Page 111 of Oathborn
The clearing was empty except for ash and ruins. Blackened timbers jutted from the ground like broken ribs, and soot-streaked stones marked the outline of what had once been walls. Amid the debris, incongruously bright, a raspberry bush trembled in the wind, its berries stubbornly red amid the gray. Whatever had once stood here must have burned to the ground years ago.
Javen stared out at the desolation as a slow, ragged breath escaped him.
Feeling the weight of grief, Tobias decided to use the first name he’d learned. “Alaric?”
A muscle in Javen’s jaw twitched. “Do not ever call me that.”
Tobias swallowed, imagining yet another black mark against him ticking in Javen’s mind. “Did… did someone live here?”
“I was supposed to.” Javen’s clipped tone held no emotion, but, like a mask slipping ever so slightly, the grief showed. The tightness in his posture, the slightest flicker in his eyes. It must have been such a deep heartbreak that noteven Javen could hide it. There was a type of loss that carved deep wounds on a heart, like a merciless river wearing down stone into a canyon.
He cleared his throat, still staring at the clearing. “When the war ended, when the Accords were ratified by your damned Parliament, this was to become home.”
There. The smallest slip.YourParliament. As if he were not governed by them. As if Javen belonged to another land, another place entirely.
As if…
No, Javen was just a part-fae, surely. A wildling. Javen certainly didn’t look like the beautiful, otherworldly fae Tobias had seen. The captain, though intimidating, was entirely mortal in appearance, right down to the faint crow’s-feet in the corners of his eyes. His jawline was sharp, and his dark hair was thick, sure, but lots of men had good luck in those regards. There was a baker back in Tobias’s hometown that still had a full head of hair at the age of eighty, and he certainly wasn’t a fae.
Still, Javen had never said how old he was, and he did have that strange habit of using antiquated words, as well as a near-perfect memory of military maneuvers which occurred decades earlier. Lockwood, too, had implied he knew Javen before his own hair had turned gray.
“How long were you married?” Tobias asked, carefully skirting the question he wanted to ask.
“Seven months,” Javen whispered. “Not even long enough for the lilacs to bloom.”
The sadness of the unusual expression pulled at him, made him think of his own loss, of all the seasons his father never lived to see, all the memories he’d missed, and all the times Tobias had missed him. “So you never came back here.”
“There was no reason to…” Javen clenched his jaw, stopping his words. He shook his head. “This is the so-called mercy of the fae. To kill an innocent mother and child—”
“No…” Tobias whispered. “Wouldn’t the… what about the Accords?”
Javen turned to him. “The Accords,” he drawled, mockery in every syllable, “protecthumansfrom the fae. They offered no protection to my wife, despite how much she’d believed in peace.”
There it was. The final clear confirmation, then, that Javen’s wife had not been a human.
How deeply he must have loved his wife, Tobias thought. Everything in Javen had shifted since coming to this small clearing, as if his defenses were lowered.
Wordlessly, Javen dropped to his knees, a hand reaching out to the ashes. His long fingers raked through them, the sunlight flashing over his wedding band. No wonder Javen dedicated his life to his work; he’d already lost everything that would give him meaning outside of it. “Damn her. Damn every cursed breath she takes.”
“The Queen, sir?”
“Your intelligence never ceases to impress, does it? Look at these ashes and tell me if the fae deserve mercy. For they will not give it in return. They will betray the Accords, and they will bring death to everyone you love.”
Tobias stared at the charred remains of what must have been a little cabin. A few stones remained, a hint of a chimney, a bit of a retaining wall. He tried to imagine Javen coming here, returning to a family, to that beautiful woman he’d seen in the drawing. A lump rose in his throat as the painful image seemed to crystallize. The bitter irony must haunt him, Tobias realized. For Javen had survived the war, only to be denied a long-awaited homecoming.
Something else nagged at Tobias; some small element of the drawing of the woman felt familiar to him. He wished he could study it again, but doubted the opportunity would ever present itself.
“Do you come here often?” Tobias asked. “I visit my papa’s grave when I can. I just sit and talk to him. Tell him about stuff, you know?”
Javen did not look his way. “No. I have not returned to this cursed land since before the war ended.”
“So why…” Why had he brought Tobias here, to this private, grief-filled clearing?
“Thismercifulfae you spoke to,” Javen replied, sarcasm dripping. “With herbeautifulgolden hair and no-doubtperfectvoice. Do you truly think she could stand alone against the Queen? Against all her Oathborn? Against Blood Ember? Are you such a fool that you think kindness can triumph over evil?”
“No. Not kindness alone. But it, along with love, with mercy.” The things his parents had raised him to be. They’d never had much money, but they’d given him a far greater inheritance. He’d gone to sleep every night secure in their love, knowing nothing he could ever do, could ever say, would make them care for him any less. Even when he’d once broken a window, which had surely cost them most of their savings to repair, his mother was more worried over the cuts in his hand.
“The best part of humanity,” Tobias said softly, not entirely sure that word fit the situation. Even if fae weren’t human, though, surely they still loved, they still cared for others.
