Page 189 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
She would fight and she would be glorious, of that I was sure.
Right now, I knew she thought she was done for. A forgotten name in the history of the great Clans. A cautionary tale that trust didn’t amount to triumph.
Yet even in the face of defeat, permanent or not, she stood up straight and fought for her values, even against enemies who weren’t hers.
Allie was a newcomer in Solkar’s Reach. She still considered herself an outsider, from the not-so-subtle hints Mrs. Thornbrew had kept launching my way.
And she was completely and utterly outraged at the injustice.
For the first time in a long while, perhaps ever, I felt understood. Because even my Brothers and Sisters thought I was too much of an idealist at times.
Too rigid in my morals, too unforgiving to those who crossed them, too set on protecting those who needed it.
I was enough of a man to admit that I doubted myself sometimes. When everybody calls you drunk, even a sober man glances at his boots to see if he’s swaying.
Standing by my own creed, born out of conscience and my mother’s chants, had been difficult in the wake of a neverending stream of curious glances and outright contemptuous questions.
Yet here she was, the embodiment of all those principles–and proud of it.
“Raised as a warrior, but taught to be a diplomat was not easy growing up in the Northern Clans,” I found myself saying.
I’d never voiced this split I had to endure. My mother–may the gods appreciate her kind soul in death as it should have been in life–had made it her mission in life to make sure I cared for the smallest being, down to the worms and falling leaves in our long walks through the forest.
“Every being lives and dies, my heart,” my mother used to say as I looked up at her. At six years-old, I already knew about Solkar and participated in my fair share of ceremonies in the Memory Hall, and I’d always thought my mother was his sister. A goddess among mortals. She let her long blonde hair down, the sunrays making it glimmer. “But their lives and sacrifice should never be in vain.”
And when I was done walking through the safe parts of the forest, I had to return to the training grounds and beat my opponents. All of them. Miharel wouldn’t have had it any other way; not that he had ever bothered to come see me train, but he always knew about each knee scrape and victory, like a true Greycrest, using information against his own family.
“A benevolent diplomat,” Allie said, yanking me back to reality. A reality in which she stood in my bedroom–the only woman to enter this room, ever–dressed in nothing but a piece of silk I could rip away in a second, yet she mesmerized me more with her words and that unflinching heart of hers. “It’s…hard. Almost impossible to juggle both, I know.”
She was probably one of the very few people on this continent–if not the only other one–who could understand.
Allie came from a different realm, where principles and protection were the stones on which her Clan had been built, yet we saw the world the same, didn’t we?
And we saw each other, pride, protection, and all.
“But we somehow manage to do it,” I said.
“We have to.” She shrugged, as if she hadn’t carried almost an entire Clan on her shoulders. I fisted my palms; they ached to circle those same shoulders and feel her words vibrating through her body. “Your Clan and people may never know how you shielded them, but you do. I do. And you were right to make that decision, Ryker.”
I hadn’t known I’d needed to hear that until now.
Whatever ice cage I’d had to erect around my soul to keep it safe began to thaw and crack.
Perhaps I’d only told this secret to Allie, after all these years of promising to take it with me to the crypt, because I’d felt she’d understand.
Not judge.
Not question.
Not laugh at what I still struggled to see as a success.
See, listen, and comprehend the magnitude of it without recoiling.
The tension cascaded down my spine, down my legs, and dissipated onto the floor in one sudden wave. That peak of tightness which I’d been carrying between my shoulders for years finally loosened.
The shift was so quick, I had to blink through it, white spots dancing in my vision. The breath whooshed out of my lungs in one long breath.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
