“It sounds like you ended up where you were meant to be.”
I scoffed. “Hardly. I wasn’t born to be a fighter. I chose it, but it isn’t in my blood and bones the way it is in my brothers’. No matter how hard I train, I’ll never be as good as they are.”
“Just because your skills are different than your brothers’ doesn’t mean that one is better. You can do things they can’t. It seems like belonging in the secret order has more to do with what’s in here”—she placed a hand over her chest—“than what you were born to do.”
She might have had a point, but it didn’t excuse what I’d done.
“That nightstillhaunts me. It doesn’t matter how much time passes. I can still remember everything—the thoughts, the feel, the smell, it’s all so alive in my memory.”
“And you’re letting it kill you inside,” she said softly, lowering her hand from her chest. “Joriel…”
I hated the way her tone softened, the way she tried to comfort me. I didn’t deserve her kindness. I didn’t want her excusing what I’d done.
“Joriel.” Her voice was harder this time. “Look at me.”
I dragged my gaze to hers.
“You need to learn how to forgive yourself.”
“What if I can’t?”What if I don’t deserve forgiveness?
A flash of pain crossed her face, there for only a second before it was gone. “What if it were me?” she asked. “What if someone died because I was busy meeting with Roth in the gardens and letting him lure me away from God’s court? Would you forgive me?”
“It’s not—”
“Would you forgive me?”
“Yes.”
“Now how would it make you feel if I refused to forgive myself, if I let that one moment when I was in the wrong place at the wrong time define the entire rest of my life?”
“Laila…”
“I want you to picture it, me living the rest of my life with the crushing guilt. I make all my decisions based on the belief that I’m not worthy of love. I throw myself into danger at every opportunity, putting everyone and everything above my own safety. I never truly let myself be happy because how dare I feel anything good when I’m responsible for someone else’s pain?”
“Laila, please,” I gasped out. She was using her powers, creating the vision in my head to go along with her words. I wasn’t even sure if she realized she was doing it.“Stop.”
The vision of a miserable and broken Laila faded away, but the memory of it felt burned into my brain.
“Would it hurt you?” she whispered. “To watch me do that to myself?”
My chest pulled tight. It had already hurt me.
“Because it hurts me to watch you refuse to forgive yourself.”
I wanted to argue with her, to convince her that I didn’t deserve her pain, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
The thing was, even if I wanted to forgive myself, I wasn’t sure I could.
SIXTEEN
Laila
Something was off.I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was like some internal system was warning me that there was danger ahead.
My hand ghosted over the blade strapped to my thigh, reassuring me that I wasn’t defenseless. My other hand inched toward Joriel’s. I wanted to touch him, to feel connected to someone I trusted. Okay, that was a load of crap. I wanted to feel connected tohimspecifically.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked him in a whisper, not wanting to draw any kind of attention to us.
