Nightrender choked out a sob, clutching the earth with bent fingers, but it, too, crumbled in her grasp. Nothing stayed.
* * *
A little time later, she and Prince Rune made camp along the Brink Way, where all the horses were still tethered.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Why?”
“For the loss of your guards. And the princess. I know what the alliance meant to you.”
He gave her a look that said she couldn’t possibly understand, but then dropped his gaze. “I’m just so tired of losing people,” he said, very softly.
So was she.
She pulled a medical kit from one of the saddlebags, peeled off her gauntlets, then rinsed her hands with the help of a waterskin. For a moment, they both watched the blood and dirt and sweat fall away. “It wasn’t your fault.” She dried her hands on a clean rag.
“It feels like my fault.”
She opened the medical kit. “Give me your hands. The burned one first.”
He held out his blistered hand, palm up. It looked wretched, like half-cooked meat, but he hid whatever pain it caused behind a clenched jaw and stoic expression.
Nightrender dabbed a generous amount of silver ointment onto the worst of the burns. The prince gasped, but didn’t jerk away.
“Tell me if this hurts,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter if it hurts.” His voice was tight.
She worked quickly, thoroughly. “Tell me what you’ll do now. Dawnbreaker trials, perhaps. An army to follow me into the Malice.”
Prince Rune sighed into the darkness. “I will try. But when the Crown Council learns that Princess Johanne is dead, they will likely attempt to replace me with one of my sisters,” he confided. “I will not be forgiven for failing yet again.”
“Failing again,” she murmured, rinsing the rest of the ointment off her own hands. Her body would heal itself.
“In Caberwill, spares are protectors for the crown prince. It was also that way before, right? With the Skyreach monarchy?”
She nodded. At least she could remember that much. For now.
“I am not the eldest. My brother was meant to be king, and I trained as his protector. But when Ivasland sent an assassin, I failed. His entire guard failed, truly, but his life was my responsibility above anyone else’s. My brother had gone to pray, as he always did. And as his protector, I always went with him, even though—”
A beat of silence pulsed between them.
“You don’t believe,” she supplied, removing a bandage from the medical kit.
“I do believe.” His eyes met hers. “I have always believed in the Numina. How could I not? We have the Malstop and malsites—all this evidence of evil. There must be good, too. But I also believed the Numina didn’t care about me. My problems. My desires.”
Nightrender loosely fastened the bandage around his burned hand.
“One day, I told Opi—Opus IV, that is—to go to the family’s private chapel without me, and that I’d meet him after. I didn’t have a reason for missing the service. I just didn’t want to go. So I skipped it. He went. I spent the hour in bed reading, and took my time getting there.
“My brother was just leaving the chapel when I arrived. There were no other guards, since I was supposed to be there. But I was still down the hall when I saw the shadow move, and then the knife…” He started to clench his fist but cringed and rested his hand on his knee, palm up. “I couldn’t get to him in time. The assassin slit my brother’s throat in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to save him.”
Nightrender swallowed hard. “And now all your grief is tainted with guilt.” She knew how that felt.
“Yes.” The word came out rough. Raw.
She opened the ointment again and began working on his other hand, though it was far less damaged than the first. “It isn’t true—that the Numina don’t care. They do.”
His eyes flicked to meet hers in the darkness.
“Thousands and thousands of years ago, the Numina and rancor waged great and devastating battles across the laic plane. Mortals died in innumerable masses, felled by the armies of the Dark Shard. Then, the worst happened: the aperture between the numinous and laic planes began to close. The Numina here would be cut off from their home unless they retreated from the war.”
Prince Rune didn’t say anything, but a heavy, waiting silence pulsed between them.
“Rather than leaving this world to perish, they spent their last hours on the laic plane pushing the rancor back toward the Rupture. Many were slaughtered, but they succeeded in building the Malstop—and me.” She didn’t speak of her own creation often—it was so personal—but humans used to know this basic history. They had, collectively, forgotten it over the millennia. She hadn’t even realized.
“Then they left,” Prince Rune said quietly. “Once the Malstop went up, and you were”—he frowned over the word—”built, the Numina left. How could they abandon us if they truly cared?”
It wasn’t as simple as that. The Numina had left a number of artifacts, Relics like her sword and armor, the summoning shrines, and others, all meant to help defend the world. Once, she had believed a few Numina had stayed, either because they could not bear to leave or because the gateway had closed without them, but she’d never seen any real evidence of that. She couldn’t even remember why she’d thought it so.
She gazed at Prince Rune, who wore a frustrated expression. “Imagine the choice: you could give people you loved a chance at survival, and then return home; or you could stay and fight, uncertain of the outcome, knowing only that you would never again go home.”
“I would stay and fight.”
“Tell me the truth,” she pressed.
“I am. I would stay and fight, no matter the cost.”
Humans said that, but they so rarely meant it. This was the difference between what they wanted to be, and what they truly were. She did not blame them.
“The Numina chose to go home,” she said. “Having given humanity its best chance of survival, they returned to a place of unparalleled light and beauty, where the air smells of honey and pain is a distant thing.”
His voice went soft, almost wistful. “Have you been there?”
Nightrender’s shoulders dropped. “No. I had no opportunity before the gateway closed, but the knowledge of it was worked into me.” When she had been new, she’d believed the Numina had not taken her to their plane because they didn’t want her to miss what she could not have. Now, she knew better: she had never been meant to go to a place of perfect peace, because she was a creature of endless war.