Page 31 of Silver Claws, Crimson Tears
Only then do I release the breath I have held since I found her alive.
After a moment, she says, “You kept my secrets. Zephyros told me you never shared them with anyone. Was it because I wasn’t there and there was no point?”
I don’t answer. Words feel inadequate, clumsy tools for the truth burning inside me. The flame that kindled when I first saw her defiance, that grew each time she challenged me, that blazed into an inferno when I thought her lost. How to tell her about such fire?
Her gaze remains fixed on mine, waiting. I reach for her face, my calloused thumb tracing the line of her jaw. A gesture I’ve imagined countless times during sleepless nights.
“I kept your secrets because they weren’t mine to give,” I finally say, my voice low. “Because duty sometimes bends before something greater.”
She stares, confusion crossing her features as she tries tointerpret what she sees. I wonder if she recognizes the naked truth in my eyes, that I love her.
“But now I’m back, and you know my truths,” she says. Her voice is as steady as the determination in her eyes. “What do you plan to do with me now?”
A year ago, the question might have broken me in two. Then, I wrestled between duty and desire, oath and temptation, but not anymore. I see the hollowness left in her, and I know there is no choice to be made.
“I know you don’t want to run,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“In that case, my only duty is to bring you back for trial. Nothing else.”
“They’ll ask you to testify. What then?”
“I plan to keep you from going to prison,” I answer. My voice carries no doubt. “So… I’ll do what needs to be done.”
Rhealyn looks at me with uncertainty. She knows me well, knows lying won’t be easy for me.
“I’ll do what needs to be done,” I repeat.
Her mouth curves, faint and wary, as though she thinks my honor will betray me when the judge demands the truth, but she’s wrong. I’ll use my silence to shield her.
“I guess we’ll see,” she says, still doubtful.
Her words linger, bitter-sweet, and I tighten my hand around hers. “We shall.”
She studies me as though weighing the truth. The firelight paints her face in flickers, catching sharp angles where once there were gentle contours. She seems to have endured more than I can fathom. And yet, beneath it, the same woman looks back at me.
Still… that other truth remains. She’s a Weaver. A word fouler than treachery in Embernia, spoken in whispers and forbidden by law. I can’t easily dismiss it as I did her murder confession of a man who thoroughly deserved his fate.
The thought still gnaws at me. Has she been sifting through my mind these past hours? Have my failings, my longings, my shame, been laid bare like the pages of a book ready for her perusing? I’m afraid of the answer.
I keep my gaze steady as that fear twists inside me. “Tell me, Rhealyn… When you look at me, do you see only my face? Or is there more you take without asking?” I pause. “And no more lies, remember?”
Her eyes steady, unwavering, as if she can sense the mistrust hidden in my question. Yet, she doesn’t seem to blame me for it.
“I have never made a habit of listening to people’s thoughts,” she says, voice firm. “Not for a long time.”
The conviction in her tone feels like gravity. Still, I wait.
She draws in a slow breath, hand curling on her knee. “I told you. When I was a child, I called them Whispers. At first, I thought everyone heard the fragments of other people’s musings, wants, fears. I didn’t know it was forbidden. But my parents worried someone else would learn the truth, so they taught me that listening was rude.”
Her gaze flickers toward the flames outside the tent. Old shards of memory sharpen her expression, and the faint furrow of shame marks her brow.
“So I smothered them,” she continues. “Every time a Whisper crept through, I forced it down, buried it until my mind was silent again, until discipline made it go away completely. I thought I’d gotten rid of them entirely. Until the Rite of Flight.”
I say nothing as she pauses, the line across her brow deepening.
“The test by the fountain brought it all back.” Her lipstighten. “But I had no intention of letting that stupid ability ruin everything I’d worked so hard to achieve. So I pushed it down again, harder than ever.” She pauses. “Zephyros… he’s the only one I’ve ever allowed inside my mind. It’s the bond. It makes our minds feel like one sometimes. Keeping him out would be like denying my very self, so I don’t. But that’s as far as I go, and I don’t intend to change that.”
