Page 116 of The King of Koraha
“What if I fall on you?”
“I’ll catch you.”
He’d try, but he was too weak. More incentive for her to hang on. Once Rendor reached the end, she struggled to mount the ladder. The metal rungs seemed slippery and her leg and arm muscles jittered with fatigue. But she lifted a foot and sought the next rung down. And to think Rendor had carried her up a ladder like this. She’d exhausted all her energy wielding magic and fainted. You’d think she’d learned her lesson not to do that by now. Nope. But Rendor had climbed with her dead weight hanging over his shoulders. She giggled at the wordsdead weight.
“Shyla? Are you all right?”
No. Not in the least. “Yes.”
Eventually Rendor’s hands grabbed her waist and he guided her down the last few rungs. Then she collapsed onto a cushion and embraced the darkness.
She slept for two sun jumps, waking only for food and water. Rendor also rested, slowly regaining his strength. On the third sun jump, they talked about what had happened while they were apart.
“Is Xerxes headed to Qulsary?” she asked Rendor.
“I don’t know. He really wanted to recapture you before going after the King. The only part of the plan I was privy to was ambushing you here. Xerxes seemed pretty convinced that you’d agree to wear a pendant.” Rendor stopped and gazed at her. “At the time, I didn’t understand why you’d do it for me, but I followed my orders.” He rubbed his healing wrists. “They used the stake so it’d look convincing. I trusted they would come for me before it was too late. Then you showed up. If you hadn’t taken off the pendant…”
“You would have yanked that stake out. The blackfire can’t make you kill yourself. Xerxes knows that. He wasn’t worried about you. He figured you would have come back in time.”
“Are you sure? It wasn’t until you removed the pendant that I even considered leaving that spot.”
“Xerxes told me. And there was no reason for him to lie.” She’d been unable to tell him how to wake The Eyes’ power and he claimed she didn’t have to obey him if she thought it would lead to her death. “Why didn’t you remind him that the King is immune to The Eyes?”
“I did.” Rendor’s shoulders drooped. “I told him everything I remembered even while I was still fighting the compulsion. But eventually I couldn’t even remember loving you. All my emotions centered on Xerxes as I became Big Brute.”
She touched his arm. “It was the pendant. The same thing happened to me. It felt so much better when I embraced being Little One.”
He met her gaze. “But there was a part of you still fighting.”
“Not really. There were certain revelations of what I’d done that shocked me back to my senses for mere moments.” She rubbed the back of her head. “Pain seemed to snap me out of it for a bit, too.”
“I stopped fighting.” He glanced down. “Being Big Brute was so easy. There was no guilt. All the stuff I did for the Water Prince was viewed as a positive thing by Xerxes and his squads. I was accepted.”
“And now?”
“Back to the struggle, dodging accusing glares, trying to ignore the barbs, and dealing with the constant guilt.” He tapped his chest. “It burns deep inside me.”
She took his hands in hers. “Tell me.” When he remained quiet, she squeezed them slightly. “Tell me about Big Brute.”
“You won’t love me anymore.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“You can’t really love me until you tell me.”
That captured his attention. She continued, “You believe that I gave you my love without really knowing you. You believe deep down you’re still Big Brute and that you’re pretending to be Rendor, Captain of the Invisible Sword, who hasn’t been accepted by the members, just tolerated. And you believe that you don’t deserve my love. Those beliefs keep you from fully embracing who you are now. So let’s take this one belief at a time. Tell me about Big Brute.”
Rendor raised his head. He yanked his hands from her grasp and met her gaze with an almost defiant expression. He said, “I killed a man when I was sixteen circuits old. The first of ten.”
He expected her to react with repulsion, but Shyla kept her face neutral. “Go on.”
Rendor took it as a challenge. Determined to horrify her, he told her about all his misdeeds, killings, and the people he’d tortured. He explained all the awful orders he’d obeyed. Everything he’d done to gain and keep the position of captain of the guard.
Through it all, Shyla didn’t judge or try to console him or show pity or attempt to explain that his actions were due to his parents not accepting him for who he was, forcing the young man to seek acceptance from the Water Prince. Nope. She said nothing. She remained expressionless. Of course, how she felt on the inside was another story—she wanted to hug him tight and make him believe he was no longer that man.
When he finished, he stared at her as if waiting for her to condemn him for all his evils. To tell him to leave and never come near her again. Instead, she said, “Tell me the good things Big Brute did.”
“There aren’t any. Weren’t you listening?”
“I was. Tell me the good. Like the time you didn’t arrest Mojag. There’s more of them.” Now she challenged him.
