A ludicrous question, one she could’ve laughed at if her throat didn’t feel scraped raw. She shook her head. Solmir wasn’t asking about her feelings. He just wanted to know if she could move, if she could continue their journey to the Heart Tree. That’s what he needed her for—her emotional state was secondary, if considered at all.
But when she opened her eyes, saw the way his shone with worry, she wondered if maybe that wasn’t true.
Concern honed his already knife-sharp features even finer, made his mouth pull flat, his high forehead wrinkle. His long hair was streaked with blood; it fell over his shoulder, the ends brushing her cheek.
“Neve,” he said again, and this time the tone was different. As if he knew she was lying when she indicated she wasn’t hurt. As if he wanted her to talk to him.
And he was the only thing to talk to in this whole cold, dead world.
Gingerly, Neve sat up, wincing as she did. Rubble lay strewn around them, pieces of broken bone. She turned to look at what they’d escaped.
The mountain had flattened, but not all the way to the cracked ground. Some of the bones remained fused together, making a nearly smooth wall of ivory that still towered above her head. Rattling still echoed in the air, as if the mountain was caught in a slow-motion collapse, dismantling made graceful by lack of speed. She thought of the Oracle’s cave, how the dais had fallen through the floor and pulled the other bones into the hole it made, and shuddered.
“We can rest a moment, but we shouldn’t stay long,” Solmir said. He nodded toward the bones. “The mountain isn’t stable.”
“Did it hurt you?” Neve remembered the fall, in bits and pieces. Wind on her face and the groan of destruction, his arms holding her tight enough to bruise. He’d kept the worst of it from her, kept her as safe as he could, knowing they couldn’t die but wanting to save her from pain.
Because he needs you. She said it fiercely to herself, forming the words into daggers so she wouldn’t forget them. Only because he needs you.
He shrugged in answer, though the proof was all over him—abrasions on his arms, a bloody slash at the corner of his lip. It was strange to see someone bleed here, where there was no crimson to mark the cut. Just charcoal-colored liquid that could be almost anything. “My wounds are superficial, and not the kind that need to be talked about.”
A lead-in if there ever was one. He’d watched her crumple as the Oracle extracted its truth. He knew it left a wound.
“I understand that I’m not someone you would choose to speak to about such things,” Solmir said, sitting next to her on the ground with his knees pulled up, arms resting atop them. “But I’m here. And I’m willing to listen.”
She kept her arms protectively curled around her middle, as if all these shards of guilt and shame and anger were physical things she had to stop from pushing out through her skin, thorns of a different kind. They all swirled in her head now, unfettered by the ways she’d lashed them down, always saying she’d deal with them later later later. Later was now, and the way the Oracle had delved into her head made all of those buried feelings impossible to catch, like trying to cup a river in her hands, like lying at the bottom of a grave and trying to swallow all the dirt.
A slight rumble tremored through the ground, rattling the bones.
“I wish I hated you more,” Neve said softly.
No reaction from Solmir, though he started twisting that ring on his finger again.
“I wish I hated you more,” Neve continued, “because then I could talk myself into blaming you completely. For everything.” She shifted on the ground, tugging his coat tight around her. “I can blame you for most of it. You may not have held the knife that killed Arick, but you were the reason he died. You would’ve killed Red and Eammon if you had to.”
He didn’t deny it. Didn’t do anything but twist that ring around and around and around.
“But none of it would’ve happened if I let her go,” Neve said. “If I had done what she asked. If I’d told Arick to stay, if I hadn’t listened to Kiri, if I’d cared more when my mother died instead of seeing it as means to an end. If I’d just listened to Raffe.” She didn’t realize she’d started crying until she tasted salt—Neve wasn’t one for crying, and the sensation was strange. She swiped roughly at her cheek. “If I hated you more, I might be able to convince myself it was all your fault anyway, find some loop in logic that allowed me to think it even if I knew, deep down, it wasn’t true. But I don’t. So I can’t.”