I was a little surprised that Sella didn’t throw us back out into the street.
But no, she was a proper Aran lady. So instead, she invited us in,
quickly arranged a guest room for us, gave us an opportunity to clean up, and informed us that dinner was starting shortly. She was polite, if a bit chilly and—understandably—confused as to why we were here.
I held my tongue until Brayan and I were left alone to clean up. “This,” I hissed, “was a terrible idea, Brayan.”
“It was better than the alternative.” I wasn’t sure if that was the case.
He shot me a frown. “Do you even remember Sella? What with your—” “Of course I remember her.”
Sella and Brayan were lovers for years. Even as a younger man, Brayan generally had only three affectations, and none of them were what I would describe as “warm.” But still, everyone knew that he adored her. Hell, who wouldn’t? She was kind, talented, beautiful, well-bred. My parents approved. She would be a perfect new Lady Farlione. All was well.
Except…
My brow knotted as I followed my broken trail of memory up until it faded. “Up until the end,” I said. “I take it, then, that the wedding didn’t happen.”
He scowled and looked away. “No, the wedding did not happen.” “Why not?”
“Get dressed. Hide those tattoos,” he said, and swung the door shut.
I did the best I could. I hadn’t had access to a mirror since leaving Ilyzath—part of me wished that was still the case. No wonder Sella looked
at us the way she did. Changing helped, marginally, as did shaving. I was careful to button the sleeves and collar to hide the Stratagram tattoos, though the edges of black circles still peeked past the cuffs and collar of the white shirt, and there was nothing to be done about the ones on my hands— nor the mark Ilyzath left on my palm.
Even that earned a disapproving look from Brayan, which I returned with a “what do you expect me to do?” shrug.
Still, I understood the concern. I tried to keep my hands out of sight at the dinner table, but I earned long, lingering stares from the cook as dinner was brought out.
I didn’t like that look. Like he was trying to figure out how he knew my face.
There were few servants here for such a large house, but even a few were too many. Brayan and I exchanged a glance that silently confirmed we were thinking the same thing.
Sella, too, looked as if she understood the implications of prying eyes and quickly excused them, closing the door and leaving us in the dimly lit dining room in uncomfortable silence.
I started eating immediately. Ascended above, I had forgotten how good real food was. Good enough to make the palpable awkwardness of this dinner fade into the background. Food in Ilyzath was something given to you just to keep you from death, and nothing more.
Brayan was, at last, the first to speak. “Thank you for allowing us to stay,” he said.
“Of course. I wouldn’t turn away old friends. Even after so many years.” Her voice was decidedly frosty as her gaze examined each of us.
“It is deeply appreciated, Sella,” Brayan said, again. The softer cadence to his voice when he said her name made me stop chewing, one eyebrow twitching.
For a second there, I thought I still saw the infatuated teenager.
But immediately following the amusement was a sour note of unease.
We were putting Sella at risk by coming here.
“We’ll be leaving early tomorrow,” Brayan said. “We will only bother you for a few more hours.”
“I see,” Sella said, taking a dainty bite of her dinner. “Then we’ll waste no time on small talk.”
Sella was a smart woman. The point to her voice said as much. She meant: I won’t ask you questions that I shouldn’t know the answer to.
Good.
Brayan looked up and down the table—there were enough chairs for several more people, but only three plates. “Will anyone else be joining us?”
Subtle, Brayan.
Sella gave a tight smile. “No, only me tonight.”
Brayan looked as if he was trying very hard to have no reaction to this at all.
Dinner went quickly, with stilted, uncomfortable small talk that I barely listened to. I wasn’t good at it before, and a broken mind and months of isolation and torture certainly hadn’t improved my social skills.
When we were done, Sella rose from her seat. “We can go into the library for tea, if you would like some.”
If I would like some.
I would murder someone for tea.
She led us to another large mahogany door and ushered us inside. The room was light-soaked, with large windows revealing the sun setting over the grazing fields and a hint of the distant ocean. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the walls, with a few couches and armchairs arranged in the center of the room. In between them, a little girl was kneeling on the floor over a book.
The girl’s head snapped up as we entered, and I almost let a “fucking hell” slip from between my teeth.
Brayan’s eyes stared up at me on the face of a ten-year-old girl. Dark curls fell to her shoulders, framing a nearly black gaze and slightly sunburnt cheeks.
The resemblance left me stunned.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, pushing to her feet. “I didn’t know you’d be coming here.”
“Nothing you need to apologize for, sweetness,” Sella said. “We’ll just be a bit.” She kissed the girl on the forehead. The girl continued to stare at us, curious, as Sella rested her hands on the child’s shoulders.
Brayan looked—somehow—utterly neutral. Sella, too.
There was no way I could possibly be the only one to appreciate this situation for what it was.
Sella looked only at Brayan. “This is Adeline,” she said, lightly. Silence, for a moment too long. Brayan just stared at Sella, and then
Adeline, saying nothing.
It was getting awkward, so I said, “It’s lovely to meet you, Adeline,” which snapped Brayan out of his trance.
“We apologize for displacing you,” he said, politely. “Thank you for sharing your library.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” said Adeline, with the charmingly precocious voice of a well-trained noble child.
Sella chuckled, kissed Adeline’s head again, and sent her on her way. Adeline bid us a polite goodnight before disappearing up the stairs, leaving us in suffocating silence.
I shot Brayan a stare that he dutifully ignored. “She seems polite,” he said, at last.
She seems polite, he fucking says.
“She is.” Sella smiled, faintly. “She’s wonderful.” Brayan made a noncommittal noise.
“I have always told you exactly where I am, Brayan,” Sella said. “If there is anything you want to know about my life, or my daughter, I would be happy to share it with you. I will be truthful.”
Ascended fucking above. This was ridiculous.
Even I understood what was happening here. That she was daring him to ask her the obvious question.
There was a long silence.
And then Brayan said, “It’s been a very long day. I think I’ll excuse myself. Thank you.”
 |
I CORNERED Brayan the moment the door was closed. “Brayan, what the hell was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? That child—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped. “Bullshit. You know what you saw.”
He refused to look at me. “We’re here because we have to be,” he said. “One night, and Sella was kind enough to open her home to us. I won’t thank her by asking invasive questions about her life.”
I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing.
“Sella was practically inviting you to ask, because—”
“I gave up my opportunity to have those kinds of questions.”
He was very focused on the pamphlet of charter ship schedules. I let out a scoff.
Typical. It turned out ten years of memory loss meant nothing. Brayan hadn’t gotten any less hardheaded. He hadn’t gotten any better at seeing truths he didn’t want to see.
“Brayan, if that child is your daughter, that fact doesn’t change because you refuse to acknowledge it.”
It had been so long since I’d seen this happen—since I’d seen how abruptly Brayan’s perfect composure broke, like a snapped thread. One moment his back was to me, and the next, he whirled to me, every line of his form vibrating with anger.
“You do not get to lecture me about my responsibilities to my family. Is your mind too broken to even understand the hypocrisy of your bullshit?”
“I—”
“Where the hell were you?”
He took a step closer, pausing, as if he wanted me to actually answer the question.
Words escaped me. I didn’t know what he was asking. “Where was—?” “Yes, Max. You. Where were you? You didn’t go to their funerals. Did
you know that?”
My jaw snapped shut, words dying in my throat.
“Seven pyres, and me, and a thousand strangers asking me, ‘Where is Maxantarius?’ I made excuses for you. I told them you couldn’t get back in time, that you were traveling with the military. You were the renowned hero, then, after Sarlazai. They believed me. But at night when I was by myself, I would try to figure out where you were. Write to all your commanders. Write to every Ascended-damned hospital in Ara.” He scoffed. “Because I figured you had to be dying, right? You had to be dying to miss the funerals of our entire fucking family.”
I couldn’t speak, horrified with my past self.
No, I wanted to say. You’re wrong. I would never have done that.
But I knew, of course, that he wasn’t wrong. That he was the one looking for explanations I couldn’t give him, and I was the one staring in frustration at a past that I no longer remembered, looking for those answers, too.
“You disappeared after that, and I searched for you for years. Years, Max, while I dealt with everything. All the responsibilities of being the new Lord Farlione. All the arrangements, the debts, the politics. I dealt with it alone, and then I would go search for you. Fucking years. And do you know where I finally found you?”
I didn’t want to know. That door loomed there, in the back of my mind, whispering, You don’t want to go here again.
Brayan’s lip twisted into a sneer of disgust. “I found you in a Meriatan slum, so out of your mind on Seveseed that you didn’t even know your own name, let alone mine. And here I thought I was my brother’s rescuer. Here I thought something horrific must have happened to you to make you run away like that. But you had no interest in being anywhere but exactly where you were.”
Brayan had his fair share of flaws, but he was not a liar. I knew that every word of this was true.
Shame simmered at the surface of my skin.
I wanted to believe there had to be some explanation. Some reason. Something I could tell him to make him understand—make myself understand.
But what excuses could I make for myself?
Brayan let out a low scoff and turned away. “A decade later, and a part of me still hoped I would get answers when I came back to Ara for you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t—”
“You don’t remember. I know.” Another scoff, this one more violent than the last. “I should have known it was a ridiculous thing to hope for.”
“I would give you that, if I could,” I said.
Was that true? If it was, why hadn’t I done it in the last ten years?
Brayan and I had always had a… complicated relationship. Even with my incomplete memory, I understood that—I understood it the moment I saw his face. That past, even the past I didn’t remember, tainted our every interaction. But I wouldn’t have left him completely alone like that.
I wouldn’t have. Right?
The clock ticked, deafening.
“How did it happen?” I asked, quietly.
I didn’t realize I was about to speak until the words were already coming out. And in that same instant, the voice in my head warned again: *You do not want to open this door.*
He turned away, facing the window, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“Ryvenai rebels,” he said. “Angry about Father’s loyalist stance during the war. Maybe angry because of our roles in the military. They came to the house one night. Took their revenge. The war was practically over by then, after the crown’s victory at Sarlazai. It was pointless.” His words were clipped and cold. “By the time anyone found them, everyone had been dead for hours.”
A wave of dizziness hit me. I sat on the edge of the bed, bracing myself against a surge of terrible images.
It felt strange to hear something so intimately tied to my life spoken of as if it were an event that happened to someone else—as if I was being reminded of some horror that had occurred only the night before. Even now, with my fractured memory, the grief had always lingered. But now, I had to brace myself against the sudden intensity of it.
I let my mind turn over this new piece of the puzzle. Killed by Ryvenai rebels—a pointless, destructive act of vengeance.
Something about it felt off, like a piece that didn’t quite fit. A part of me insisted, *No, there is something else missing here.*
*But you don’t want to open that door.*
“I wish I had been there,” Brayan muttered, almost to himself, then sighed deeply and turned back to me. For a brief moment, I saw Brayan lose control. Then, slowly, his careful composure returned—his shoulders relaxed, his back straightened, his hands unclenched, piece by piece.
“That’s enough of this,” he said.
I wondered if he was talking to me or talking to himself.
I couldn’t pretend that I wanted to continue the conversation. What would I say? I had no explanation for myself, and Brayan knew it, too. But though he carefully tucked away all that anger, I looked down and saw a chasm between us so wide and deep that I felt like a fool for not noticing it before.
We left early in the morning, so early that Sella and her household weren’t even awake yet. Brayan didn’t say goodbye. But before we left, I
scrawled a note on the library table.
Sella-
Thank you for everything.
We’re glad life is treating you well.
If your daughter ever needs anything, know that she can come to
me.
-Max
Maybe it was a stupid thing to do, given the circumstances. She seemed like she had everything here that one could want, and hopefully she would never be in a position where she needed help from a half-mad convict like myself.
But just in case. Just in case she ever found herself alone in the world.
Everyone deserved, I figured, a thread back to their past.
Brayan and I didn’t speak on the boat out to Threll. After last night, there wasn’t much to say.
