“I don’t believe for one second that what she did was right, but I don’t think she did it on purpose. Her magic—yourmagic—it’s powerful. It has a mind of its own, if you’re not careful with it.”
“So she just lost control? Is that going to happen to me?” Kestrel’s mind was reeling. She stared down at her hands. They were small; they looked the same as they always had, like they were incapable of hurting so much as a mouse.
“Of course not, Little Fury,” Thom said, trying to be reassuring. “No one is going to hurt you like they hurt her.”
It was an empty promise though, Kestrel knew. One he had no control over. For she had already experienced hurt, betrayal, deceit. So far, it seemed like everyone she’d met had crossed that line between friend and foe, including him.
Everyone except Elora.
How much more heartbreak would it take before she snapped just like her mother did?
Elora’s voice leaned over her shoulder. “We should get going before the guards change.”
Kestrel nodded again, even though leaving was the last thing she wanted to do. Truth be told, she could’ve spent hours down there with him. But that wasn’t possible yet. And the two of them would soon be needed for their journey into the Hollows. This was meant to be a quick visit. Just to make sure he was alright. And to ask him…
“I just need to know one more thing.”
His tired eyes met hers. “Anything.”
“What’s your real name?” Maybe it was a stupid thing to waste a final question on, but it was something that had been tormenting her. And if they were to go on to maintain any sort of relationship after this, she needed to know.
A sad smile creeped up one side of his face, crinkling the scar across his cheek and eye.
“I’ve been Thom now for nearly twenty years. Part of me always will be. But before you were born, I was called Darius.”
“And you changed your name so that we could go into hiding?”
“Correct.”
Kestrel nodded, thinking. She wasn’t sure what that meant for what she should call him, but she could figure that out later. “We have to go now, but I wanted you to know I am going to end this curse. And when I do, I’ll demand your freedom. You just have to wait a little longer.”
Despite the gloom around them, Darius actually smiled. “You are so much like her, you know that?”
Kestrel didn’t, but she felt something warm bloom inside her all the same.
Saying goodbye, she turned around to join Elora on their walk back out of the dungeon, when Darius called out one more time.
“Princess Elora? Might I have a word?”
Chapter 33
Forgiveness is a Tearing of the Heart
ELORA
Elora had been listening to the two of them, watching their interactions like a guarded owl in a tree. Darius looked like the same person, if only a bit more weathered and weary. His hair was longer, the scar on his cheek a little more profound with the aging and sagging of his skin. But hesoundeddifferent. Ages apart from the cold and stoic guard who had overseen most of her torture in Caelora.
In his soothing and hushed words to Kestrel, Elora could hear the father in his voice. The protector. Sometimes, it was so at odds with the monster she remembered him to be, that she felt herself dizzying, one hand needing to brace herself on a beam nearby as they discussed a lifetime of secrets between them.
By the time they were ready to go, Elora was eager for fresh air.
She needed distance between them—both the memory of the man and this new version she couldn’t quite reconcile with.
And then, he called her name.
“Princess Elora?” Truth be told, she wasn’t even sure he’d known who she was. After all, he had likely tortured hundredsof Caeloran prisoners in his time as a guardsman. Then again, she supposed an Ashen stood out—and one of their nobles, at that. “Might I have a word?”
Elora had never wanted to disappear into darkness more than she did in that moment.
