Page 76 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Save Nia. I know.”

“I don’t think you do. Did you want me to let Silas kill them both?”

“Well, he almost killed her.”

I wrapped my hands over my ankles, trying not to tighten them into fists. “Tell me what did you want me to have done, Cai. If it is my guilt you want, have it, but tell me what to be guilty for.”

“I don’t want you guilt,” he said, tapping a finger on top of his knee. “You should have waited. Waited for any of us to come before you began bargaining with them. Do you realise that not once have you been alone since you stepped here thirteen years ago?” He beat a hand to his chest. “I have been beside you. Alaric, Nia, Tristin, the whole damn kingdom has stepped at the same footstep as you for thirteen years, Snow. Now you even have him, you actually let him be there for you. Then you went back again. Why do you act like you’re all alone?”

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t know.

He rested his head back on the rock and shut his eyes. “I actually hate this stupid sun.” His eyes peeled open again when the light around us dimmed at my command, a grey storm sliding over the blue skies. “Do you not hear them anymore?”

“Hear what?”

“You always wince or cringe when you are down here because of the mist. Do you not hear it anymore?”

“I hear it. It’s just…there were louder things in my head before that have numbed some sounds.” I shot a look around, over the little life that had sprung around the ruins so unlike before. “Heard Isjord hasn’t stepped in Myrdur anymore.”

“They haven’t. Kilian stopped a ship a few weeks back.”

“Heard he stopped a few.”

“This one had some of our people in it. Trained Olympians being held by slavers. Silas had spent quite a fortune on them.”

My eyes drew shut. “Hells.”

“What are we doing, Cakes? Are we fighting this thing?”

“No, I was thinking maybe we can talk about it with Aurora and my father first. You think they might reconsider this whole ‘destroy the whole realm’ ordeal?”

He hit me with another hazelnut. “I meant, what is next? There is a plan, I know there is a plan.”

“There is.” There always was a plan. This one had to end with me—

Groaning, he stood. “You can’t keep hiding.”

“I am not hiding.”

He shot me a pointed look. “You went to the dungeons this morning.”

“Maybe you should be my keeper.”

“Why did you go down there?”

“To reminisce about the good old days where I could squeeze an answer, any answer, from someone.”

“What answers?”

“Why nothing is not making sense again, all of it.”

He sat back down again. Though I could not see the look of worry, I felt it when the wind turned brisk. “Is it like before?”

“Perhaps. But there are no voices in my head to make me feel like I’m losing it. I’m going insane from the silence. The emptiness.”

“He shouldn’t have left you alone.”