A suppressed smile tugged at the corners of Atrius’s mouth. Like a cat that was secretly hiding a canary in its teeth.
My brow twitched. “You have a plan.”
“I always have a plan.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. He always managed to make it work, I would give him that. But part of what made Atrius so difficult to understand—what made him such a formidable enemy—was that his plans didn’t make sense to anyone else but him. Sometimes I thought he conducted warfare like he fought in battle: entirely in the moment, responding to every change in circumstances in real time, impossible to anticipate.
“So?” I said. “Prove it. Enlighten me.”
He seemed to debate whether he wanted to or not.
“Are you familiar,” he said, “with the island of Veratas?”
“Yes, but—barely. It’s… a nothing island, isn’t it?”
Tiny. Uninhabited. Close to the eastern coast of Glaea.
“It was,” Atrius said. “Easiest conquering I’ve ever done.”
My brows rose now. “Conquering.”
Again, he was silent for a long moment, his eyes far away, a gentler smile playing at his lips. It was a strange expression on him, all those hard lines softened, even under the harsh light of the fire.
“There’s a settlement,” he said.
He spoke so quietly I almost didn’t hear him—like he was bestowing a precious secret to me, delicate as butterfly wings.
“They’ve lived there for a few months now,” he went on. “The husbands and wives and children.”
My lips parted in shock. His civilians? The families of his soldiers were… right over there, in Veratas?
“I—I’d assumed they were in the House of Blood. In Obitraes.”
Atrius shook his head. “No.”
I knew he wouldn’t answer. But I had to ask anyway.
“Why?”
His threads shivered slightly, as if beneath an unpleasant cold breeze.
“My people,” he said, “are not welcome back home.”
My people.
All this time I thought he’d meant the House of Blood. No. He meant his people—the ones who had followed him all this way.
His eyes lowered to the carpet, the fire reflecting flecks of gold in them.
“So,” he said, “I’ve had to find a new one for them. Or find a way to let them return to theirs.”
The wall over his presence, normally so impenetrable, suddenly disappeared, letting forth a wave of deep sadness. Not my brother’s wild grief. This was quiet and constant, like something that had just been accepted into one’s bones.
I felt an echoing ache in mine—something that, perhaps, had always been there, but I tried not to look at too closely.
“Why?” I murmured. “Why can’t you go home?”
Atrius’s eyes at last flicked back to mine, steel-stark against the firelight.
For a moment, the vulnerability in them shocked me.
And then the wall returned, and his back straightened, and his face hardened again. He cleared his throat, as if to force away the remnants of his honesty.
“My cousin, one of my generals, will be launching another offensive from the island,” he said. “Her men will roll in to support us from the sea, under the cover of the mists.”
He was trying to make this discussion businesslike again. It didn’t work. We had exposed too much to each other.
All at once, the realities of my role crashed down on me. In one day, three versions of myself who were not supposed to coexist—Sylina the seer, Sylina the Arachessen, and Vivi the lost little girl—had collided in the most confusing ways. The pieces of myself didn’t fit together. They were ugly contradictions.
A lump in my throat, I rose and crossed the room, each step closer to Atrius shivering up my spine.
What are you doing, Sylina?
He said nothing. But his eyes didn’t leave me, the way a predator’s tracked their prey. And yet, it wasn’t quite a predator’s hunger that shivered in him.
I lowered myself onto the arm of his chair, my legs touching his, practically in an embrace.
He didn’t move, but I sensed his heartbeat quicken.
I pressed my palm to his chest. His skin was warm, almost hot, like he was fighting back a fever. Beneath his flesh, I felt his curse eating at his threads, a gaping, starving mouth of necrosis.
“You’re in pain today,” I said softly.
“It’s fine.”
“You didn’t call for me.”
“You were busy.”