The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

“I need to take care of something, once and for all.” The muscles in his neck were like tight cords, and he kept his gaze averted from mine. And then I knew.

“Your father,” I said. “He’s the lord of the county there, isn’t he?”

He nodded.

I stepped away, trying to remember the county lords. There were twenty-four of them in Morrighan, and I didn’t know most of their names, especially not those down here in the southern counties, but I knew this lord might not be alive much longer.

I sat down on a stool in the corner, the same one where Berdi had once tended my neck. “Are you going to kill him?” I asked.

Kaden paused, then finally pulled out a chair and straddled it, facing its spindled back. “I don’t know. I thought I just wanted to see my mother’s grave. See where I had once lived, the last place where I was—” He shook his head. “I can’t just let it go, Lia. I have to see him at least one more time. It’s something unfinished inside of me, and this might be my last chance to make some sense of it. I won’t know what I’m going to do until I see him.”

I didn’t try to talk him out of it. I felt no sympathy for this lord who had whipped his young son, then sold him like a piece of trash to strangers. Some betrayals ran too deep to ever forgive.

“Be careful,” I said.

He reached out, squeezing my hand, and the storm in his eyes doubled. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be there. I promise.”

He rose to leave, but then stopped at the kitchen door.

“What is it?” I asked.

He turned to face me. “There’s something else that’s unfinished. I need to know. Do you still love him?”

His question knifed through me—I hadn’t expected it, though I should have. I saw the wondering in his eyes every time he looked at me. He knew when he held me in the loft that it wasn’t dust I had choked on. I stood and walked to the chopping table, unable to look him in the eye, and brushed imaginary crumbs away.

I hadn’t even allowed myself to dwell on this thought. Love. It felt foolish and indulgent in light of everything else. Did it really matter? I remembered Gwyneth’s cynical laugh when I told her I wanted to marry for love. She already knew what I hadn’t yet grasped. It never ended well for anyone. Not for Pauline and Mikael. My parents. Walther and Greta. Even Venda was proof, riding off with a man who had ultimately destroyed her. I thought about the girl Morrighan, stolen from her tribe and sold as a bride to Aldrid the scavenger for a sack of grain. Somehow they had built a great kingdom together, but it wasn’t built on love.

I shook my head. “I’m not even sure what love is anymore.”

“But it’s different between us than it was with—” He left his question dangling as if it was too painful to say Rafe’s name.

“Yes, it’s different between us,” I said quietly. I lifted my gaze to meet his. “It always has been, Kaden, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve always known it too. From the beginning, you said that Venda came first. I can’t explain exactly how our destinies became entwined, but they did—and now we both care for Venda and Morrighan, and want a better end for them than the one the Komizar has planned. Maybe that’s what brought us together. Don’t underestimate the bond we share. Great kingdoms have been built on far less.”

He stared at me, his eyes restless. “On our way here, the things you scratched into the dirt, what were they?”

“Words, Kaden. Only lost unsaid words that added up to good-bye.”

He pulled in a deep, slow breath. “I’m trying to find my way through this, Lia.”

“I know, Kaden. I am too.”

His gaze remained fixed on me. He finally nodded and left. I walked to the door, watching him ride off, the moonless night swallowing him up in seconds, and I ached with his want, ached with what I couldn’t give him. His need reached deeper and farther than me.

I returned to the kitchen and blew out the lantern but couldn’t let the night go. I leaned against the wall tacked with paper—lists that tried to hold on to the life that Berdi had traded for another decades ago. In the dim light, the faint edges of her kitchen became a distant world of twists, turns, and unmapped choices, the ones that had woven together and defined Berdi’s life.

Do you regret not going?

I can’t think about things like that now. What’s done is done. I did what I had to do at the time.

My hands pressed against the cool of the wall behind me.

What was done was done.

I couldn’t think about it anymore.

* * *

Early the next morning, I raided Berdi’s wardrobe and found only part of what I required.