Page 206 of Between Despair and Hope

“Tannyl.”

“Yes, the very one.” She leaned forward, clipping a bead to either twist before pulling them back to join her bun. I was growing impatient, and observing her do something I’d watched in moments of adoration during my childhood made me more annoyed as each minute passed. “Larke had both men and found herself pregnant. When Tannyl died, it seems she blamed your father and threw herself off the balcony.”

“Gods, Mother. How can you be so detached?” The way she’d said it in a bored, monotone voice unsettled me.

“It happened a few centuries before I was born, and I don’t think your father was ever capable of love again. If I think about it too hard, I make excuses for him. But I cannot and should not make excuses for how he treated me and how it forced me to treat you and your sister.” She turned on her seat and smoothed her dress down before elegantly lifting her chin to speak to me. “I do not see how or why it is important, considering everyone in the story is dead.”

“Did he kill Tannyl?”

“Now that, I do not know. Anything else?” she asked, straightening her collar as she glanced out the window.

“I suppose not. I found a note I think is from Larke in a book I believe she stole. Do you know who a Zaph is, who she might have been—” Shivani had stood, walking over to the window in a daze, clearly not listening to me. “Mother?”

“Fire.”

I rushed behind her, first noticing the massive plume of smoke coming from the northern end of the capital—where Elora was. When the massive winged creature I didn’t recognize as a dragon flew over the palace, it drew me from my stupor.

“Elora’s at the cafe on Armista,” I said, right before opening one rift to get my sword followed by another which opened up into chaos.

Chapter 54

Cyran

“You’regoingwhere?” Elora’s voice was shrill as she slapped both of her hands palm down on the table between us. The cook shot a glare at me through the kitchen window, and I ignored him, preferring to look upon the girl across from me for the last time. Besides, the place was empty, so it wasn’t as if we were bothering any customers.

“Pelmuzu isn’t quite so cold as it is here, and I’ve heard it’s lovely in the spring.”

“Cy, you can’t be serious. You’re just going to give up your kingdom to your brother like that?” Her brow furrowed, reminding me of the girl I’d met this past autumn. The girl who’d promptly brought me to my knees and then somehow stole whatever was left of my heart.

“Well, no. I planned to hide there for a time, gain friends and riches, then purchase mercenaries to eradicate my brother. Unless your father does it for me first, of course. Then I’ll pay him back, I suppose.”

“You can’t go to Nythyr. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“And I can’t go back to Folterra, not now. The rebels are all dead. Dec saw to that.”

“What about your sister? You’re just going to abandon her too?”

“Ismene won’t leave.”

“When did you decide?” she whispered. Her blue eyes welled up, and she tugged one of her curls over her shoulder, twisting it around a finger. She wore her hair pinned back, forcing me to stare at her scar—the evidence of my betrayal.

“After our discussion,” I said, after only a moment’s hesitation.

“Cy,” she breathed.

“Please don’t call me that anymore.”

“Stay here,” she pleaded. “I didn’t ask you to leave Vesta. I just needed to draw a line between us.”

“And I respect that, Elora. I didn’t ask you here to make you feel guilty. I only asked you here to say goodbye. And to tell you sorry once more. I have nowhere to go in Folterra, and I can’t stay here. Nythyr is—”

“Youcanstay. I—” She tugged her lower lip into her mouth and fidgeted in her seat. “Iwantyou to stay.”

“Min viltasma,” I murmured. “I cannot stay because I will never be able to—to—it is difficult to be in your proximity. This capital is not big enough to put enough space between us for me to not think about you. The way you bite your thumb when you concentrate. The freckle on your right ear. The face you make when I annoy you. All the ways I have hurt you and betrayed you.” She clasped her hands together and leaned forward as if she was about to argue with me, but I cut her off. “Your forgiveness was a gift I will never deserve. But I cannot go home, and I cannot live like this.”

“Like what, Cy?” she whispered.

I sighed, pulling on my hair with my elbows on the table. She was going to make me rip out the contents of my soul and lay them on the table in front of her, wasn’t she?

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