The moment they got back to Udara, the refugees from Izozkia’s domain being placed in temporary homes by all other available soldiers, Iree’s elite squad gathered atop the fort wall for a dressing down. Though Rhys knew what was coming, that didn’t stop him from feeling like he was going to throw up.
Iree’s gaze tore him to shreds. “Anything to say for yourself?”
He only shook his head and continued to stare at the ground. What was he supposed to say? The things it had taken Dorothea a single week of acquaintanceship to realize about him were completely unforgivable in his world, and he doubted even Iree would understand.
Iree closed her eyes in a moment of regret. “Then you’re no longer my captain. Creed, consider yourself promoted.”
Cerid looked agitated, but Iree continued before he could protest.
“Last chance for anyone else to bow out.” Iree swept her gaze over them, waiting. “I’m serious. Killing or being killed is the way of our world. You all understand?” One last pause was met only with silence. “Good. Now, Rhys. With me.” She stalked off without waiting.
He felt everyone’s eyes on him, particularly Dorothea’s, but slouched off without looking back at anyone. Each footstep required immense effort. The weight that was always somehow on his shoulders, some dark, amorphous thing, was especially heavy lately and today in particular.
Once he caught up to Iree, his miserable sense of apprehension only intensified. If she were storming off or yelling at him, he’d know how to deal with her. Her anger was most ferocious when it was a quiet flame.
He couldn’t take it anymore. “Iree. Please talk to me.”
She closed the door to her office and took a deep breath. With slow, smooth movements, she slipped behind her desk and rummaged around until she withdrew two small glasses and a bottle of vodka. After pouring them both a drink filled to the brim, she gestured for Rhys to come fetch his while she dragged him a chair over so they could sit beside one another.
Iree nursed her drink for several minutes, draining the glass and pouring herself another before she spoke. “What happened today?”
Rhys took a sip to stall his answer. “We lost,” he murmured, swallowing a cough.
“You had them. You had them!” Iree’s fist smacked the table, sending a stack of papers that had been perching on the edge fluttering to the floor. “I’m going to get my ass handed to me by the council for this. Do you have any idea what this is gonna do to my credibility? And you know what people say about Ariana every time our team takes the smallest loss. Were you thinking of anyone other than yourself today?”
Yes, but it didn’t matter. “I’m sorry, Iree.”
She didn’t act like she’d heard him. “Atlin gave us the perfect chance to get the drop on them! You want her to waste her life on your mistakes, huh?”
Worse than any fear, guilt sent searing and freezing waves through him. “She shouldn’t even be here, Iree,” he snapped. “She’s a civilian.”
Iree laughed. “So what? You know where we’d be without her? We’d be dead. I died today! You died too, multiple times through your own stupid fault! You’re gonna sit here trying to tell me she’s not essential? Really? Meeting Bittersweet Nightshade on the battlefield for this first time since the start of the war changes everything, and Atlin was the only barrier between us and total defeat.”
Iree was right from a tactical perspective, but meek protests still wormed out of him. “Dorothea is just… She’s just a girl.”
“Just a girl?” Iree laughed. “I was just a girl and you were just a boy when we first learned to take lives.”
Rhys couldn’t think of a good reply. He’d made mistake after mistake and was going to pay for it now.
After an extended silence, Iree sighed. “Look. I know it’s hard. Especially since…since we lost Mom.” She smiled hopefully after putting her hand on his cheek to make him look at her. “But we’ve got to be strong, and we’ve got to get our hands even dirtier if we want to fulfill the promise we made.” Her smile faltered. “Please tell me you haven’t forgotten that.”
“I haven’t,” Rhys whispered.
“Then tell me. What was our promise?”
“To honor Mom and create a world free from war.” It felt like he was reciting words that didn’t belong to him anymore.
“And we both know what has to happen to make that a reality. For our people, for all we’ve lost… For Mom. We can’t stop. Please, Rhys. I need you to keep fighting.”
He wanted to find strength in her words, but he was just so numb. “Iree,” he began hoarsely, and she had to lean closer to hear him. “Is this what she would have wanted?”
She jerked away. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t know if she’d be proud of the people we are now. I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing anymore, and I don’t know if this is what she would have wanted. I mean, we can’t even know that…she’s gone. Does it really matter what she would have wanted in the end?"
“Rhys…” That one word, soft and high-pitched, was laden with endless hurt, and it gutted him. Iree gritted her teeth, trying to stop the tears that perched on her lashes. “Get out,” she whispered.
Part of him wanted to beg for forgiveness before leaving, but he didn’t even have the will to grovel. It was his fault for always pretending that nothing was changing or going wrong. He’d been slipping for years now but had never been willing to admit it.
Lost as he was, his feet took him to the place he found best for thinking. The chapel was peaceful even when crowded, so he’d come to like it. Once there, he moved by force of habit to the deserted back row. He didn't like having his back to anyone.
His eyes were caught by a flash of color, highlighted by the ample candlelight. Sconce after sconce, black iron with thin strings of clear crystals entwined in their swirling designs, held white candles, all of which were lit by a dedicated worker each night. But the color, the gray hair he’d spotted, some of it caught that light, and it burned silvery and strange. There, in the seats closest to the Gods, was Dorothea.
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Only when he was already walking closer did it occur to him that he could pretend not to have noticed her and leave to avoid interaction. Going home to wrap himself in solitude seemed like a wonderful idea, so he started to creep backwards.
Too late—she turned at the sound of his footsteps. “Rhys,” she said, smiling. “Hi.” She paused. “If you want to sit here, that…um, would be fine with me. It’s okay if not though.”
He didn’t have the will to get out of the situation, and her awkwardness calmed him down a bit. He asked as he lowered himself, “Why are you here?”
“I wanted a quiet place to think and pray.” Her smile got gentler. “What about you?”
“I didn’t feel like going home yet.”
She nodded. “Too tired to do much but too anxious to rest.”
“Exactly.” It hit Rhys suddenly how unpleasant he was finding the interaction. He felt unnerved, off balance, but why?
It was obvious, though. He already knew why he found her presence so difficult, this thing that had been nagging at him for days now: they were killing her. Yes, Dorothea had offered assistance of her own accord, but he almost couldn’t stand the sight of her knowing what was happening. His negligence that day had cost her precious time. Try as he might to get an apology out, he couldn’t.
Instead he asked, “What really happened today between you and the Ghurians?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’ve been wondering the same thing about you, kind of. About why it is you didn’t…”
“Kill them?” It kept surprising him how reluctant she was to put these things into words, but it shouldn’t have. She was from a completely different life than him, so far apart it may as well have been a separate universe.
And maybe… Just maybe, that made her the best possible person to talk to?
“Sorry,” Dorothea laughed quietly. “I shouldn’t push you about these things. But after today, I don’t really know where to turn next. I’ve never had so many people to let down, and I want to protect everyone. I’m trying to make up for the things I didn’t do, and now for things I did do and things I thought… I’m so confused,” she laughed weakly.
If she wasn’t so vulnerable and open, Rhys wouldn’t have had the courage to admit what he did now, breaking the seal on the things he’d been trying to hide for so long. “Me too,” he said. “I barely know what to do from moment to moment.” It was easier to follow Iree’s lead, but he’d become too dependent and scared over time.
She looked surprised. “You always seem so self-assured.”
“I try to look that way, yeah.” He’d tried hard to become someone worthy of everyone’s expectations. With a magic like his, how could they not rely on him, and how could he excuse letting them down with so much at stake? So he’d learned long ago that being quiet and wearing a smile could easily be mistaken for being smart, relaxed and confident.
“The you that’s unsure is…” She spoke hesitantly. They still didn’t know each other well enough to judge how far they could push boundaries, after all. “Um. Sorry.”
He felt himself letting his guard down completely despite everything. “Finish what you were going to say.” He smiled when she looked at him with doubt. “Please?”
She twiddled her thumbs, looking down at them. “It’s nice. It makes me feel like I can reach out to you, knowing you’re just the same as anyone else.”
“The same?”
“Yeah. You can be scared and unsure, and have dreams and fears and, you know, normal stuff.”
But he hadn’t been permitted to have or feel any of those things, not even as a child. So by extension, maybe he just wasn't normal. “What about you?” he asked. “Dreams and fears.” He wanted more from her. He wanted to know more about this person whose experiences were so disparate from his own.
“Dreams, I dunno… I’ve always known what my future will be, so I guess I never bothered finding any. Fears, well… I guess what scares me most is failing.”
“Failing?” Not death, not Ghuria? “What do you mean?”
She frowned. “Well, I just can’t save everyone. I’ve never dealt with stakes this high or had so many people to let down. I want to be able to keep it together, but I don’t know if I… I don’t want to fail anyone. And I probably will in the end.”
That same guilt reared, sank its teeth in. None of them had a right to thoughtlessly profit from her parasitic magic. At the same time, for the potential of that magic to be wasted while so many lives were on the line… There was no perfect answer. “Look. The worst thing you can do is be dishonest with your limitations. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Dorothea. Please look at me so I know you understand.” She did so, eyebrows lifted in question of his sudden insistence. “Don’t…” Don’t die. Please don’t die. “Don’t push yourself too hard.”
She nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”
Rhys wiped his hands on his trousers, part habit and part because he felt nervous and fidgety. Everything he was saying, did it have a point or use at all? He didn’t care what she was planning or what was happening, he didn’t care about what her attempts to interact with the Ghurians most definitely meant. He just… He wanted to protect her. He wanted to understand and keep safe that part of her that hadn’t grown up in a culture of warfare, that essence that reached out to the humanity of even someone like him so unflinchingly.
Didn’t she only do that because she had no idea what he’d done? Or had she just assumed what kind of blood he had on his hands and already forgiven it? Would someone like her understand if he tried to convey these things he’d never once attempted to give voice to? But it wasn’t his place to burden her just because he felt helpless.
“Rhys?” She leaned over to peer up at his face, as he’d lost himself completely in thought. “Still here with me?”
“Wah!” He jumped. “Uh…” She was laughing, so he couldn’t help a weak chuckle. “Sorry. It’s been…a day.”
“Yeah.” Confusion furrowed her brow. “You’re not going to push more about it?”
She’d obviously avoided his question about her and the Ghurians. “No. I don’t care, really.” He shrugged, and after looking shocked she laughed again and smiled brightly.
“That’s good, because I have no idea what I’m going to do next.”
“Same here.”
“At least we can wallow in our sheer confusion together.” She leaned back, stifling a yawn. “Rhys?”
He bit one back now too. “Yeah?”
“Are you really okay?”
He didn’t have the will or even the desire to brush off her concern anymore. It had been years since anyone had sincerely asked how he was doing.
His hand drifted into his pocket by habit, touching something small and warm. Almost on impulse he drew it out and laid it flat on his palm, a simple pin that no one had worn for years.
Dorothea leaned over to scrutinize it. “What flower is that?”
Right, she’d come from a harsh climate. Not that Rhys knew much about flowers himself. “A lily, or so I was told.”
Dorothea reached out to touch it, then looked to him for permission. Rhys nodded, and she ran a finger along its surface. “It’s faded,” she observed, fingertip brushing some flaked and dulled parts where the originally pristine yellow showed its wear.
“That’s my fault. It’s like a worry stone.”
“It adds a certain charm to it.”
“Glad you think so.” He paused, thinking he should stop here, but the words just kept coming. “I told you before that I bought pins for myself and two friends. For protection.” It sounded even more foolish now. As if some cheap trinket would help. He closed his hand on the lily. “Yet I have two of them with me.”
She regarded him with silent sympathy, nodding.
“I… It was misleading to say they were for friends. One was for my…mother. The other was for Iree.” He smiled. “Care for a boring story, Dorothea?”
“I’d love one.”