CHAPTER 8

Stories Written with Love and Guilt

Sefia’s mind churned with what the Book had shown her.

Nin.

Her parents.

Magic and bloodshed.

For Sefia, the stench of the copper-colored blade would always be linked to loss—of her father, of Nin, and of Harison, the ship’s boy from the Current of Faith. It wasn’t her mother’s scent. Not her mother, who had always smelled like earth and fresh greens.

She wondered what had happened to the bloodsword. Maybe it had been buried in the garden, the iron quietly leaching into the soil. Maybe, Sefia thought bitterly, that was why Mareah had spent so much time digging among the furrows—because it reminded her of who she’d been.

While Frey and the boys lit a celebratory bonfire in the camp below, Sefia read and reread the passage, pressing her fingertips to the names like she could reach through the Book and seize her mother’s hand, snatch the worn elbow of her father’s sleeve, or tug the end of Nin’s bear-skin cloak. Like she could take her parents by the shoulders and demand they reveal all the secrets they’d kept from her when they were alive, all the secrets that still kept her in the dark.

One by one, the others crawled under their blankets, but Sefia read until she had memorized every paragraph, every punctuation mark, her emotions grinding against each other until they were nearly indistinguishable: grief, hurt, anger, betrayal, longing.

She hadn’t realized Nin had hated Lon and Mareah so much, hadn’t realized she’d had to sacrifice everything because of them. But she’d joined the couple eventually, to help them build the house on the hill overlooking the sea, where the three of them had raised a little girl.

It had been an isolated childhood, but Sefia had been protected. And loved.

Glancing at the others, she felt a pinch of guilt for loving the people responsible for ruining their lives. For ruining Nin’s life.

And Archer’s.

She couldn’t reverse the damage her parents had done. But maybe, if she stopped enough impressors, if she saved enough boys, she could make up for their mistakes.

And then, maybe, she could look Archer in the eye without feeling like she was betraying him in her turncoat heart.

A rustling in the grass made her look up. She reached for the Illuminated world, readying for a fight.

But it was just Archer. His lean form was edged in stars, larger and more grand than his seventeen or eighteen years, than his body muscled with hardship. As he entered the lamplight, his features regained their definition, and he became a boy again, flesh and blood.

“I thought you’d be back sooner,” he said.

Placing a stalk of grass between the pages, Sefia set aside the Book, hugging her knees like she could soothe the ache in her chest if only she curled up tight enough. “The Book showed me my parents,” she said.

“Oh.” Archer sank down beside her, though they didn’t touch.

“They kept so much from me.” Turning out the lamp, she doused them in inky darkness. “Sometimes I wonder if I ever knew them at all.”

He said nothing. She twisted her fingers as each second of silence grew more painful. Blame. Guilt. So much had come between them in the span of a couple days.

“Maybe they didn’t know how to tell you,” Archer said at last. He pulled out the worry stone, glinting between his fingers. “Maybe they were afraid. Because of what they’d done.”

She looked at him then, daring him to argue with her. “I was their daughter. They should have told me.”

Trusted me. Believed in me. Tanin’s words.

“Would you still have loved them, if you knew?”

“I still love them,” she whispered apologetically, “even now.”

In the night, Archer’s eyes were a dark, searching bronze. She could’ve looked into those eyes for hours and still not have looked enough. He glanced away, and again she felt that guilt. Silently, he put his forehead on his knees, completely still except for his thumb, tracing the piece of quartz.

“Do you hate me for that?” she asked.

When he straightened again, the starlight gleamed on the scars that flecked his face and arms. “Sefia.” He shook his head. “I could never hate you.”

Before she could say anything, before she could even smile, he spoke again: “My first kill was a boy named Oriyah.” The words came out in a rush, like if he didn’t say them now, he might never get them out. “He was another of Hatchet’s candidates, almost as new as I was. Neither of us had fought yet, and Hatchet kept trying to make us train. But we couldn’t. I couldn’t. Oriyah was younger than I was. They’d broken his arm when they captured him, and it wasn’t healing right. I couldn’t hit him.”

Sefia froze, like the story was a spell and if she breathed too loudly it would break.

“When Hatchet realized we wouldn’t fight, even for practice, he got another impressor—Redbeard.” Archer glanced at her. Redbeard had been the one who burned the newly captured boys. “They tried everything: cursing us, beating us, ordering us to pick up our swords. But we didn’t. Oriyah was too scared.

“Then one day, Hatchet brought all six of us boys out of our crates. He gave Oriyah and me each a club and made the others line up.” Archer’s voice went ragged at the edges, but he didn’t stop speaking. “‘Fight,’ Hatchet said. He put his gun to Oriyah’s head. ‘Fight, or he dies.’

“Oriyah was in tears. He gave a halfhearted swing. I let him hit me. It didn’t hurt much. I wouldn’t fight him. I kept thinking, if only I refused long enough, if only I showed them I wasn’t what they wanted me to be . . .” Archer shook his head, shuddering. “Hatchet shot him. There was so much blood. I didn’t know we had so much blood in us. Oriyah buckled at the knees, and when he hit the ground, he was still.

“Hatchet didn’t even bat an eye. ‘Fight,’ he said, ‘or I’ll kill another one.’”

Archer swallowed again and again. His fingers were shaking so badly he dropped the quartz point.

Sefia caught it and slid it back into his palm, warm and slightly damp. “Hatchet killed him,” she said. “Not you.”

“It was my fault. Because I didn’t want to . . . Because I couldn’t . . .” He took a long quivering breath. “Because I was weak.”

“You didn’t put the gun to his head. You didn’t pull the trigger. Wanting the world to be a better place than it is? That doesn’t make you weak. That makes you the kind of person this world needs.”

Archer was still for a long time, like an animal crouched in the shadows, waiting for prey. But at last, his posture relaxed, his coiled muscles unwinding. With a sigh, he slipped his arm around her shoulders, and for the first time in over a week, he didn’t pull away.

Sefia closed her eyes. He smelled like dust and rain, though they hadn’t seen rain in a week, and when she leaned in to him, he made room for her in the crook of his arm, in the curve of his neck.

As the sky lightened above them, Archer reached out, tentatively, fingers first and then his whole palm. Their hands clasped.

They remained that way, not speaking, while dawn spread across the Delienean Heartland, and Sefia rediscovered the shapes and textures of his hands—the tender flesh on the inside of his wrist, and each of his knuckles, the hills and vales, the crescents of his fingertips.

And when they stood, finally, to stumble back to camp, she picked up the Book and felt the distant reverberation of questions still to be answered, secrets still to be discovered. But those tempests were slumbering. For now.