I am sorry about many things, but I am not sorry about this.
I start with a happy memory. They are so few nowadays. As I write, Kalen patrols the city with my azi, and Khalad is hard at work with his forging. It is a lonely vigil tonight in the Santiang Palace, with none but my own thoughts for company.
My brother always asks me to be candid, though I know it sometimes makes him uncomfortable.
Let me be candid now.
• • •
On the day we were to leave for Istera, I woke up later than I intended and with every desire of prolonging the hour. With a low grunt, I rolled onto my stomach and pressed my face against the sheets, content to breathe into the mattress. The bed was harder than its downy counterpart at the Valerian, but I preferred this. The bed in my asha-ka didn’t have his scent on the covers, and his warmth was better than any blanket. He was the only place I could rest my head and dream without nightmares plaguing me, as they had for the last three months.
I felt the bed dip beside me, felt his lips ghost over my skin. “You need to get up,” Kalen murmured, his voice husky from sleep, but the rough fabric against my shin told me he’d already dressed. I squinted in the direction of the windows. It was a little past dawn. Of the two of us, he was the morning person. I no longer needed to attend classes in the Willows, but with many mandatory nights spent entertaining visitors at the asha-ka, I frequently crawled into his bed a couple of hours past midnight.
I muttered something inconsequential and burrowed my head underneath the pillow. “Go away.”
I heard him chuckle, and the mattress dipped farther. “Tea.”
“A few minutes.”
Kalen nudged the pillow out of the way. “I know you’re tired, but as generous as Zahid has been regarding our room accommodations, I don’t think sleeping in would be a good plan for today.”
That was true enough. Asha were offered some leeway when it came to pursuing personal relationships, as long as those relationships didn’t conflict with their duties. Lord Zahid, the Deathseekers’ master-at-arms, had been understanding of Kalen and me; Kalen’s fellow soldiers were not above some friendly ribbing. Faced with the choice between losing my visiting hours with Kalen or embarrassment from his mostly good-natured comrades, I had quickly learned to live with the latter.
“Five more minutes…”
His breath warmed the spot behind my neck, the part that never fails to break into goose bumps from his touch. His tongue flicked out, and within a few seconds, I was both wide eyed and wide awake.
“Kalen! You cheater!”
He laughed and dodged my attempts to flail at him. “Don’t make me kick you out.”
He was wearing a maroon jobba instead of the dark coat and pants he preferred. Deathseeker or not, Kalen was nobility, and any visits he made to allied countries required formal dress. Remembering that I too needed to hurry home and change given the crumpled state of my hua, I sat up and turned toward the mirror. With common cosmetics, I would have resembled a raccoon. With apothecary spells mixed in, my rouge and liner managed to look only slightly marred. “This is all your fault.”
“I know,” he agreed, unrepentant.
“It’s rare enough for Parmina to give me the night off. I should have been resting. You said you were going to walk me home.”
“We are home.”
“I meant to the Valerian, you lout.”
“I can walk you home now.”
I glared at him. He walked me home in the mornings, regardless of where we ended up the night before.
He smiled back. Gruff as he usually was, Kalen could look insidiously innocent if he wished. “And I will. Councilor Ludvig isn’t expecting us for another hour.”
“An hour?” I swore loudly and hopped out of bed, pulling on my hua haphazardly. “You never mentioned how late it was!”
“Yes. My trying to get you out of bed had nothing to do with that.”
I tugged my waist wrap into place around me and glared at him again. “This is all your fault.”
“I know.”
I reached up and kissed him. “Take me home,” I commanded, “and if we’re late, you get to explain why to Parmina.”
“I would much rather face another daeva.”
I paused. “I need one stop,” I amended quietly.
Kalen squeezed my hand. He knew what I wanted. I always asked for the same detour. “Of course.”
• • •
The graveyard was not far from the Willows. As was the custom, a generous portion of it had been set aside for ashas’ and Deathseekers’ graves, a row of daffodils planted in a line to demarcate their headstones from the rest of the populace. Even in death, the great equalizer, important people pushed up better shrubbery than the rest, I thought.
A small monument stood at the graveyard’s center. It was a statue of Vernasha of the Roses, the founder of Kion, as well as its first asha. A single line was set in bronze at the foot of the statue, a tribute to all those who had served and given their lives to protect the kingdom. My fingers traced over the words:
A life worth dying for is a life worth living.
We stood among the Deathseekers’ tombs first, where Kalen honored in silence all the brothers he had lost. Then we moved toward the ashas’ side, to one grave in particular.
“Good morning, Polaire,” I said, greeting her softly, sinking to my knees. Hers was a shiny, gray slab, free of the moss that claimed those around hers. It grated at my heart that she was here at all. Today, a bouquet of fresh lilies had been carefully placed over the grave—Althy’s doing, I surmised.
These daily pilgrimages did nothing to lighten my guilt. Three months wasn’t long enough. Thirty years wouldn’t be long enough either.
“I’ve been having visions,” I told her softly. “But are they bad dreams or something worse? Sometimes I dream you are alive only to see Aenah use the daeva to kill you again and again. Sometimes the victim changes, and it’s Mykaela or Althy or Likh or Zoya. Sometimes I dream that the Valerian is on fire. The vision is so real that I can feel the heat on my skin and the sun burning in my hair. Only Kalen helps chase those nightmares away. Is this my penance for not saving you?”
Kalen was quiet. He wrapped his arms around me as I tried in vain to slough off my sins like old skin.
I wove a tiny rune before Polaire’s stone, allowed the magic to flow out of my fingers, burrowing into the ground below me. I probed the dirt for any spark that I could channel, any suggestion of life I could steal from her bones and multiply so she could rise from the earth, smile, and tell me how much of an idiot I had been while she’d been gone.