The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(83)

My sister was gone.

And I was going home. Alone.

“I’ll gather the others, then, and we can tell them what’s going on,” Elka was saying. “I mean, I know you’ll want to leave as soon as . . . well, as soon as we can.”

I stood staring out the window at the lighthouse in the Great Harbor. Elka hadn’t left my room since I’d woken up. She been there when I had. Cai, she’d told me, was making . . . arrangements. On my behalf. So I wouldn’t have to. I loved him for that. I don’t think I would have been able to sit down with Cleopatra in that moment to plan for Charon and my sister’s funerary monument. I think that would have broken me beyond repair.

“How long a journey is it, do you think, from here all the way back to your island? I would think that we’d go overland from Massilia. We can get carts again, and Quint will know the fastest routes—”

“Elka.” I turned to face her. “I’m not asking the others to come with me.”

“Sorry?”

“And I think it’s probably for the best if you stay here too,” I said. “You and Quint.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” She looked at me as if I’d suddenly just started to speak Aegyptian.

“You’ll have a life here,” I said. “Just look at this place. It’s a palace. We never imagined such a place existed when we were back at the Ludus Achillea. It’s like a kind of dream. You’ll be happy and you’ll be rich. All of you. I have to go, but the rest of you can stay here and be happy.”

Elka pulled no punches. She stared at me, unblinking, and said, “Maybe you’ve been hit on the head just like your sister, ja?”

A wave of cold anger washed over me. “What did you say?” I asked quietly.

“It would explain your loss of memory,” she answered, just as quietly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t remember when you told us that if we’re together we keep our purpose?”

“Elka—”

“My purpose isn’t to live in a palace guarding a queen who isn’t mine, in a land that never even knows the glory of a midwinter frost.”

“This isn’t your fight. Durovernum’s not your home.”

“But it’s yours. And that makes it mine. Together, remember? Or have you forsaken me as your sister?”

I glared at her flatly. “My blood sister is staying here. In a tomb.”

She nodded. “Yes. She is. Laid to rest there by the woman she called friend above all others, beside the man she—finally, it must be said, because she was just as damnably stubborn as you—the man she finally realized she loved. Sorcha doesn’t need her gladiatrices anymore. I thought you still did. We still need you, little fox.”

“Damn it, Elka!” I snapped in frustration. “We’re not shackled together by the ankle anymore. I won’t be responsible for dragging you to the end of the world just so you can die for the sake of a backwater kingdom I never should have left in the first place! I don’t want that on my soul. Can’t you make a life for yourself?”

She took a step back. The look on her face was like I’d slapped her. Hard.

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t. Not like you. I don’t have a den left to return to, little fox. None of us do. You know, I think your sister was wrong. You aren’t searching. You’re running. You started running that night back in Durovernum and you never stopped. One day, you’ll run right off the edge of the world. It would be a great pity if there was no one there to catch you and bring you back.”

I didn’t know how to explain. How to make her see. “I’m not running,” I said. “I just have to get word to my father about Aquila. That’s all. I don’t even know for certain that Acheron wasn’t lying.”

“And what if he wasn’t?” she countered. “What if Aquila and his mercenaries are already there? What will you—you, all by yourself—do then? Tell me that.”

“I’ll figure something out—”

She threw her hand in the air in frustration. “For the love of your own grim goddess, Fallon!” she exclaimed. “Think for a second, will you? Just one second. You already have your own war band. Those girls would die for you and—”

“That’s the whole damned problem, Elka!” I rounded on her, anger and fear and sorrow—everything, really—crashed down on me in that moment, and hot, stinging tears sprang to my eyes. “Meriel did die. Leander died. Vorya died. Hestia died. My own sister died. All because I wanted to save Sorcha. Because I wanted to save the queen. Not our queen, as you yourself have already pointed out, but a queen nonetheless and so therefore deserving of saving. Right? Of sacrifice. Who in all the world am I to decide that one woman’s life is worth more than another’s? Several others’?”

“That’s arrogant.”

“I know—”

“No.” She cut me off with the sharpness of her tone. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was, it’s arrogant of you to think that you made the decision for us. That we didn’t all—each one of us—decide for ourselves to stay or go every time. To fight or not. To flee or not. I’ve even heard you claim responsibility for Tanis and her catastrophically bad judgment, and I, for one, would appreciate not being loaded into the same sack as that one, thanks very much.”