“Tell me, then,” she said. “Why are you doing this? The dream?”
He laughed. “Because I’m extremely unhappy.”
Kadaki didn’t smile with him. “Why are you unhappy?”
He looked almost nervous behind his jerky smile and glassy gaze. “What did you come here for?” he asked instead of answering.
To tell you that we’re not going to continue what we started in the ruins,she should have said. Instead, what came out was, “Why did you leave?”
As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. She wasn’t ready to hear the answer. Her heart pounded.
He just watched her for a long time, looking sad and distant.
Kadaki stood up, unable to sit still. She managed to tame the tremor in her hands, but then it crept into her voice instead. “After Kuda Varai, you said you would come with me. You said you’d help me sort my life out after I deserted, and I’d help you do the same, and we’d be together to support each other. That’s the only reason I left the army. I thought things would be okay as long as I had someone there with me. And then you left, and you left that—thatstupidnote. And I was alone.”
He didn’t answer.
She clenched her teeth. “Neiryn?”
“I was afraid,” he said finally.
“Of what?”
“Change. I wasn’t ready to give everything up the way Novikke and Aruna did. I thought I was, at first. My people abandoned me, and I was angry about that. But to leave behind everything—my entire life, my people, my culture, my home—it would be madness. I love my country, Kadaki. I love the way the sunlight looks in Ysura. I love that you can smell olaga trees on the air all summer. I love looking out at Tal-Vreth from the tops of the towers in the city. I love being able to see Mount Uriethwyn always on the horizon, no matter how far I walk.” He shook his head. “Despite its flaws, I love it.”
“But we had all betrayed our leaders when we decided to save Kuda Varai,” Kadaki said. Her voice sounded strained. “I thought we were all going rogue together.”
He shook his head, rueful. “You did. I didn’t. I was still free to go back to Ysura.”
He was right, she realized. What reason did he have to go with them? Of course he wouldn’t have wanted to give up everything. Not just for her.
“So that’s what you did,” she said. “You just decided to… go home.”
He just looked at her. He looked regretful, but he offered no apology. She hadn’t thought he would, even though she’d hoped for it. She had imagined him telling her he never should have left, then confessing his love for her and begging for her forgiveness.
But that wasn’t the way things worked.
There were no apologies. Only the uncomfortable reminder that he hadn’t cared for her as deeply as she had for him. She hadn’t been enough for him.
She turned on her heel and went to the door.
“I didn’t know how much it would hurt you,” he said. “That was never what I wanted.”
She paused with her hand on the door handle. “You didn’t hurt me. Don’t overestimate your importance in my life.”
She enjoyed the twitch of pain on his face as she spoke.
* * *
The next morning,she awoke to the sound of shouting.
She stumbled out of bed and ran into the hall, fearing a repeat of the previous day’s disaster. Perhaps the sinkhole would grow to consume the entire house. Roshan’s surveyors had said it appeared to have stabilized, but maybe they were wrong.
She quickly realized that the house was still fully stable. The shouting was coming from Neiryn’s room. She ran to the door and pounded on it. “Neiryn?” she called. He didn’t answer. Strange noises came from within.
She channeled a burst of magic through her hand, shoving it against the door, and the door flew open.
In midair above the bed, water gushed from nowhere, as if from a fountain. The bed and the pile of tangled sheets atop it were soaked. Water ran off the sides of the bed frame and pooled on the floor.
