Reign of the Fallen (Reign of the Fallen #1)(73)

The guards comb through the cooling rubble, rounding up more survivors.

Even Meredy finds a purpose, calming the frightened horse from the forge and climbing on its back, riding past the border of the village to search for others in need of help.

I join the baroness at the top of a raised platform that looks like a poorly constructed stage, and together we watch a flock of dark figures ascend the nearest mountain.

The Dead are gliding away toward the horizon, and I’m powerless to stop them.

*

“Evander,” I murmur to my quiet room near the top of Abethell Castle, “I can’t sleep.” There’s no hallucination sitting beside me on the bed, not since I’ve given up the potion. But I can’t seem to shake these conversations. I know he’s gone, yet here I am.

“Do you remember the time we snuck into the Deadlands together without Master Cymbre? Chasing after that young Dead baron who’d just become a Shade, because we thought we could change him back with a vial of honey?” I shake my head at the memory. “We were lucky that rock you threw distracted him. Lucky to get out of there with our lives.”

I gaze out the room’s arched windows at a dark valley that should be flickering with light. With life. Where are Elsinor’s exiled Dead now?

“Here’s what I’ve been wondering since the massacre, Van. What if the Dead turn into Shades when we look at them, or when they’ve been in our world too long, because they were never meant to leave the Deadlands at all?” The words make me a traitor to the sapphire pins on my chest, Evander’s and mine both. But now that I’ve said it aloud, I can’t stop myself. “What if I can’t find Vane? What if he loses control of his Shades?”

Or worse. “What if our magic is the weapon that brings Karthia to its knees?”

I can practically hear Evander saying it now, carefully weighing each word. “What I do—what we do—brings hope.”

Nodding along with his voice in my head, I say, “Our magic is love triumphing over death.”

But there’s no denying our magic can be deadly.

All around me, the sobs of several villages’ worth of survivors seep through the floors and echo in the hallways. The survivors are restless in rooms beneath me and around me, and perhaps some of the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach belongs to them, is for them, because I know the ache of loss thanks to Evander.

I hug my knees to my chest and wish all my imagining could conjure the weight of Evander’s arms around me one last time. “I forgive you for being gone,” I whisper. “I just wish I could forgive myself.”

For not saving him. For not saving the people of Elsinor. For allowing Meredy to come here and risk her life, too.

I wipe my soaking face on my sleeve. “She reminds me of you,” I whisper into the dark. “That used to make me miserable. But lately, it’s made me happy. I promise I’ll keep her safe, Van—not that she needs protecting. Honestly, she’s saved me a time or two. I just think you’d like to know someone has her back, since . . . you’re not here anymore.”

I sit straight up on the bed, kicking one of the pillows across the room. Why did it have to be Evander?

It should’ve been me who was decimated by that Shade.





XXIV




I pull on my boots and slink through the castle, headed for a stretch of bare earth washed in moonlight: the guards’ training grounds.

I may not be able to save anyone, living or Dead. But beating stuffed dummies with a wooden practice sword? No man or beast in Karthia can stop me from making the straw fly. Except maybe the one sitting on a hay bale beneath the archery target, her chin in her hands and her bow in her lap, watching me approach.

“Let me guess,” Meredy says mildly as I cross the flat ground cleared for sparring. “You couldn’t sleep either.”

“Thinking about all the spirits the Deadlands gained today?” I drop down beside her.

“Among other things.” She looks so composed, even after the day’s tragedies: her eyes bright and dry, her long hair brushed and shining, her clothes clean and unwrinkled. It makes me completely envy her composure.

I narrow my eyes at her, searching for some sign that she’s troubled by what we saw. “Do you ever get mad? Really mad, like you need to hit something or you might explode?” Meredy frowns slightly as I add, “Or what about sad? Has anything ever hurt you so much, you couldn’t hold it all in?”

Meredy grips the bow on her lap, but her expression doesn’t change. “Yes. Of course. Just because you haven’t been around me long enough to see me hurt or mad doesn’t mean I don’t feel everything as deeply as anyone else. Maybe I just have a different way of showing it. Not everyone needs to punch things when they’re upset.”

Her gaze is so intense, I want to look away, but I force myself to keep meeting her eyes. “I don’t believe you. I think you care more about appearance than how you feel.”

Meredy breaks our stare, glancing over her shoulder at the valley below. Every slight movement, from her restless shifting to wiping her palms on her skirt, sounds too loud in the otherwise silent night. The archery target looms over her, masking her face in shadow.

I can’t sit here another moment. I steal the bow off Meredy’s lap and pick up the quiver near her feet, selecting an arrow. Meredy turns back to me, a question in her gaze, but I let the thick silence wrap itself tighter around my throat.