Page 88 of The War of Wings
She gingerly extended one knee, and I saw the purple splotches and swelling at her ankle. “Twisted it running down the stairs in the chaos. It’s not bad. I wasn’t going to come here, but my cousin all but shoved me into the ballroom. I feel sillyasking to be healed when so many other people…” She trailed off, her eyes moving around the room. The floors of the ballroom looked like a painting created with only shades of red. Piles of bloodied cloth lay discarded on cots, evidence of the people I’d healed just as much as it was evidence of the ruin I’d summoned to their doorstep.
“Don’t feel silly. This looks painful,” I murmured, inspecting Cielle’s ankle as I pulled my thoughts back to her. “I’m glad you stayed.” I pulled my dagger across my palm one last time, opening the wound that had already started to clot, and gently rested it against her ankle. I would never, ever grow accustomed to watching someone heal before my very eyes. The purple bruises faded and the swelling lessened immediately, her ankle good as new in seconds.
She flexed her foot, carefully rolling the joint, testing. “Wow,” she whispered. “It’s amazing. I mean, I’ve been watching you move throughout the room all night, but seeing it firsthand is different.”
I gave a weak smile, looking around until I saw a clean strip of cloth on a nearby cot. I wrapped it around the gash on my palm to keep it from opening again until I could get some rest. But after I tied it in place and Cielle stopped flexing her foot, neither of us made a move to leave.
A heaviness hung in the air between us. So many questions. I was the one to open the floodgates, to broach the subject that sat like a whole separate person between us. “Did you know?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “Well, I found out last year I was adopted, but I never assumed…” A shallow breath left her lungs as she peered down to where her hands were folded in her lap. “I figured it out after we met at the ball. It’s mad.”
“It is,” I agreed, a humorless laugh escaping me as I lowered myself onto the cot across from her.
“So, your sister…”
“Larka,” I offered.
“Larka.” She tested the name on her tongue, nodding. “She’s my sister by blood.”
A let out a deep sigh. “Yes. You two look just alike, truly. She passed a few years back when Cindregala came to Eserene.” My brows pinched with the memory of that day, the smoke I could still smell if I closed my eyes.
“Oh,” she said, her face falling. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at me pensively through her thick lashes. “And your mother and father?” Not Katia and Rhedros. Irabel and Sarek.Hermother and father.
“Da was great.” My words came easily, a smile pulling at my lips, but worry immediately infringed upon the memory of my father. “He was a good man. He, um… He passed not long after Larka. Malosym. Back when Malosym was Lord Evarius Castemont.”
Her mouth twisted, a delicate hand reaching for her heart. “I’m so sorry, Petra. That is so much loss.”
“I’msorry you didn’t get the chance to know them.” I couldn’t picture Larka and Cielle together, two people who looked so alike but seemed so incredibly different. I took a deep breath for what came next. “And Ma is…” I exhaled that breath too hard. “It’s complicated between us. A lot…” My fingers flexed, as if the best way to explain this was hovering in the air and I just needed to grab it. “A lot happened after Larka and Da passed. It was a difficult few years. I can hardly fault her for it,” I rambled. “I’m sure she’ll be ecstatic to meet you.”
We sat in silence, a thousand unspoken words hanging between us. Her life should’ve looked like mine — at least up until the moment Castemont walked into it. Larka had been as scrappy as they come, a born and bred Inkwellian with a half-empty belly and dirt under her fingernails. She was as much a part of Inkwell as it had been of her. But even though Cielle looked so similar to Larka, I couldn’t see her there, and I was glad for it. She was saved from an existence centered only around survival.
And a small part of me felt possessive over the life I’d led before it had been torn to shreds. Yes, it had been centered around survival, but love had flowed to fill in the cracks left by hunger and anxiety and cold.
It was a hard life, but it was a good life. One I was happy to have had.
“I want to fight,” Cielle said suddenly, her voice laden with the certainty of someone whose mind had been made up and was not going to budge. “My parents forbade it, but I want to fight when the time comes. Nieve does, too.”
Luckily, she wouldn’t have to. Because even though I’d let Malosym slip from my fingers this time, there would come a next time. And next time, I’d be fucking ready.
“Thank you, Cielle,” I managed to say.
Again, neither of us made a move to leave, but it was Cielle who broke the silence this time. “Is Miles okay?” Her expression was tortured, her brows upturned and her breaths short as she waited.
Not at all,I thought to myself, but I couldn’t tell her that. Not when she was looking at me like her entire life hinged on my next words. “He…” I started, but didn’t know quite what to say. I couldn’t lie to her, but I wasn’t sure how much good it would do her to know how miserable he’d seemed since Eserene. “He’s had a rough few weeks,” I murmured, blowing a deep breath out through my lips. “He uncovered a lot of his past. He found his brother. And…he died. In Eserene.”
Her eyes flew open, her lips parting as she stared back at me. “B-But–”
“I brought him back somehow. I’m not even sure how I did it. I think it’s because I tried to heal him before he actually died, but…he stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating. It was traumatic, to say the least, for all of us, but especially for him of course.”
Tears had begun to gather on her lashes, the icy blue now rippling, crystalline pools. She gnawed on her bottom lip, herknuckles white as she wrung her hands together. I could practically see her torturing herself in her mind.
“He talked about you a lot,” I said quietly. Miles would be furious I told her, but it felt important she knew. “He spoke of the choice he made, and how he thought he was doing the right thing. Forgive me if I’m overstepping,” I continued, my tone cautious. “I don’t know the full story, and by no means do I think you need to forgive him. But maybe, if you’re open to it, just talk to him. Let him explain his side.”
Cielle’s red-rimmed eyes found mine. “Do you think I should?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek for a moment, trying to find the words I needed. I didn’t feel comfortable giving her an outrightyes. But maybe I could steer her in the right direction. “I used to think there was a clear line between right and wrong. I couldn’t imagine a world where the wrong thing could be done for the right reasons, and in turn the right thing done for the wrong reasons. That never made sense to me.” Cal’s face flashed through my mind, softening the edges of my heart that had hardened tonight. Tyrak’s face, too, with his apologetic eyes. And Miles’, who’d turned me over to Kauvras in search of his truth. “I think if you were to peel back the layers that make up Miles, you’d see the goodness at the center of his soul.”
“You mean, if I were to take off the mask?” she asked with a weak smile.
