“I want you to look me in the eyes and explain to me how you can believe that I am innocent. You were there. You witnessed it firsthand.”
“You’d been through some extreme events, the pressure got to be too much, and . . . you’ve been conditioned your whole life to believe the lies told to you and about you—?”
“They aren’t lies!” I shouted, standing. “None of it has been a lie. You want the truth? I am exactly what they say I am.” I took several long breaths. “A witch.”
His face was blank, utterly unreadable. I waited for some sign that he understood, that he believed me, but none came.
“I see ghosts, Kellan. I see them everywhere. How do you think I knew what was going to happen to Simon? It was because a spirit showed it to me. These visions are not superstition. They are real and terrifying and I’ve lived with them every day of my pathetic life.” I gulped as guilt and shame snaked around my throat and tightened. “And yes, I did cast a spell to try to save Simon, and it wasn’t the first time. It was a mistake to do it in front of all those people who already loathed me, but you know what? I might be glad I did it. I hate what happened to Emilie, but I’m glad about what has happened to me. Because I don’t have to pretend anymore. I don’t have to wonder anymore what you’ll think of me when you finally realize the truth—?”
Kellan took me by each shoulder, stopping to hold me in his brash gaze for an instant before bending his head down to kiss me. He kissed me. And in spite of everything, I squeezed my eyes closed and fell into it. Kellan’s arms were around me and his lips were pressed hard against mine, and for a moment nothing else in the universe mattered.
Then the kiss broke, and he murmured against my cheek, “You are not a witch, Aurelia. You’re just a girl who’s had the weight of the world on her shoulders for too long. We are not in Renalt anymore. You can let those fears and superstitions go. You can let all of it go. Renalt, Achleva . . . everything. You and I, we can go wherever we like, be whomever we like. Just say the word, and I can make it happen.”
My heart thudded heavily. “You want me to run away?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Run away with me. We’ll put all of this behind us. Forever.”
I was struggling to comprehend. Just . . . leave? “What about my mother, my brother? Renalt?”
“With you gone, I’m sure everything will go back to normal for them. Conrad can go home, your mother can again secure the throne . . .”
“And the Tribunal can carry on killing thousands more innocents with impunity. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s just the way things have always been, Aurelia. All I care about is what happens to you.”
My fluttering heart became suddenly still. I was instantly and acutely aware of every point of contact between us: my hands on his chest. My cheek brushing his. His arms crossing my back. I began to pull away, untangling myself from him, until I had completely withdrawn and he stood agape, empty-handed and disarmed.
“Aurelia. Look at me.”
I wouldn’t look. I didn’t want him to see what was written on my face. It wasn’t just his hand-wave dismissal of my most intimate confession; it was his belief that things just were. That the Tribunal was a simple fact of life, like the tides or the changing of the seasons. That the continued murder of hundreds was an acceptable exchange for the safety of one. Me.
That was one idea I would never be able to accept. Never. If that was the cost for a life with Kellan, it was a price I could not pay. And with that realization, my secret hopes were whipped away like autumn leaves on a winter wind. I stepped farther back, deepening the physical divide between us to mirror the one I felt in my heart.
“Aurelia.”
I kept my head turned away and gazed at the fire and the forest looming behind it, a black velvet shawl draped across the white, hard-angled shoulders of Achleva’s distant mountains. I said, “Everything you’ve seen, everything you and I have been through, and you still don’t understand.”
“Have you been listening at all?” He came between me and my view of the forest and sky, his eyes narrowed and full of feeling. “I’m trying to tell you I love you, Aurelia.”
“You can’t,” I said leadenly. “You don’t know how.”
“What can that possibly mean?”
“It means that when we get to Achleva and you have been assured
that I am safe and settled, I will dismiss you from your duties and you’ll be able to return to Renalt. Stay in the guard, or don’t. Marry, if you like.” I felt my composure slipping. “I hope you do.”
He said nothing more; he just turned and walked away, down past where Lisette and Conrad were sleeping, and out into the tall, starlit grass of the border fields. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t see him anymore and I collapsed onto my bedroll, anguished and alone.
Good, I thought. The only person I can hurt now is me.
9
The dream was vivid. I was standing at the edge of the forest, watching a pale light between the trees. I squinted to make out what it was, heading toward it without consciously moving my feet. I was a moth drawn to a flame; I knew nothing good could lie beyond, but I was pulled toward it anyway.
The light was Toris’s lamp. He was several hundred feet inside the tree line, hunched over, face obscured by the shadows into something that barely resembled him. I shrank behind the trunk of a large tree and watched as he took the blood of the Founder from the cord around his neck, unstopped it, and let the liquid drip onto his face. One. Two. Three drops. Then he put the relic back inside his shirt.
Toris stood slowly, and for a minute his face looked all wrong, as if his bones had rearranged themselves in unnatural ways. He was muttering under his breath, words both foreign and frightening. I could feel the power in them. This was blood magic. He had used the Founder’s own blood to enact a spell. And judging from the heaviness in the air, an unpleasant one.