Page 208 of Feralheart

“Have you read it yet?”

“No.” My voice cracked. “I’m not giving up, but I think it’s time. But once I read it, I’ll know I should’ve saved him when I had the chance. That I chose wrong.”

“You chose survival.”

“That’s the same thing as wrong, sometimes.”

I unfolded the poem.

Tolross’s handwriting filled the page, each letter formed with the care he used when his hands weren’t cooperating.

“Do you want me to⁠—”

“I need to read this out loud.” Needed to hear my brother’s words in my voice even though it would gut me.

I read.

When your boots are full of stones

and the road forgot its end,

when the sun is someone’s memory

and the dark won’t be your friend.

Walk anyway.

When the choice is die in quiet

or keep breaking toward the light,

when giving up tastes sweeter

than another losing fight.

Fight anyway.

My throat burned. I knew what he’d been thinking when he’d written it, because I knew my little brother, from the exact slope of his handwriting when his hands were shaking to the way he’d drawn the letters of anyway larger than the rest. The word needed more space to breathe.

He’d written this for a person who might not come back.

Tears trickled down my face.

“I left him.” The words broke out of me. “He needed me, and I left him and in that trial, he was right there. Healthy and whole. Everything I’ve been fighting for. And I turned away.”

He started to speak.

“Don’t.” I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to shove the tears back in. “Don’t tell me I did the right thing. Don’t⁠—”

“Shhh.” He turned and his hand found my shoulder, the touch gentle enough it made everything worse. “I’m not telling you anything.”

My tears came harder.

The words blurred. I tried to refold the paper, but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. The creases wouldn’t line up. The paper crinkled oddly.

“Eradin.” Fen’s voice came from somewhere far away.

“He gave this to me knowing it might be the last time he’d see me.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. “He wrote this knowing he might die while I was gone, and these would be his last words to me. That I’d be reading them, and he’d already be⁠—”