Y ou fucking lied to me.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I’d only ever lied to Brayan once,
and it was the kind of lie that devoured everything else.
Brayan stepped into the room and closed the door, hard. I half expected it to crack the walls.
“You were there,” he breathed. “You were there the day that it happened.”
I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t ready. The topic always hit me like a sudden strike, the kind that knocked all the wind out of me.
So I did nothing but stand there as he thrust the crumpled papers into my hands.
Numbly, I unfolded them. They were discharge records from the Orders. Many soldiers had been sent home in the time immediately after Sarlazai, mostly due to injuries, so the paper was packed with many, many rows of names and locations.
Still, I easily found mine, right there in the middle of the page.
Maxantarius Farlione. Temporary discharge. Korvius.
I just stared at it.
The Orders had spun me such a perfect, intricate cover story. But it was the fucking bureaucracy, this stupid slip of paper buried in the archives, that destroyed it all. It was almost fucking funny.
“Max,” Brayan snapped. “What is this?” “I—”
I could say it was a mistake. I could say that I lied to the Orders about my destination because I was going to go party in Meriata. I could say that I
left before the attack happened.
I could tell so many lies.
But I had been cursed with a face that painted every thought that crossed my mind for the world to see, and all those fake explanations sat rancid, unspoken, at the back of my throat.
“I want the truth,” Brayan demanded.
And I—being so, so stupid—said, “You don’t. It won’t help.”
I’d never seen Brayan like this. I’d seen him angry, but this was like his body ceased to function, overwhelmed by rage. “I swear to the fucking Ascended, Max, I need the truth.”
If I’d been able to look at anything but him, I might have acknowledged Tisaanah edging closer to me, shaking her head. But my lips were already opening.
This is a mistake, Max. Big mistake. Nothing good will come out of this.
“Reshaye,” I choked out. “Reshaye was more than you know.”
Brayan seemed confused. “Reshaye? You mean, the power that the Orders gave you. The… eyes.”
“No. More than that. It was… sentient.”
“Sentient?” Brayan’s brow furrowed. “As in it, what, talked?”
It sounded so fucking ridiculous out loud. “What I did in Sarlazai wasn’t me. Reshaye did that.”
He scoffed. “I knew you had some guilt, but—”
“Believe me or don’t,” I snapped. “You wanted the truth and I’m giving it to you. It wasn’t me. It acted with my body. But it wasn’t me. Before, I’d always managed to control it. But that day, when we were overrun in the city…”
Suddenly I was there again, soaked with blood and melted snow, my consciousness waning, Reshaye thrashing in my mind, and Nura—Nura looking at me like she had back then, her fingers caressing my temple seconds before she betrayed me.
And I didn’t even realize that I was talking anymore, but the words were pouring out of me.
“I never wanted to do that. I wanted to retreat. But when Reshaye took over, I lost control. I was conscious for every second of what it did to those people. With my magic. My hands. And then… then it was over and everyone was around me calling me a fucking war hero. Celebrating that. You were celebrating that.”
I drew in a breath and when I let it out, it trembled.
“That was why they discharged me. Because I’d killed thousands of Ascended-damned people, many of whom were my own. They discharged me because I was a fucking mess and I, being the— the idiot that I was, just wanted to go home. I just wanted to hide and pretend that none of it had happened.”
A mistake. Such a mistake.
How many times had I thought about that in the years since? There were so many moments to regret, but I’d pinned most of them on that decision— the decision to return home, when I knew, when I should have known—
I opened my mouth, but the rest of it, now, strangled me. Brayan said, “And?”
So much came after that word.
And.
I barely felt Tisaanah’s hand clutching my arm, barely heard her murmur, “Max, you don’t need to—”
“I was so fucking angry at it. And it was possessive. I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to control it this time. My mind was— everything was rearranged. I couldn’t lie to it. I couldn’t lock it away.”
I was ten years in the past, staring at the bedspread, arguing with Reshaye in my head.
You’re a monster, I called it.
{If I am a monster, what does that make you?}
{You make me do this.}
“I was so stupid. I made such a stupid mistake. But once I realized, it was too late. I couldn’t control it. It was angry at me and it wanted to—I don’t know what it wanted.”
{Now you have no one but me,} it had whispered to me, while Kira’s body burned.
Tisaanah held my arm so tightly that her fingers shook.
But I only looked at Brayan, not breathing. He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change.
“Clarify,” he said, the way he would command a soldier for a debrief. “I—”
I had never once actually said the words out loud before. “It wasn’t rebels.” My voice was strangely choked. “It was me. It was me.”
“Reshaye,” Tisaanah said, quickly. “It was Reshaye. It was not you.”
But neither Brayan nor I seemed to hear her.
People like to say that there’s catharsis in speaking the truth out loud, as if some weight is lifted in the act of discarding a lie for an ugly reality.
That, I decided in this moment, was not true at all. I watched a muscle twitch in Brayan’s throat.
“You are telling me,” he said, quietly, “that the last thing they saw was
you?”
He stalked closer, slowly.
“You are telling me that you murdered our family?” His voice rose, step by step, with each word.
“No,” Tisaanah said. “Reshaye did. He had no control over it.”
True or not, it seemed like such a pathetic excuse. I’d examined all the angles of my guilt countless times, and there were many. Maybe there was nothing I could have done to stop Reshaye in those moments, but there was plenty I could have done to keep myself away from that situation entirely.
My back slammed against the wall. Brayan pinned me, his arm against my throat. He was always so carefully controlled. When his emotions spiraled out of control, it wasn’t a slow rise, it was an explosion.
“You let me believe a lie for ten years,” he snarled. “You let me believe that I killed those bastards, when really, it was you— it was you that—”
“There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t said to myself, a million times over.” My voice was slightly raspy, and I had to force it out through the pressure of Brayan’s forearm. “I would have done anything to erase that moment. Anything.”
“You let me believe that there had been justice for this.”
Justice. I’d wanted that too, for so long. I thought if I died in the slums of Meriata, maybe something would be set right in the universe. Maybe some debt would be repaid.
Brayan’s eyes shone, and I realized he was close to tears.
“There was never going to be justice, Brayan,” I said, quietly. “No matter who you killed for it. I meant everything I said when I told you that nothing was ever going to make it make sense.”
“You— You—” He discarded words and abruptly left me, leaving me catching my breath. He went to the door, and when he turned again, his sword was drawn.
“Get your weapon.”
He looked every inch the renowned warrior of Ara, the golden son. And yet, I pitied him. His whole life had been built around a set of unquestionable truths, and chief among them was that there was no problem that could not be solved with a firm hand or a sharp blade.
“I’m not going to fight you.” Brayan lunged anyway.
Tisaanah was in front of me immediately, her hands up and magic ready, prepared to shield me before I could stop her.
Brayan didn’t hesitate before he readjusted, dodged her blow, grabbed her arm, and wrenched her out of the way.
That was it.
Fire roared to life at my hands, and then I had Brayan flung against the wall. The red light of the fire flickered across his face, emphasizing every line of hatred.
“Don’t you dare touch her.”
“Or what? What will you do? Kill your last brother?”
We all had the same eyes, my siblings and I, so dark they were almost black. Mine had looked just like theirs before Reshaye had altered them. Now, the darkness of his acted as a mirror to the flames, begging me to take the challenge.
He wanted me to fight him, because that was all he knew how to do. It was the only way he knew how to deal with pain.
I let my magic fall away and stepped back.
“I made so many mistakes, Brayan.” My voice cracked. “So many mistakes. Reshaye was so far outside my control, but I won’t pretend that I’m not at fault. That there weren’t a hundred different decisions I could have made that wouldn’t have put me in that room that day. You know what I wished more than anything?” I let out a rough laugh. “I spent years wishing that you had been there. Because I was certain you would have killed me before I could finish it.”
My father had hesitated when he saw it was me. Softened his blow to avoid killing his son.
Brayan would have done no such thing. I knew it then, and I knew it now.
“I made mistakes,” I said. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to atone for that, and I’ll fail, because there’s nothing I could ever do that would be worth their lives.”
Brayan was trembling, the muscle in his jaw feathering rapidly. He jerked his chin up, but despite himself, a tear rolled down his cheek.
“That isn’t enough.”
“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t. Nothing ever will be.”
He was still, his shoulders heaving, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. I tensed, preparing for him to lunge at me again.
I wouldn’t even blame him if he did.
Instead he said, “You’re right. I would have killed you,” and slammed the door behind him.
