Eliana
“‘Tell me,’ said Morgaine to her love, ‘will you think of me when I am gone? So far from you I must go, such a journey lies before me.’ And Morgaine wept furious tears, ashamed for him to see her, but Gilduin held her hands and kissed them, and looked upon her anguished face, and suddenly Morgaine felt at peace, for in Gilduin’s eyes was naught but love. ‘There is nothing in this world that I could look upon and not then think of you,’ he said, ‘for in you lies everything I have known, everything I am, everything I will be.’”
—“The Ballad of Gilduin and Morgaine,” ancient Celdarian epic, author unknown
In the room Ludivine had set aside for her, Eliana lay beside Navi, arms tight around her, cheek pressed against her arm. She listened to Navi breathe and waited for her to reply. With a twinge of nerves, she remembered that she would not be able to wait for long.
Corien would not stay weakened by Simon’s blightblade forever. Ludivine had shut herself away in her room to keep watch for him. Every passing moment brought them closer to when he would regain his strength and come hunting. Hours, Ludivine had guessed, and only a few of those.
Eliana burrowed against Navi’s side, greedy for her warmth. She thought of how Navi had kissed the sharp-eyed, sharper-mouthed woman, Ysabet, before retreating to Eliana’s room. How their fingers had interwoven, a lingering touch, before moving apart. It should have brought her nothing but joy to know her friend had found a lover. But it only made her think of how little time she herself had had with Navi, and Zahra, and everyone she so fiercely loved, and how all of that time had been while they were at war.
At last, Navi blew out a sharp breath. Her left hand stroked Eliana’s hair.
“Well,” she said, and then said nothing else. Eliana looked up at her, studied her face. The fine cut of her jawline, her thick black lashes. She fiddled with the hem of Navi’s sleeve, glad she was saying nothing else. She didn’t need to; Eliana could see everything she felt on her face.
She asked quietly, “Are you ashamed of me?”
“Because you pity him?” Navi’s voice was gentle. “Of course not. I admit I pity him myself. But I pity you far more, and I am glad that I nor any of my people have seen him today. He is wise to keep himself hidden away. I’m not sure I could have restrained Ysabet, and she’s never even met the man.”
Eliana smiled a little. Silence fell between them, a long, unhurried pull of peace.
“I’m angry that I have to do this,” she whispered into the quiet.
Navi’s fingers were tender in her hair. “As am I, my darling.”
“I’m angry that I want to.” Eliana pushed on before Navi could respond, “I shouldn’t want to let him in again, to accept him, to allow him his power. For months, I’ve guarded myself against memories of him. I’ve wanted to hurt him. I’ve tried many times. But now, when I think of what’s been done to him, I hate him less. When I think of seeing him again, knowing what I now know, I feel this awful relief. He has suffered, and so have I. All those weeks of pain in Corien’s palace… He has lived through years of that. He understands.” She drew a quaking breath. “And then I hate myself for thinking about this when there is so much else to think about, so much else to—”
She swallowed against the hard ache in her throat. The words danced on her tongue. If I do this, Navi, if I manage it, we will never have met. Maybe you will never have been born.
Or maybe Navi would be born to her lovely family in Astavar. She would grow up in Vintervok without a dark future on the horizon. No war, no spy work, no suffering in the Orline maidensfold.
“There is too much hate in the world already,” Navi replied after a moment. “Why direct more of it at yourself?”
Then Navi shifted until they were both on their sides, facing each other. She pressed her brow to Eliana’s.
“We don’t have much time,” Eliana whispered. It could have been said about any of them, about any part of this, but she knew Navi would understand her meaning. “I don’t have to forgive him, she said. I just have to open my heart to him again.” She laughed a little, tears on her lashes. “What little of it there is left.”
“Then go to him,” Navi said quietly. “And be kind to my friend. Her heart is stronger than she thinks, no matter what evil tries to break it.”
Eliana kissed Navi’s cheek. She closed her eyes and lingered there against Navi’s soft skin. Then she rose from the bed and did not look back.
• • •
She found him in a small chamber situated far from the others. Her steps carried her there on fluttering wings of nerves, and when she knocked and heard his summons, every muscle in her body tensed. Panic splintered swiftly inside her, a widening crack in thin ice. She considered turning away, leaving him, demanding of Ludivine another solution. How could she accept or even face this man who had hurt her?
This man who had suffered just as she had. This man who, like her, knew very well the true breadth of Corien’s cruelty.
She did not turn away.
She entered the room, found Simon sitting at the edge of a tiny bed that looked too small for his tall frame. Was it here that he had spent those months under Ludivine’s tutelage? Had she visited him as he slept, sent him nightmares within these very walls?
He looked up, realizing too late who stood before him. He was unable to hide the open mess of his face, his bloodshot eyes and reddened cheeks, the wildness of his hair. He caught her eyes and looked immediately away.
“No,” she told him, going to him at once. “If I don’t get the relief of not having to look at you, then you have to see me too.” She lifted his chin so their gazes locked. His lashes were wet. He tried to look away again; she did not allow it, holding his face still. He had kept himself clean-shaven while in Corien’s palace, but these last few wild days had not allowed him the time. His cheeks were growing rough again, and she wanted to rub her fingers against them until she could remember no other sensation. She longed to hurt him in whatever vicious way she could imagine. She longed to run from him and everything that awaited them.
“I know what has been done to you,” she told him firmly. It was difficult to speak. She put a metal stamp on every word. “I know what you’ve endured. You have my pity. You do not have my trust.”
He nodded, his mouth held tightly. He had been expecting her to say that. Against her palms, she could feel the muscles of his jaw working.
Too many words crowded her throat, many of them brutal. She could have screamed with frustration. This was moving too fast for both of them. There was too much hurt between them, too many lies and too many days apart.
“But you do have my love,” she said furiously, as if it were a curse.
Simon watched her, hardly breathing. He did not blink.
“I wish you had nothing of mine,” Eliana said through her teeth. Her cheeks burned with anger, and her heart ached in too many places. “Not my love, not my anger, not my memories. I wish you hadn’t seen what he did to me. I wish…”
She could no longer speak. Simon reached up to cover her hands with his own. He barely touched her; she was an eggshell in his palms.
“I wish I could hurt you as you hurt me,” she whispered. “I wish I didn’t want you still or care for you at all. I wish all I wanted was to help you find your power again.” She shook her head. Her voice teetered on the edge of something sharp. “But I want more than that. Even now, even after everything.”
When Simon closed his eyes, tears slipped out. He turned his face into her palm, whispered her name against her fingers.
She watched his mouth, fighting ferociously against her own misery. It split her vision into diamonds. “He hurt me,” she said softly. “I called for you. I screamed for you to help me.”
Simon let out a single sob. Fumbling, he reached for her. His face against her ribs, his hands clutching her shirt. The tender weight of his palms sent a fierce bite of joy up her arms. Her instincts were at war. To leave him aching, to lean into his warmth. Two paths and no answers.
“God, I know,” he said, voice muffled. “I heard you. I heard every word, Eliana. I heard it every time he hurt you, and I could do nothing. There were times he made me watch, and you were so delirious with pain you didn’t even realize I was there.”
His words spilled like shards of glass against her belly. Each one stabbed her, and yet she clutched his shoulders, held him fast, wished she could press him inside her until he no longer existed anywhere else.
She held his shoulders and watched the wall as he wept. His tears were as silent as hers, his body rigid. They were both used to that, she supposed. They were used to hiding the signs of their pain.
And suddenly, she could no longer bear to remain standing. She didn’t care that she had wanted to hurt him, that for months she had watched him stalk through the palace and imagined his murder at her hands.
She bowed her head to kiss his crown. “I’ll miss you,” she told him, not meaning to say it, and then a sob burst out of her, unexpected and savage. She could hardly breathe; tears seized her like fists.
There was more to say, more than could ever be said, but Ludivine was shut away in her eerie candlelit room, fighting for every moment. There was no time to say anything more, no time to mend or heal. Not forgiveness, Ludivine had said. Only acceptance. And Eliana had come to Simon’s room determined to do nothing but talk, to work at opening her power to him and helping him search once more for his.
But when he turned his face up to hers, his hands trembling at her sleeves, Eliana lost all sense of the wrath she wished he deserved and knew he did not, and she met his mouth gladly.
He waited until she had settled in his lap before wrapping his arms around her. The sensation nearly split her chest in two. Such a solid cocoon of warmth. She cried out against his lips, opened her mouth to receive his kisses. They spilled inside her like knives warmed by fire. Hot steel glinting red, blades that slipped and sliced. He smelled of salt and smoke, murmured her name until she wore the syllables on her skin.
This would bring no relief, Eliana knew, even as she clung to him. His fingers found her, and she clenched her thighs around his arm. They would finish, and they would ache in body and in heart, everything they had locked away now once again unleashed. His power would return if they were lucky, or maybe unlucky, and then he would send her back to do the impossible thing she must do, and she would never see this version of him again, never see any of them again. If she succeeded, if her unborn self survived, she would grow up in Old Celdaria, ignorant of everything she had once been, or had never been.
She wove her fingers into Simon’s hair, pulled hard so he would look up at her. His eyes landed on her face, just as searing hot as she remembered, and his hand moved just as it had the first time until the fire rising inside her spilled over, roaring. Despair came fast on its heels, and she knew she could not stop, not yet, not ever.
Frantic, she moved to lie flat on her back and then pulled him atop her. Guided him into place, hooked her legs around his. He must have sensed her desperation, the wild sorrow building in her chest like a storm spinning with pitiless thunder. He moved sharp and hard, as if he could imbue in her the memory of every night they would never have. An apology for every time he had hurt her. A plea for forgiveness that would never come.
She arched up against him, tightened the grip of her thighs. Tugged at his hair, dug her fingernails into the scarred flesh of his back. When he latched on to her throat, sucking gently on her skin, she whispered for more, begged him, commanded him. Her mind was a cascading shower of light. She knew nothing but him—the map of his scars under her palms, the rough plane of his jaw scraping her cheek, his mouth on every trembling slope of her body. His hoarse voice, hot against her ear, and how beautifully it cracked open under the weight of her name.
After, cooling in the damp sheets, soft and sticky in the nest of his arms, Eliana pressed her face against his chest. Her jaw aching with tension, her legs and arms heavy and tired, she listened to the steady rhythm of his heart.
“I don’t love you,” she whispered fiercely against his skin.
A moment passed. Then she felt Simon’s hand cup the back of her head, cradling her to him. His lips touched her brow.
“I know,” he replied, his voice choked with sadness. “I don’t love you either.”