Page 90 of Hearts Lost

ALOSERIN

SHOULD I BELIEVE YOU?

Voids, she smells good. As I pull Ithronel closer to my chest, her scent fills the air around us, and images I’d tried desperately to forget tumble over themselves in my mind. The room swims as memories crack open in my chest and threaten to drag me to my knees. Carrying Ithronel through the Outer Ring. Folding her cloak back to check her face for frostbite. Running my frozen fingers over her cheek at night, when I thought no one else was watching, wondering what I would say to her if I ever got the chance to do it all over again. Wondering how I could possibly explain the tattered mess she’d made of my heart.

A growl reverberates through the room, and I snap back to consciousness. Rowan is sprawled out on the floor of the cell, looking smaller and somehow more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. Fear loops thick bands around my chest and pulls tight. I gave him a dagger Lythienne said was coated with dragonsbane but, voids below, at the moment that really doesn’t seem like much.

“You’re staying, then?” Rensivar rumbles.

There’s a hissing, slithering sound, and the dragon’s hoary face looms in the cell door. Panic pulls my muscles tight, and once again I’m staggering through the void with Ithronel in my arms, pushing forward in a haze of agony and exhaustion with nothing in my brain but the dull, throbbing urge to get her out of here. To bring Ithronel to safety.

I stumble toward the door, and Rensivar pulls back. I could swear he’s smirking in a way that some part of me finds deeply problematic, but that’s a concern for another day. Right now there’s a portal writhing before me, and I have to reach it before the dragon who destroyed my kingdom decides to shut it down.

Heat washes over me as I step through the portal’s magic. I grit my teeth against the burn, against the unpleasant pulling sensation, and I feel Ithronel tense in my arms. I glance down, old instinct pushing me to check on her breathing, to check her features for frostbite, and I’m still staring at Ithronel’s closed eyes when my boots hit the floor of my parent’s impossible basement dungeon.

“—can’t possibly be allowed to leave,” a voice says as I stumble through the scorching heat of the portal and onto unforgiving stone.

There’s a gasp, and for one horrifying moment, the entire room spins and I think I might pass out. I grit my teeth and pull every muscle in my body tight. My back and shoulders ache already with the dull, familiar pain of carrying Ithronel, and some part of me wonders how I ever found the strength to carry her out of the void. To carry her for ten days.

Because it was easier, my mind hisses as the portal behind me fades into oblivion. Keeping her asleep was easier than waking her up. Pain was easier than asking her if it had all been a lie. Death was easier than dishonor.

“Aloserin,” my mother cries.

She takes a step toward me, one arm outstretched, then stops. Her face is very pale, and her mouth is a round circle of shock. Behind her, the magician Nyana stands with her arms crossed over her chest.

“It’s done,” my father announces from beside the door.

He looks exhausted. My parents exchange a glance, and then he turns to me.

“You’ll be staying here, of course,” my father says. “Until we go to the new place.”

His voice is perfectly reasonable, friendly almost, but there’s a sadness in his expression that makes me wonder what he was like before the war. Before his kingdom was trapped in the Lands Below.

“No,” I reply, the words surfacing slowly from the churning mess of my mind. “No, I will not be staying here. Not ever again.”

My mother’s eyes widen.

“We can’t allow her to leave,” Nyana snaps. She’s scowling at Ithronel in a way that makes the skin on the back of my neck pull tight. “You can go, I suppose. This is your family, after all. You couldn’t tell anyone what’s happened here without implicating yourself. But her—”

Nyana’s voice fades into a heavy silence.

“I hope you understand,” Mother says. Her voice trembles. “It’s for the best, really.”

The best? The best for whom? I run my eyes around the room, taking in my parents and Nyana, the magician who’s betraying her kingdom, and even our lone servant Archibald.

I could take them, I realize. With or without Ithronel’s help, I could physically overpower the four people in this room. It’s what I’ve spent my entire adult life training to do; even now, some part of my mind is calculating how to get stone at my back and a blade in my hand. Wondering whom to attack first.

I sigh, suddenly feeling more exhausted than I’ve ever felt in my life.

“I am walking out of that door,” I announce. “And I am never, under any circumstances, coming back. Do you understand?”

Tears glitter in my mother’s eyes. My father’s face looks pale, despite the flush in his cheeks and nose.

“If that woman betrays us—” Nyana growls.

“I’ll take her somewhere secure,” I reply.

My mother barks a manic little laugh. “What? Are you going back to the Outer Ring to disgrace us again?”