A sob escaped her, one that sounded like it had cracked her chest open, and I caught her in my arms. She cried against my shoulder. All the while, the letter ran on a loop in my mind.
Goddess, but that was love. Real and true. Amryssa was lucky...and cursed, for having lost her mother that way, but so unbelievably lucky to have experienced love like that in the first place.
I smoothed her hair. She eventually pulled back, leaving a gluey mess of tears and mucus along my neckline.
“This explains so much.” Her voice fractured into quiet pieces.
“It does? Like what?”
“Like why I’ve always felt so...apart. Why I’ve never truly fit, why I’m not shaped like other people inside. Why I sometimes feel like a shadow of something greater, or like there’s this hole in me where something more should be. Why the swamp calls and calls and calls to me and never stops.”
I stiffened. “That’show you’ve felt? Always?”
She trained tear-bright eyes on me.
I felt like I was choking. “Why haven’t you ever said so?”
“Because.” She sniffled. “I didn’t want you to worry. I know it hurts you when I’m unhappy. So I’ve tried. I truly have. I’ve tried to be content.”
I inhaled sharply. “You’re not, though?”
“I am,” she said, averting her eyes. “Sometimes. With you, when we’re laughing. Or when Lunk tells me chicken stories. But it’s hard, Harlowe. The swamp. It shouts louder every day.”
I took the diary and set it aside, needing a moment to concentrate on something other than her crumpled face.
How I wished things had gone the way the Lady Marche had intended. But they hadn’t—not only did Amryssa not want the same things, but her mother’s sacrifice had gone awry. When the Lady had finally ventured into the swamp, she’d been waylaid by a nightmare. She’d died before offering herself to Zephyrine, thus leaving Olivian with an impossible choice: consign his daughter to the marsh, or curse Oceansgate with the nightmares.
But at least this explained why the seneschal had stayed. He was responsible for this.
My next question stuck in my chest, blocking my airway and squatting on my heart. I had to ask, yet the prospect terrified me.
So I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath. After all, I’d battled a nightmare andalmostwon. I could do this.
“What do you want?” My words were about as firm as last night’s pudding, so I repeated myself, louder this time. “Now that you know, what do you want to do about this?”
Amryssa’s chin trembled. She stared and stared and stared, and in the quiet, the two halves of my heart declared war on one another.I need you to be happy, but gods above, please don’t leave me.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Would you be all right, if I went?”
Oh, goddess. I caged my answer against the roof of my mouth, feeling like a monster for having it ready.
“That’s not fair, I know,” she rushed to add. “But I want you to tell me the truth.”
I tried a few versions out in my head, then shaped my denial into something suitably gentle. “I’d be...lost.”
She nodded, as if she’d expected that. “And my father? Do you think he’d be all right?”
“No,” I blurted, because that had no shades of gray. Olivian had gutted his territory for her. Knowing what I did now, I suspected losing his daughter might actually kill him.
He’d have nothing left. Just ghosts and guilt and nightmares. Ones he’d brought on himself, but...still. He hadn’t made any choices I wouldn’t have. “No. He wouldn’t.”
“Then I think...I have to stay.” Amryssa scrubbed at her cheeks, her eyes solemn. “Because I could never hurt him like that. Or you.”
The iron band around my ribcage loosened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But is this actually what you want?”
