Page 126 of Daughter of the Drowned Empire
His fingers grazed across my back, and I sucked in my breath. “The sunleaves are already closing the cuts. Aemon was careful not to layer your lashings. I know they hurt, but your back will be good as new in a few weeks. You’re actually healing really nicely.”
I shook my head, attempting to steady my voice. “I doubt it. I know what those whips are meant to do, who they’re meant to be used on, and it’s not someone like me—someone weak, someone powerless.”
“Lyr, you’re not weak. You have power.”
“You told me that before,” I said. “But it wasn’t true. I had no power in the first clinic. And I only barely survived last night because of your power. I know Mercurial’s dangerous, but you were so quick to get rid of him after he mentioned my power. Rhyan, you know I’m weak.” I buried my face in my hands. “Weak and helpless. I couldn’t…I couldn’t hold my end of the bargain up,” I cried. “I couldn’t find my strength.” A harsh laugh escaped from me. “Of course, I couldn’t. I wasn’t even strong enough to…to….” Tears rolled down my cheeks.
Rhyan’s hands were warm on my back, his palms soothing against my shoulder blades before stroking down, applying the last of the paste. He stuck a bandage over everything, making sure it was secured in place. His hand lingered on my back, gentle. “You weren’t strong enough to what?” he asked.
My chest tightened, and the backs of my eyes burned, as on fire as my wrists had been. Then I said it, the truth I’d carried, the shame that had covered my heart in a shadow for two years, “I feel like it’s my fault. That I’m to blame. Because I couldn’t save Jules.” A sob wracked through me, and I hugged my knees to my chest.
I felt Rhyan get up, shifting his body in front of mine and gathering me into his arms. “That’s not true,” he said. “Lyr. It was never your job to save her.”
“But I feel like it was! She would have fought so hard for me. And I just sat there, helpless. I watched. Watched it happen. Watched as she was taken away right before my eyes. The Imperator had her bound, and I watched. And the Bastardmaker, he…he carried her away. In front of everyone. We sat there in our finest gowns, and we all watched and did nothing! And I…I….”
“Shhhh, Lyr. It’s all right. It’s all right.” His hand rubbed up and down my back. “It wasn’t your job to save her. You weren’t even of age—you couldn’t have gone against the Imperator. You know that.”
“I do, but I still feel like I should have thought of something. Done something more. Tried harder, been faster. I tried…after it was over, I tried to go after her, but Markan….” The tears fell freely down my face. “Markan drugged me. He dragged me back home unconscious.”
“Gods,” he sounded anguished. “I am so sorry. Bastard,” he swore. “But, Lyr, look. Even if you’d gone, you couldn’t have stopped them. Think about it. What was your father doing? The Arkasva? Or your sisters? Or your aunt? Or any other member of the Bamarian Council? When an Imperator wants something…there’s almost nothing we can do to stop it.”
Like invading my country with a foreign legion.
“I know.” I sniffled.
“I think,” Rhyan continued, “I think you’ve been shouldering the burden of what happened to Jules for a long time and unable to admit it. Because of how she’s seen now. But, Lyr, you are blameless, and I would bet you anything if Jules were here, she’d tell you the same. She’d tell you you’re forgiven, that you’re not to blame, that it’s all right to keep living, to get stronger, to fight back. It’s not your responsibility to save everyone. Just yourself.”
The scars on my wrist said otherwise. So did the black eye forming on my face, and the countless cuts and bruises that had faded into my skin. My whole face heated as more tears fell.
“I just feel so powerless,” I said, my voice a hushed whisper.
“I know. I think I have an idea how you feel.”
I shook my head. “Nobody does.”
“I do. And I’m not just saying so. Lyr, I’ve…I’ve watched an Imperator take away the person who mattered most to me. I had to watch too, completely helpless. And I…I was lashed. And not when I had magic in my body—it happened when I was weak, when I was powerless.”
I turned to face him. “You said…you said you used to hide your scars.”
He stared down, blinking, his hands rushing to his hair, attempting to muss the curls and pull them over his forehead, over his scar. It was still too short to cover the wound, so he settled for shrugging his shoulders before meeting my eyes with his own—bright and green, beautiful, shockingly beautiful, even with the scar running through his left eye. It might have ruined another face, but instead of troubling Rhyan’s beauty it added another dimension to it.
“I was thirteen the first time.”
I reached for his forearm. “I’m sorry.”
He jerked his chin up, jaw tensed as his arm slid out from my touch. “I’d offer proof of my healing, but there’s some other artwork on my back, and I don’t want you to lose confidence in me.” He winked, attempting to make a joke, but his voice shook.
“You mean your tattoo?” I asked. He’d trained wearing a half-tunic a handful of times, but I couldn’t recall a single scar or mark save the large gryphon, its inked wings spanning across his shoulders and wrapping around his chest.
I stared down at my own stars and sigil for Ka Batavia—a mask for my blood oaths.
Rhyan slowly pushed my hair behind my ears, applying the remaining paste to my cheek. “Yes. Thanks to the tattoo and some handy spell work, quite a few nasty-looking scars were removed. But the lashings, those truly did heal on their own.” Sitting in front of me, he smoothed the last of the paste across my cheek, across the cut Meera had given me when she’d punched me in her vision. He glanced down at the open tunic covering my chest. “We can get this back on now.” He reached forward, sliding the sleeves back up my shoulders. “I can tie the lacings for you—if you just hold your hair aside.”
He patted my back when he finished, and I twisted back toward him. “Thank you. For everything.”
His good eyebrow narrowed, but I had the impression he’d meant to move both. His scar was more than cosmetic, though he refused to admit it. “We’re going to get you stronger, call on your own strength, so you can stop giving a voice to the feeling of being powerless.”
“You know how to do that?”
