Between Tides Thunder(113)

“I still see him in my dreams,” she whispers. Her eyes are glazed, like she’s not entirely here with me. “The smell of smoke. Burning flesh. But it’s wrong. Metallic. Worse. I didn’t think we’d make it, Mayah. I hadn’t eaten in days—food stores were low. Everything was given to the wielders. My ankle was broken. Tumaas refused to leave me.” Her voice splinters. “I begged him until my throat was raw. Until I had no voice left. My lips kept moving, pleading, even though no sound was coming out.” Her voice drops even lower, a lone tear sliding sideways down her cheek onto the pillow. “He wouldn’t have been able to hear me over the thunder and rain, anyway.

“We waited for death, lying motionless in the dirt. For hours. I was so fucking angry I was going to die hungry.” She takes a shaky breath. “He was covered from head to toe in armor.” I know which he she means. “A vengeful monster. He’d raise his hand, and lightning would follow. If a waterwielder tried to attack him—they’d shake uncontrollably, unnaturally, then fall to the ground.

“I don’t know how long we lay there. Waiting. Just waiting. Even after he left, after our camp was leveled, we didn’t dare move. By then, the smell of my own piss mingled with death. Tumaas’s heavy arm over my back was the only thing keeping me sane. Keeping me grounded. Eventually, Tumaas stood. There were three other survivors, nonwielders who’d played dead, too. No wielders—they hadn’t been cowardly like us. He killed them all.

“Tumaas carried me. We walked and walked and walked, but he never faltered, Mayah, not once. I can’t remember how many days we just existed. Numb. Broken.” She swallows hard, hand fisting the blanket. “And then Tairna and the rebels found us.”

Between the two of us, the pillow is soaked with tears. I wrap Sura in my arms, folding her into myself as she sobs. My sweet, carefree Sura, harboring so much pain, yet somehow still finding the strength to shine brightly for others.

“I’m so sorry, Sura.” Sharp pain lances through my heart again and again. “I’m so sorry. And to see him again now…”

She wipes away a lingering tear from her cheek. “The nightmares don’t come as often anymore. But when I heard you’d married him, it was a terror like I’d never known. It was worse than that night knowing that monster had you. That you were forced into it.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I knew there was no way you’d choose him.”

It’s a question wrapped in hope and accusation and betrayal.

It cuts at my heart. But I can’t lie to her.

“My father intended for me to marry his brother Faramir,” I start, twisting the blanket between my fingers. “Our plan was to poison everyone at the Equinox Festival. But … it was Zev that came to retrieve me from Tundrayn.” Sura flinches when I say his name. “Our carriage was attacked by rebels. He—he thought I was involved. That was the first time I truly saw the Dark Commander. He was violent and angry and lethal. He terrified me. But more than that … he enraged me. I hated him and what he represented. I blamed him for my mother’s death. For your death. For the death of every Tundrayni.” Sura’s eyes are riveted to me, but I can’t bring myself to meet them. “But … as we traveled together, it became harder to hate him. I began to see the man, not the Dark Commander.

“And … I didn’t want to admit it, but that man was good. He was hurting, just like I was. He kept me safe. He comforted me during storms and didn’t humiliate me for it. And he protected me when any other man would’ve…” I swallow hard.

The words don’t want to pass my lips. I force myself to meet my best friend’s gaze and utter them anyway, stilted and hesitant. “H-he told me about the attack on your battalion. What he did. I thought he’d killed you and Tumaas. And still, I…”

The look of betrayal in Sura’s anguished blue eyes nearly silences me, but I force myself to keep going. “Nothing can excuse what he did, Sura, nothing. Tides drown me if I lie, I would do anything to save you from what you endured.”

“But?”

I’m tempted to fling myself over the edge in her voice.

“He’d just watched his best friend—his only friend—die a painful death after hours of suffering. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but he was hurting. He’d just lost the person closest to him, after already losing his mother.”

The air grows thick around us.

Sura doesn’t respond.

“Say something,” I plead, squeezing her hand.

“You knew how many Tundraynis died at his hand over the years.”

I dip my chin in a hesitant nod.

“And—and you believed he killed us. Me.” A statement, not a question.

I nod again.

Disbelief laces Sura’s voice when she says, almost to herself, “And still, you … care for him?”

I do. Tides help me, I do.

Tears stream down my face as I nod for the final time.

Sura is silent for several minutes.

It stretches between us for an eternity.

“Oh, Mayah-bear,” she finally whispers. “It’s all right.”

The force of the sob that wrenches from my throat shakes her narrow bed. Sura holds me as shuddering cries rack my body, cool relief mingled with cutting pain.