The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(82)

It wasn’t fair, I thought. She was always so much better at things than me . . .

“There’s something you need to understand,” she said. “I’m not you, Fallon. And I’m not who you’ve always imagined me to be, either. You think I am this questing, heroic soul. Always searching, never resting. That isn’t you looking through a window and seeing me, but you looking at a mirror . . . and seeing yourself.” She reached for my hand and drew me nearer. “When we were young, I always knew you would be the one to achieve greatness. I was restless when I was young. Now? All I want is to rest. And I can do that now. Now that I have known happiness. Now that I know you will carry on for both of us. Wherever you go . . . whatever you do . . .”

Through the pain in my heart I searched my soul to see if I could find the truth in what she said. I thought back to the moments when I’d made Sorcha put on my armor to go back into the arena to fight Nyx in my place. I remembered how uncertain she’d seemed . . . and how—maybe—I might have convinced myself at the time that it was only because she’d been too long away from the fight. Looking back on that moment now, I wondered. Maybe Sorcha really wasn’t the warrior queen I’d always imagined her to be. Maybe I would have to be content with her as just a queen. Maybe even just my sister.

“You should rest,” Charon said to her, softly.

She turned her head slightly and said, “In a moment, love.”

The room went blurry from the tears that filled my eyes.

“Fallon . . .” Sorcha let go of my hand and waved in the direction of a trunk set against one wall of her room. “Go. Open it.”

I stood and crossed the room. When I lifted the lid of the trunk, I saw that it contained all of Sorcha’s things that she’d brought with her on our journey from the Ludus Achillea. There wasn’t much. But underneath a folded cloak, there was the thing I knew she wanted me to see. Her armor. The breastplate—the one studded with river pearls from Prydain that Caesar had installed as a spoil of war, displayed in his temple of Venus Genetrix. I lifted it gently, reverently, out of the trunk and held it up in front of me so I could look at it. There was a scar on the leather from a sword blade where it covered the ribs on one side and another scar on the back piece. But other than that, it was in beautiful condition. The leather oiled and supple, the bronze buckles and fittings polished to gleaming, and the multitude of pearls glowing with an ethereal shine.

“The one in the temple is a fake.” Sorcha’s laugh was a thready whisper. “A cleverly made replica.”

“Does . . . I mean, did Caesar know?”

“It was his idea,” she said. “He gave that one back to me and said that his pearl collection should stay together. I never really knew what he meant by that . . .”

I knew.

“Wear it home, my sister,” Sorcha said, her voice growing fainter. “Lead the war band. Your war band. Like I once did . . .”

I crossed back over to her side. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You are the furthest thing from that.”

“I can’t do it without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Not really. I’ve always been with you. Too much, I think. But know that I always will be.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

She rolled her head back and forth a little on the pillow. “Caesar once told me that he didn’t understand those who feared death,” she said. “It will come when it comes, he said. To everyone. Even to him.”

“He fought against them. His murderers . . .”

“Well, not being afraid to die isn’t the same as not wanting to live.” She smiled, and her expression grew distant. “I had a dream last night. I saw a raven in the sky. Biggest one I’d ever seen. Beautiful. Only . . . it had the wings of an eagle. Isn’t that strange?”

I looked at Charon and he looked at me.

I wondered if he’d ever told Sorcha about the mark on the second sword he’d had made for me. But he shook his head, a small, bemused frown on his face.

“I’m thirsty,” Sorcha murmured.

I looked around, but when they’d cleaned up the room, they hadn’t left a water pitcher behind. Charon went to stand, but I shook my head. “Stay with her,” I said. “I’ll go.”



* * *



—

When I returned to the room, Charon was sitting on the bed with Sorcha curled up beside him, her body curved around his and her head resting in his lap. He had his arm laid across her shoulder, and their fingers were woven together. And he was smiling gently, staring at the ceiling and lost in thought or a memory or . . .

“Charon?”

When he didn’t answer me, I set the tray down on a table and walked slowly over to them. There was only a small trickle of blood at the corner of Charon’s mouth, a thin crimson line that disappeared into his beard. And Sorcha looked for all the world as if she were asleep. Dreaming a wonderful dream . . .

I reached over and closed Charon’s dark, empty eyes.

And then my knees gave out. I laid my head down on the bed and I wept for them both.





XXII


I DON’T REMEMBER returning to my own chambers after they found me there, still kneeling at the side of Sorcha’s bed. I only remember waking up in mine, wondering where I was. What had happened . . . Then it all came crashing back to me.