38. THIRTY EIGHT

thirty-eight

ONE. LAST. THING.

By the time we arrive back at camp, we all split. Cole is whisked off with Carlisle to discuss what he’s missed, and I go to the healer's quadrant. As I enter, it’s the first time I notice how much I missed being here. How familiar the smell of mint and lavender have become. How comforting it is that the light filters through the windows, spotlighting cascading swirls of dust.

Marge is surprised by my return, and sends me out to forage for mushrooms. I have to control my pace as I walk toward the forest, each stride closer to Daeja picks up in speed. Anything to get me to her faster. When I finally break through the tree line and spot her shadowy silhouette, a part of me relaxes. Struggling to maintain my composure, I break into a sprint, fighting every second keeping me apart from her.

My cheeks warm into a genuine smile. “ I couldn’t bring you a carriage of chicken but—”

She barrels into me, and I fall backwards to the ground. Her warm snout nuzzles into my neck, her strong tongue nearly licking the skin off my cheek.

“I’ve missed you.” Her voice is soft and low, like the sound of the water against the shore. The three words have a noose around my heart, clenching and pulling and hurting. Wrapping my arms around her muzzle, I lean my head into hers as I scratch her favorite spot under chin, and she melts into a pleased rumble.

“I’ve missed you too.”

“When we get to the Dragon Lands, will we always be together?”

My throat constricts, my chest tight. Had she asked me months ago, my answer would’ve been something entirely different. In the past, I imagined I’d drop her off at the border as easily as if I were trading something at the market. Trading her for a life of freedom where all I had to worry about was myself.

But now?

Now she feels as familiar to me as my own two hands. I can’t imagine a life without her. In a world where I have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m doing—with her it all makes sense. Everything makes sense when she is next to me. And that is all I need. Whether or not we go down together or burn the world to ashes, all that matters is we are together.

Together has become my favorite place to be.

“Yes. Always,” I answer her finally.

After dinner, I go off to my own room. I lay on my back staring up at the night sky through the gaps in the roof’s tattered ceiling, watching the twinkle of the stars. Footsteps outside my room fade to silence as the early evening hours pass by.

“Are you ready?” I call to Daeja.

“Ready as ever.”

I pack extra clothes, some food, and a water flask into the satchel my mother gave me all those months ago. I gather my sword and scrawl a new note for Archie and Marge, leaving the folded letters on my desk. I pause, mulling over one last task, before deciding out of respect to our previous relationship, Cole deserves one, too.

Cole,

There will always be a part of me that loves you, even if sometimes I don’t want to. I’m sorry I had to go. But I hope you understand. I will always want the best for you, and I will never stop wanting you to be happy.

Love, Kat

Tears slip from my eyes, spattering against the paper. I still couldn’t write the words ‘I forgive you.’ Perhaps someday, I can. But today that is not that day. I am still far too broken, too hurt.

I slip out of my door and scan the camp one last time, partly to say goodbye to the place I called home for the last several months, and partly to ensure no one else is around. With a soft sigh, I leave. As I pass the crumbling wall encircling the outpost, a whisper stops my tracks.

“Wait.”

I turn, slow. Each breath a staggering weight in my chest.

Cole stands rigid, a torrent of sadness drowning his features. “Don’t leave. Not yet.”

I don’t say anything—I’m stuck.

He takes a few cautious steps toward me. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I know I’ve hurt you. I’ll beg for your forgiveness and mercy before I beg it of any god. But, please...just give me this one last chance to tell you how sorry I am, before you go. And then, you can go—” His voice wavers, tears glistening in his eyes. “I…I will let you go.”

I nod, tightness constricting my throat.

The way he fidgets, he’s dying to touch me. But he restrains himself. My emotions swirl around me, threatening to pull me under into a whirlpool of despair at the extent of how damaged we are.

He sighs, his shoulders sagging in relief that I’m giving him this last chance. “I’m not in love with her, Kat. Not like I am with you. I didn’t agree to it because I loved her.”

“Then why did you?” I whisper.

“Gods…I killed myself every day for not fighting for you when you told me to leave you alone back in Padmoor. I wanted to respect your wishes, even if I didn’t want to let you go so easily. But I did. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Nothing makes sense when you’re not next to me—it feels like a life left wasted. When you broke things off with me to take your mother to Stoneshire for the blue flame, my father was injured at work. He was forging a sword, and the sparks exploded into his eyes—blinding him.”

I gasp.

He nods and takes another step closer. “He had to sell what little weapons we had left in the shop, but it wasn’t enough. We only had enough to sustain the eight of us for maybe a few weeks. I was trapped and desperate for a way to support us, so the girls wouldn’t starve. And then word of the draft came. Willard told me you were still in town and that you never left for Stoneshire. I went to your house, scared you’d be angry I wasn’t honoring your wish to leave you alone. But I went anyway. I saw a flicker of movement near the window after I knocked on your door, but you never answered. I took it as your sign that you didn’t care to talk to me. So I left and took the opportunity to join the King’s army. The military pays well, and if I could work my way up in the ranks, I could send money back to him and my sisters.”

My gaze settles on my boots. It wasn’t me not answering his knock—it must’ve been my mother. And it must have been the day I fell asleep at the river, just as I told his sister Vivian back in Padmoor.

“And then you met Celeste,” I finish quietly.

“No. I trained for a few weeks at a different outpost. But every day I regretted not staying to fight for you. So I left.”

My eyes widen, searching his. “What? What do you mean you left?”

“I came back for you. I went back to Padmoor. I couldn’t live a life without you anymore.” He pulls out his mother’s ring from his pocket, his thumb brushing over its gleaming metal. His voice wavers as he stares down at the ring. “And then my worst nightmare came true. You were gone. I dug through the ashes of your home, desperate to not find you. I asked around Padmoor, and everyone told me the same thing. I even asked Willard, practically begging him to say it wasn’t true, desperate there had been some mistake. But he confirmed it—you and your mother had died in the fire. And I felt my heart shatter at that very moment. It broke something in me. Ever since then, I’ve struggled with who and what I am. I should’ve stayed with you, I should’ve fought harder because in my mind, maybe I could’ve saved you. That guilt never ceases to haunt me. I returned back home, and when my father learned I deserted my position in the King’s military he—” He shakes his head, biting into his lip to keep tears from spilling.

A half-hearted laugh shakes his shoulders. “I have to stop saying that, but it’s a habit. He’s not even my father.”

“What?”

He glances up at me. “When he found out I dishonorably left the military, he admitted I’m not even his real son. When he wed my mother, she was already pregnant, and had sworn him to father me. To raise me as his own. But I was such a disgrace in his eyes, he couldn’t possibly be associated with me. Not to mention the repercussions if he housed such a treasonous bastard. He told me to never return, and that I could never see my sisters again.”

“Cole...I’m…I’m so sorry,” I murmur. My own heart aches, knowing how much his sisters mean to him. And then for them to be ripped away from him, in a single moment, completely outside of his control. Ripped away as if they were torn from him by the currents of a river.

Ripped away, all because of me.

He continues, “I didn’t know where to go. I tried to go back to my original squad, knowing they’d execute me for desertion. I didn’t have you, and I didn’t have my family, so they’d at least put me out of my misery. My original squad sent me to Arterias for a trial. I had two options: execution, or I could serve out the rest of my life as captain of the most northern squad. This outpost is where they send those they can afford as collateral. They know we’ll be the first ones to die in rebel attacks. But I wouldn’t get paid for it—which meant my family would die if I couldn’t send them something.”

He takes a shaky, heavy breath. As if this has been weighing on him for months. “And then I was offered a proposal. If I married Celeste, I would be wed into a wealthy family. I’d have a handsome dowry, and I could send that money back to my family. My life sentence would be lifted so I could be with her.”

“How is that possible? How could they just lift the sentence so easily?”

“Apparently, since her father was Jurrock, they still have the favor of the King. But Kat— I don’t love her . I’ve never touched her or kissed her. I’ve never felt about her like I do you. If I had known you were still alive…” He grabs my hand in his, pleading for me to listen to him. “I would never have agreed to it. I just wanted to take care of my family, can’t you see that? I would take a lifetime of poverty and pain with you, than riches and prestige without you. I doubted your ability to work through the hard things, thinking if I told you I was engaged without a solution, you’d leave. But you weren’t the weak one—I was. The fact is, you are so much stronger than I think. Than you think. You are single-handedly the strongest person I know. And I’m not saying that because I’m madly in love with you. Or because you’re my friend. But because it’s true.”

He retrieves something tucked into his jacket and presents it to me. “Here...I want you to have this.”

I take it slowly with a blink and pull open the scroll. A map. At a loss for words, I tuck it shakily into my satchel.

“And this.” He pulls out another item and holds it out to me. A dark brown...journal.

My father’s journal.

I dart my gaze up to him. “You kept it? All-all this time? Why?”

A sad smile blooms on his face. “Because I know how much it means to you. But I didn’t want you to have to worry about the risk of me keeping it for you.”

My voice cracks. “Cole—”

“Wait. One…last…thing. I promise,” he whispers. He takes my hand and flips my palm open, places his mother’s ring in the center, and closes my fingers around it.

His throat bobs as he twirls and tucks a stray hair behind my ear, dragging his finger underneath my jaw and locking my gaze with his own. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me or how you feel about me now. Because for me, it’s always been you. And it always will be you. I am fearfully yours, my love. Wonderfully in love with every piece of you, broken and whole. Regardless of whether you love me or not. Something might have changed in you, but you never changed in me.”

My lips tremble at the delicacy of his words, my throat constricting. Tears blur my vision, and my heart swells and breaks all at once. Little does he know how much has changed in me. Part of me doesn’t deserve his words—not when I fell so easily into someone else’s bed and without giving him any chance to explain himself. Gods, the secrecy of what I’ve done alone is suffocating. I’m digging for the right words to say and for the right moment. The realization slams into me—this must’ve been what it felt like for him, keeping his betrothal to Celeste a secret.

“Cole, wait. There’s something you should know—”

An alarm bell slices through the somber night from the outpost. Both of us whirl toward the sound. A glow of a torchlight leaks from the outpost, growing brighter by the second.

Someone cries out in the distance, “Captain! Somebody get the captain!”

Cole drags his gaze back to me, brushing a tear off my cheek.

He nods, a soft smile lifting his face. “Go.”