A lump forms in my throat. My chest feels hollow.
“I’m not proud of what I did, McKenzie,” Aren says. He’s still staring at the river, and the starlight reflecting off its surface is mirrored in his eyes.
“What made you leave?” Now it’s my voice that’s gone flat.
“Lena’s and Sethan’s father.” He turns away from the river to look at me. “I was an imithi before I met Thrain. The exact translation would be orphaned wanderer, but it’s…It’s more than that. It’s a subgroup of fae, usually children, who have no family, no roots. It’s not a healthy way to grow up. Fae can fissure from place to place easily, but not having somewhere to call home changes us. We don’t follow the rules and customs of a region. We don’t care if we anger or offend people—we can just fissure to another city. We break laws and cause trouble, and there are almost never any consequences.”
A part of me—the weak, sensitive part—wants to reach out to him, but I force myself to keep my hands at my sides, and say, “That doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
I see him swallow again, and this time, it’s not because he’s struggling to control himself.
“I know,” he says, and my chest aches, hearing the pain in his voice. “I’m telling you this because I want you to understand why I followed Thrain. We—me and the other imithi—all pretended to accept our situations, but in truth, we wanted roots. Thrain took advantage of that. Healing is a rare magic, so I was useful to him, and I wanted a mentor. It didn’t matter who it was. Not until I tried to steal silver from the mines in Adaris.”
Adaris. That’s one of the provinces Atroth dissolved, the one where Lena is from.
“You stole silver?”
“I tried to steal it,” he says. Then he gives a short laugh. He doesn’t smile, though, and there’s no light in his eyes. “It’s not the smartest thing to do, and I didn’t plan it. Briant, the elder of Zarrak, showed up. He lived there, so he had experience fighting with deposits of silver around him. I didn’t. He slipped through my defenses and gave me a wound that would have sent me to the ether if he hadn’t ordered Lena to heal me.”
“I’m sure she loved that,” I mutter, imagining her having to heal someone who had just tried to kill a member of her family.
“There was an argument,” he says. This time, when he chuckles, he does smile. “Anyway, the Zarraks were already making plans to oppose Atroth. They gave me a cause to fight for—a good cause—and they gave me a home.”
He takes an anchor-stone out of his pocket. “I’ve spent every day since I ended my association with Thrain attempting to make up for it. Briant was a good man. I wanted to deserve the home he gave me.” He runs his thumb over the surface of the stone. “I want to deserve you.”
Those words make my heart thud against my chest, erasing the numb, hollow feeling that was there.
“Aren—”
“You need to know something else,” he says, stepping forward and pressing the anchor-stone into my hand. “I regret what I did to Brene, but I would do it again. Radath had Briant. Brene knew where they were. She wouldn’t tell us. We had so little time and…” He draws in a breath. “By the time I made her tell us, she was broken, and he was already dead.” His gaze grows distant as he relives the moment. “Almost dead. Radath tortured him. He’d lost so much blood and…If I’d acted sooner, I could have healed him.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until it hurts. Falling in love with someone shouldn’t be this difficult. It should be something you easily slip into, like a bed with silk sheets, but I can’t continue questioning why I’m with Aren. I need to decide if I’m going to follow my heart or if I’m going to follow my head. I followed my heart with Kyol for ten years. It was the wrong decision.
The phone in my pocket vibrates, startling me. I wasn’t expecting a response to my text, especially not one so quickly, but I take the cell out and read Nakano’s message.
“He took the bait,” I tell Aren. “He and his team will fly out tonight.”
“That’s good,” he says quietly. Then he turns back to the river and dips his hand into its rippling surface. I watch as he lifts his palm to the stars, letting the water fall between his fingers. A rumble vibrates through the air as the rain turns into light, a fissure safe for me to step into as long as I have a fae escort.
Aren turns back to me, holds out his hand. His chaos lusters leap to my skin when I take it. It’s as if they know I’m struggling with a decision, and they’re going to make it as difficult as possible for me to be clearheaded about it.
Aren pulls me gently toward him. “You told me you wanted time. I’ve given it to you, and I’ll give you as long as you need, McKenzie. I love you.” He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You’re worth waiting a decade for.”
He places the softest of kisses on my lips, then takes me into the In-Between.
TWENTY
WHEN WE STEP into Corrist, Aren changes. He’s back to his usual, lackadaisical self. It’s like our conversation never happened. His movements are relaxed, languid even, and, as we pass through the silver wall, he teases me about my tendency to get hurt—which I promptly point out is so not my fault. Fae keep trying to kill me, and I wasn’t born with a sword in my hand like he and everyone else in the Realm practically were.
His voice is still light when we step out of an alley and the Silver Palace comes into view.
“You’ve been to the Sidhe Cabred,” he says.
“Yeah,” I answer, even though he wasn’t asking a question. When we were back in Germany, he found the anchor-stone that proved I’d been fissured to the Ancestors’ Garden via a Sidhe Tol. “It was three years ago.”
“Lena’s thinking about allowing anyone to enter it,” he says. “The high nobles are against the idea.”
Of course they are.
“They love their privileges,” I say.
Aren nods. “It’s beautiful?”
I shift my focus from the palace’s silver-rimmed turrets to him. “You haven’t seen it yet?”
“I’ve been busy.”
True. That’s why we’ve only seen each other a handful of times since Atroth died.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him, remembering the vibrant green leaves edged in pinks and purples. “Even at night, the flowers are brighter and more alive than any I’ve seen in my world, and they’re lit with magic. Their petals are soft. Their scent lingers on your skin and…”
I stop. The only reason I know that last part is because Kyol laid me down on a bed of laubrin at the foot of the Sidhe Cabred’s waterfall. I thought the flowers would be prickly and uncomfortable; they weren’t. They were sleek and silky, and Aren doesn’t need to know what Kyol and I almost did on top of them.
“It’s beautiful,” I say again. Aren’s watching me, his thoughts unreadable in his silver eyes. He doesn’t look away until we near the base of the palace. He calls out to the guards watching us through hidden slits in the wall, and the small doorway beside the big, elaborate gate opens, allowing us entry.
“You should try to get some rest before we fissure to Boulder,” Aren says once we’re inside.
Lena’s decided to give the vigilantes time to pack up and leave for Cleveland, so we have a few hours before I need to be ready to go. Sleep isn’t a bad idea, so I nod and tell him I’ll meet him later.
I head to my room to get as much rest as I can, but when I turn down the corridor that leads to the second level of the residential wing, I see Paige scrambling across the floor on her hands and knees.