head to meet my gaze.

"Ash," I whisper, my fingers curling around the cold metal bars that separate us.

"Rora…" Her expression softens, and for a moment, the world falls away. In an instant, we are not two sisters torn apart by war, but two halves of the same heart. Two halves destroyed by their father leaving them. Two halves who lived through the pain of their mother consuming a vile flower.

"You shouldn't be here," she says, her voice hoarse and strained.

Tears blur my vision as I shake my head at her. "I had to see you. I needed to know that you are all right."

Asha's lips curve into a sad smile. "I'm alive, if that's what you mean."

I reach through the bars, desperate to touch her, to offer some small measure of comfort. She flinches away, her eyes filled with a pain that cuts me to the core.

"I'm so sorry." Emotion thickens my voice as I continue. "I never wanted any of this to happen."

"If you had stood with us, none of it would have happened."

I know she's hurting, but it doesn't make the accusation in her words any easier to bear.

My voice wavers as I try again. "I love you, and I love our family."

"No." Asha rubs her clenched fist across her mouth, her knuckles white with tension. "If you truly loved us, you never would have left Bakva. You never would have left me."

My bottom lip trembles before I catch it between my teeth.

Bitterness twists Asha's mouth into a hard scowl. "You abandoned me for a crimson. You do not love me. You love him."

"That's not true," I choke out. "I love you both."

She turns away from me and hunches her shoulders.

I want to reach out to her, to pull her into my arms and hold her until her pain subsides, but I know she won't let me. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Sadness strikes deep inside me as I turn away. Away from my sister. Away from the pain in her eyes. Away from all the shattered pieces of her I cannot pick up and put back together.

I hurry from the dungeon and toward the upper levels. Maybe someday, she will forgive me enough to talk to me the way she used to.