And she knew she’d be enjoying the same sense of gut-wrenching anxiety even if they hadn’t recently become … intimate. Loving him, romantic or otherwise, had always been what made life at the Divide tolerable. Even with how much he’d been gone, she always knew he’d come back. But not this time—he couldn’t. There was nothing for him to return to.
So ultimately, it wasn’t Kharon Gate, or the Drudgers, or the other Sentinels, or the Legion’s mysterious disappearing act that worried her. It was just Griffith Bach’s fate. He rooted her to this life, and without him, she’d be lost.
She let out a sharp breath and dragged her hands through her hair, pressing her cold fingers against the warmth of her scalp.
Cavalon coughed, and his groggy voice startled her. “Have you been to Artora for the decennial fall equinox?”
She let go of her head and lifted her face from her knees. He remained lying faceup, eyes closed, the pink in his cheeks stark against his pallid skin.
“No,” she said.
“It’s ridiculous.” A weary grin tugged at his lips. “It’s when they swing so close to their binary, Myrdin, it takes up half the sky.”
She glared down at him. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Is it working?”
She didn’t respond at first, but after a few moments, she quietly mumbled, “Not really,” though her tone betrayed her. Mindless chatter felt better than mulling over everything she could have done differently in the last day.
“Okay.” Cavalon grunted as he propped up on his elbows, then slouched against the wall beside her. “You told me a story,” he croaked. “I’ll tell you one. Are you ready?”
“I guess…”
“Once upon a time…” He cleared his throat. “There was a kingdom led by shitheads.”
She scoffed.
“It gets interesting,” he assured. “Trust me.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“So, in this kingdom led by shitheads, there was a preeminent leader—a king of kings, if you will. The shittiest of them all.”
“Ah.” She fought back a smile. This was to be autobiographical, then.
“After decades of unhindered tyranny,” he continued, “the shithead procreated. By some unequivocal miracle, and despite years of brainwashing disguised as a royal education, his spawn was not a shithead. The spawn wanted to change things, but he wasn’t allowed to truly lead. He was throttled, puppeteered by the shithead himself.”
“A figurehead,” she offered.
“Exactly.” He nodded. “Years later, the spawn spawned, and thus introduces the hero of our story.”
Adequin quirked an eyebrow. “Hero?”
“Leading man?”
“No.”
Cavalon frowned. “All right, our protagonist—we’ll call him ‘the boy’—led a fairly clueless childhood. Thankfully, the shithead was busy enough with his evil endeavors that most of the childrearing had been left to the spawn and the shithead’s wife, who was also unquestionably not a shithead.”
“The boy’s grandmother?”
“Right.”
“I met her once.”
Cavalon’s face fell slack. “You … did?”
“Corinne Mercer?”
He gave a wavering nod. “When?”
“Shortly before the war started. My first posting after basic was at Legion HQ. She attended a summit where I was a security escort for a senator. I think she was there bidding to get Legion-held Viator tech released for private sector research.”