“What you said to me yesterday,” I say, keeping my face neutral. I am in control of this conversation. It will not go anywhere that I do not allow, and I am sick of fearing it.
“Mmmm” is the only response he makes.
“Well?” I demand.
“What?” he asks, exasperation tingeing his tone.
I lower my voice again. “You said you would never lie to me. You said you didn’t want anything between us. You said that by agreeing to Threydan’s terms, you would be lying. All three can’t be true.”
“Can’t they?”
At that, my look turns chilling. “Kearan Erroth, stop talking in questions and speak plainly.”
“What’s the point of that? No good will come of it.”
“The point is that I cannot make sense of you, and I want to understand what you meant.”
“No, you don’t.”
My hand goes for a knife. I pull it from a sheath in my boot and twirl it between my fingers. I need a means to occupy myself. And perhaps he’ll be more forthcoming if I have something sharp in my hands.
“You don’t want the truth, Sorinda,” he continues, moving closer so I can hear his lowered words. “You want what will make you feel in control. Believing I want nothing from you makes you feel in control. Unthreatened. It doesn’t force you to make decisions or think about me the way I want you to think about me. You want what’s easy. You need it. Because what you’re doing, all these external pressures of being stranded in a foreign land and looking after so many individuals—these trials would be difficult for anyone. You don’t need my feelings and thoughts making things harder. Besides, if I showed you exactly how much I want you, you would only distance yourself further from me. This way, I could help. This way, I could be your sailing master for the voyage. Your confidant. Your friend. I couldn’t have become any of those things if you thought I wanted even more.”
My knuckles turn white on the knife. “So you did lie to me.”
“I said I didn’t want anything from you. And that’s true. I don’t want just anything. Sorinda, I want everything with you.”
My gaze leaves the knife I’m holding and latches on to his face.
Everything? “What does that entail?”
“Does it matter?” he asks. He looks furious.
“If it didn’t, I wouldn’t ask.”
“Fine. Everything entails trust, honesty, friendship, love. A lifetime of all of it.”
“Oh, is that all?” I ask to be difficult. My fury rises to match his, but I refuse to raise my voice. Not when his life still hangs in the balance.
He has wanted me from the beginning and led me to believe otherwise. For my own good, no less, he proclaims.
So I would let down my guard. So I wouldn’t push him away so readily.
“You tried to trick me into liking you, is that it?” I ask, my voice going deadly.
“I wasn’t trying to trick you into anything. I was making this journey better for the both of us.”
“By playing with your words. Lying but not lying? You think you’re clever?”
“I think that, even now, you’d rather fight than be truthful with me. You’d rather stick that knife through my gut than tell me that you like me the smallest bit, even if it’s true.”
I toss the knife to my left hand, let my right index finger trace the indent of the fuller. “Truth? That’s what you want from me? You think if I tell you the truth we’ll live happily ever after?”
“Ever after is uncertain, but it looks a lot more hopeful when you have someone to share it with.”
Hope. Is that what he wants? Then I’ll just dash his hopes right now so he’ll finally see me for what I really am.
“All right,” I say quietly, twirling the knife in the air and catching it. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
And then he’ll leave me be, and I can focus on the problems at hand without his constant attention and nagging.
“You were right,” I say. “I did lie to you about what happened the night I lost my family.”
Kearan shakes his head abruptly. “No. We don’t need to do this now.”
“We do,” I disagree. Clearly he needs to see me as I really am.
“Sorinda—”
“Be quiet.”
He slams his lips closed.
“The beginning happened as I said. Samvin Carroter killed my family one by one. I did hide in the shadows as it happened, too overcome by fear to do anything more than watch and be still.” I shut my eyes as those images, forever burned into my memory, try to come to the surface. “He drowned my mother and sisters in that tub. And he knew there was one daughter left. Some of the servants were in the room with us. One, a maid, had a daughter my age. She was there. We’d been playing dress-up earlier that day and switched clothes. She was in my fine dress while I wore servant’s garb.”
I turn the knife in my hand around so I’m gripping the blade instead of the hilt. It’s the only way to keep my muscles from tensing. “She screamed so much louder than my sisters. She tried to say she wasn’t me. She begged for her life. And what did I do? I stayed right where I was. Hiding. I watched as he drowned that little girl in my stead. I let her die for me. I did nothing.” Tears slide down my cheeks silently, and I brush them away with closed fists. The knife I’m holding pinches my skin, and I drop it before I can do myself any damage.
I look back up at Kearan, who is back to his unmoving self. “Now you see. It was one thing to stand by and silently watch as my sisters died. It is as you said. There’s nothing I could have done to save them. I was too small. Too powerless. But the other girl? Sleina? I could have saved her. All I had to do was tell the truth. Reveal my hiding place. I would have died, and she would have lived. Then I would shine in the night sky with my family, and she would have been able to live the life she was meant to lead.”
I feel hollow as that memory finally breaks free. I’ve carried it for so long, never telling a single soul. Threydan stole it from me, but Kearan—I gave it to Kearan.
I swallow down the ache in my throat. “There. You’re set free.”
“Set free?” he asks.
“Yes. This delusion you have that you want anything from me. You don’t have to carry it anymore.”
He blinks. “Why is that?”
“Because I’m not who you thought I was. I may be a lot of things. I’m fierce. I’m talented. I’m smart. I’m capable. But my sins are so much greater than my strengths. They are a shadow that follows me wherever I go. I do my best by serving Alosa and doing good, but I know I can never make up for taking the life of that little girl. The only innocent I ever killed. She is a stain that will never wash free from my hands.”
Kearan moves then; he marches right up to where I sit on the snow-covered log by the fire. He kneels on the ground in front of me, heedless of the cold that must be seeping in through his pants.
“You listen to me, Sorinda Veshtas, and you listen well,” he says. He places his hands on either side of the log where I sit. “You were a child. Children are blameless. Children cannot sin. You were five. You were in shock. You were traumatized by the horrors you had witnessed. You were acting on instinct, driven to mere impulses, no longer in control. You are no more responsible for that little girl’s death than I am. That man? That murdering bastard? He killed her just as he did your family. You did not do any of it.”