“Zuhra? What’s wrong?”
I fought to break free, until the sound of his voice penetrated the clamor of fear in my head—and realized it was Raidyn. I sagged with relief before catapulting forward into his arms; but rather than letting myself sink into his embrace, I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him backward, a sob breaking free as I shouted, “We have to go—now! He’s here! They’re gone—I’m so sorry, they’re all gone.”
“What?” Raidyn shoved me behind him, spinning to face the stables, his veins flaring with fire. A small orb of it almost immediately hovered above his hand as he stalked forward.
“No! Barloc is here somewhere.” I grabbed his arm and yanked Raidyn back. “He killed them! He killed all of them!”
He glanced past my shoulder, realization dawning on his face. His eyes flared, a blaze of even brighter light pulsing through his veins. “Naiki,” he uttered. And then he pulled free of my grip and charged into the depths of the stable.
“No, Raidyn!”
He let out a long, low whistle, a sound that mimicked a gryphon’s, but that was so full of mourning it made my eyes fill with tears again.
Until there was a responding sound from within the stable, echoed all down the row of stalls.
Raidyn froze, then let his hand lower, the orb of flame winking out. The light in his veins dimmed. I stared in shock as first Naiki, then the other gryphons, all pushed their heads over the stalls, a cacophony of whistles and low hoots filling the previously silent stable.
“But … I don’t…”
“Zuhra”—Raidyn slowly turned to me—“why did you think they were all dead?”
He should have been angry. He should have been yelling at me for scaring him like that. I could feel the anger simmering beneath the surface of the cool, collected tone of his voice. But he strangled it into submission and simply waited, while I gaped in disbelief.
“I … I went in to check on them and I didn’t hear anything. I got scared and called out, but there was still nothing. They didn’t even move. I—I guess I assumed…” It sounded so stupid now, but had felt so real, so certain before.
“They’re trained to be completely silent when they’re in unfamiliar places and it’s not their Rider’s voice or scent they recognize coming in,” Raidyn explained, rubbing a still-shaky hand over his face and then pushing his hair back off his forehead, leaving it in disarray.
A flush crept up my neck and my stomach cramped. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” Though his words were forgiving, he turned and walked away, toward Naiki’s stall, away from me.
I stood in the doorway, watching as he reached up to his gryphon and stroked her feathered face, then leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers, his eyes squeezing shut. Scalding shame pulsed through my body. She was the only family he had left, and for a terrible moment, I’d made him believe she, too, was gone.
Mortified, I turned on my heel to rush to my room.
“Zuhra, don’t go.”
Despite myself, I paused.
“I came to talk to you.”
“You did?” I slowly turned back to find him striding toward me.
He nodded, his eyes roaming over my face. “When I left last night, you were asleep. Were you able to stay asleep?”
My face grew hot again, but for a different reason this time. “Yes. Until the sunrise, at least.” I shifted on my feet, looking away from his blue-fire gaze, staring instead at his chest, to the muscles that shifted beneath the light material of his shirt. “I don’t know how you knew … or why you were willing to … but I really can’t thank you enough for doing that for me.” It was such a meager excuse for the gratitude I owed him after what he’d done for me, but I had nothing else to offer except the paltry words.
When his fingers grazed my jaw, I jumped then went completely still. He gently pressed, lifting my face up until our gazes met again.
“You truly don’t know?” His eyes seared into mine. “You can’t feel why?”
I swallowed. He wanted to know why I couldn’t feel why? Oh, how I felt. Quite a lot of things, actually. The tingle of his fingertips still lingering on my face, the heat in my limbs, liquid and languorous, tempting me to step closer to him and lift my face toward his. The heady rush of having his burning gaze focused solely on me. But beneath all that, there was something more, something deeper. A safety, a security, I’d never known before. A feeling that even though I’d believed this citadel to be home for all of my eighteen years, in reality, it had merely been a stopping place for me to grow and learn and bide my time until I found my true home—in him. Because if I were honest with myself, I couldn’t picture a life that didn’t have Raidyn in it.
But that was everything I felt. What could he—
And then it hit me, with such force I stumbled back a step, my eyes widening.
He watched me closely, an expression of such vulnerability on his face, it struck me like an arrow piercing me between the ribs, the target deep in my chest, making me ache. That, and the sudden swell of hopeful fear—emotions I recognized but couldn’t claim.
His emotions.
“I can’t hide anything from you, Zuhra. Not anymore.”
The sanaulus. All those things I’d thought were my feelings and mine alone—the ones I was too afraid to name, even to myself … did that mean he felt the same things as me … was that even possible?
Could I truly trust myself to separate what was me from him? What if I had somehow twisted his true emotions into what I only wished to be true?
Every beat of my heart was laced with a painful, sharp hope; my head hurt from the confusion and longing that seized me.
“Can I ask you a question?” Raidyn’s voice was soft, his fear rising over the tumult of emotions. At least, I was fairly certain it was his fear, not mine.
But it was so hard to tell, and I was so very, very afraid to let myself hope.
I nodded.
“Why don’t you trust me?”
My mouth fell open, leaving me gaping at him wordlessly.
He looked to the ground as he quickly explained, “I apologize for being so blunt, but I don’t know what I’ve done to make you think you can’t trust me. I only know that you don’t. And … now that you are aware of my feelings for you, I hope you will at least do me the honor of explaining what I did to deserve your mistrust.”
My mortification grew even more acute, but though I opened and closed my mouth once, nothing came out.
When I didn’t respond, he let his hand drop. My skin was oddly bereft without his touch, chilled and stretched too tight over my body.
“Do you know why Adelric has all three of us in his battalion—me, Sharmaine, and Loukas?”
“No,” I finally managed, baffled by the question.
“We were all Riders, we all had gryphons choose us. But no battalion leader would take on me or Loukas. Sharmaine refused to abandon us, even though she had the opposite problem—nearly every single battalion wanted her to join them.”
“But … why?” I had no idea why he’d changed the subject, but if his goal was to get me talking again, he’d succeeded. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been brave enough to answer his question—especially after I’d made him think Naiki had died. I owed him an explanation, it was true, and doubly so after that. But the way he’d worded it made me realize just how unfair I’d been to him. Because the truth was he’d never done anything to make me think he wasn’t trustworthy. Only Loukas’s accusations had planted those doubts, and circumstantial evidence had continued to make me wonder if it were true.
“Shar is smart, dedicated, and good at pretty much everything. Plus, her power to create a shield is highly coveted,” Raidyn continued to explain. My stomach plummeted as he described the beautiful Paladin who had been in love with him for most of her life. “But she is also loyal to a fault, so she decided she’d rather not follow her dream to be a Rider with a battalion than leave me and Loukas behind.”
Despite the jealousy I struggled to strangle into submission, I made myself say, “But … you’re all those things too.” I flushed when his brows lifted. “Why wouldn’t every battalion leader have wanted you too?”
Raidyn grimaced. “Because after I lost my parents, I was hurt and angry, and I didn’t know how to handle it.”
I watched him closely, but there was no indication that he believed anything different—when he said he’d lost his parents, I sensed only sorrow and grief and even a little anger. But nothing else. No lingering hope.
I should have believed my heart, not Loukas.
“My grandmother did her best with me, but she, too, was heartbroken and she only lived a few more years after the gateway was shut. After that, I was old enough that I refused to move in with whatever distant relative the council deemed should raise me. Instead, I bounced between Loukas’s and Sharmaine’s homes and trained with Naiki, and eventually passed all my tests to become a full Rider. And then got rejected by every leader—except one.”
My father.
“He took all three of us into his battalion, difficult as it was, because he, too, had suffered terrible loss. He knew how to reach a boy who had hardened his heart against everyone, afraid of being hurt again. He knew how to help me become … someone better than I was.”
I remembered the pang of envy I’d felt when Loukas first told me that Adelric was like a father to Raidyn, after losing his own parents. But as I listened to Raidyn tell me what my father had done for him, when I sensed his gratitude for Adelric’s influence, I couldn’t help but feel thankful that not having my father in my life had meant Raidyn gained him in his.
“He saw past all my defenses and treated me like a person worthy of respect and kindness, which I wasn’t at that time. He saw potential in me that I’d given up believing in long before that.” He hesitated and finally looked back into my eyes. “I guess I hoped that perhaps his daughter would be able to see me that way too.”
My knees trembled. “Raidyn, I—”
“And I know I’m not supposed to use the sanaulus,” he barreled on, “but when it comes to you, I must admit that I am not strong enough to resist trying to figure out what you’re feeling—at least a few times. Which, I guess actually does make me untrustworthy, after all. But I’ve never felt like this before, let alone with someone I healed, and—”
“Raidyn.” I stepped closer to him and reached for his hand, though it took every ounce of courage I possessed to do so. The deluge of words cut off with a snap of his mouth closing. His hand flexed around mine, his eyes widening as if just barely realizing how much he’d admitted. Embarrassment burned hot in my gut, but I recognized it as his this time, not mine. “You haven’t done anything to make me not trust you. I’m sorry that I ever listened to Loukas; I should have known better.”
His fingers tightened. “Loukas?” he ground out. His teeth clenched so hard, a muscle snapped in his jaw. It wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d expected. Was he angry? “What did he say to you?”
“He, er, he said something about thinking you were using me to get to the gateway so you could come here and search for your parents.”
“My dead parents? And you believed him?”
He was definitely angry.
“Well … my father was proof that it was possible to survive. And he thought maybe you still hoped your parents had too. And that you saw me as a way to get here and search for them.” When his eyes narrowed, I rushed to add, “It made more sense to me than believing you could truly care for me. I know I don’t have any experience with … with…” I faltered, gesturing between our bodies. “Things between men and women. But even I knew that it was extremely unlikely that someone like you could have wanted someone like me.”
Raidyn stared at me for a moment before pulling his hand free of mine. My fingers closed over my palm, and I quickly yanked it back to my side. The sun overheard was unbearably strong. A dry breeze rustled through the courtyard, grazing my already-too-hot cheeks.
“And Loukas is the one who put these thoughts in your head?”
“Yes, but I—”
Raidyn turned on his heel and stalked toward the citadel.
“Raidyn, wait! I don’t want to cause you to fight with your friend—”
He paused long enough to glance over one powerful shoulder. “Oh, you aren’t causing anything. He brought this on himself.”
I dashed after him, barely catching up before he made it to the door that was still slightly ajar from when he’d come out, apparently to find me. I grabbed his sleeve and tugged. “Please, Raidyn. It’s my fault for listening to him. I should have asked you—I should have trusted you, like you said.”
He looked down at my hand on his arm then up into my face. He lifted one hand to gently brush his fingers against my cheek. But instead of turning back to me—to finish whatever conversation he’d intended to have before I ruined it by admitting what Loukas had told me—he let it drop to his side again and asked, “Zuhra, do you know why Loukas has green eyes instead of blue?”
The unexpected question threw me off balance. I shook my head mutely.
“Ask him. It might explain a few things.”
He moved toward the door again, but I grabbed his sleeve once more. “Tell me. Help me understand why you’re so mad right now.”
“It’s not my place to say. Though the Light knows I don’t owe him anything at this point.” Raidyn’s eyes glittered dangerously in the sunlight. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my friend and I are about to have a long-overdue talk.”
This time I let him go, his lingering rage beating in time with my dread.