She shook her head. “You know that answer. You said yourself that you don’t believe the Numina care, because they do not act on your behalf. You may view them as apathetic, indifferent to the plights of modern mortals, but these cults see the Numina as negligent—as cruel as anything from the Dark Shard. And so, they have decided to worship the beings that do deign to venture to the laic plane.”
“Rancor want to conquer our world. How could anyone think that’s better than beings that don’t interfere?”
The Nightrender placed her glass on the table. “You don’t understand. This isn’t simple worship. They seek to placate the rancor and obtain favors from them. Power, wealth, long life: the rancor promise to deliver all those things and more, and they have the ability to deliver them, if by twisted means. Even though these people know the rancor’s end goals, they assume any cataclysmic event won’t come to pass in their lifetime.”
Leaving the problems they created for their children’s children.
Someone always had to solve these long, slow-building problems, and it seemed unfair that it was never the ones who’d created them. Worse, there were people like his parents, or his grandparents before, who simply pretended such problems didn’t exist—as though there wasn’t a looming, long-announced calamity that threatened humanity’s very continuance.
Rune looked away, still struggling to understand how people could allow such evil into the world—into their own lives. Summoning rancor? Making deals with them? It was unconscionable.
“People used to read,” the Nightrender muttered. “There are dozens of books on the subject.”
“People still read.” Had she somehow not registered the fact that she’d found him in the library? In the reading room?
Her tone turned frosty. “Clearly there are gaps in your education, Prince Rune. You should know that people have been summoning rancor as long as there have been people and rancor. Everyone wants power, and some are willing to do anything to get it.”
Ire rose in him as he motioned at the books stacked around the table. “I read everything I can find, Lady Nightrender. One might argue that books are my closest friends.” His only friends, after his brother died, and considering the Nightrender had neatly declined his offer. “I spent my childhood reading everything that I could find about the Nightrender. About you. About the rancor and the Malstop. But most of the books about your awakenings, your wars, your deeds—they were burned after the Red Dawn. That’s the only story anyone really knows anymore.”
That had been more than he’d meant to admit, but she couldn’t dismiss him for the ignorance his ancestors had forced upon him. Not when he’d done his best to learn everything there was to know about her and her world, in spite of it being a forbidden subject. For years, he would have done anything for even a crumb of extra information.
“Yes,” she murmured, “let us talk about the Red Dawn.”
Rune almost swallowed his tongue.
“I’ve—I’ve been wanting to apologize for my outburst,” he began awkwardly.
Though she was clearly exhausted, her gaze was steady. Resolute. “It doesn’t matter. I just need to know what happened. I need to know why I”—here, her voice cracked just the slightest bit—”slaughtered every member of every royal family in every kingdom. That is how you said it, I believe.”
His chest felt like it might split open and spill his whole heart on the floor in front of her. Clearly she’d been torturing herself these last days—because of his words. Because of what he’d said to her in a fit of anger. He should have held his tongue. He should have been kinder. She was still a person, wasn’t she? A person with feelings and fears, even if she didn’t talk about them.
He softened his voice. “I wish I understood it. I wish I could tell you everything.”
“Surely you can tell me something.” Her expression was hard, but there was true pain in her eyes.
“I am sorry.” His jaw felt too tight to make words. “At first, I assumed you remembered. When I realized you didn’t—it seemed dangerous to tell you. No one wanted it to happen again, after all.”
Her chest expanded with a long breath. “You took an enormous risk in summoning me.”
Rune nodded. “I didn’t want to distract you or burden you, or…trigger more death. I needed you to help me—to help us—and I thought if I told you about the Red Dawn, you’d change your mind. Or worse.” Every word was like stripping off a layer of armor. “I tried to use you. Manipulate you. I withheld the truth. And for that I’m sorry.”
The Nightrender unfolded herself from the chair, standing tall.
Rune rose, too, only a breath between them. He could feel the heat off her body, smell the sweat soaked into her armor.
Dark eyes searched his, reading the truth branded upon his soul: He was ashamed. Afraid. Alone.
“I want the truth from you,” she whispered. “All of it.”
He nodded.
“Never lie to me again. Not directly and not by omission. You are my summoner, my Dawnbreaker. I will not accept betrayal.”
The words might have sounded like a threat to anyone else, but Rune was close enough to hear a soft undercurrent of sadness, a thread of deep anguish and longing. She was more than human, but she was not invulnerable to emotion; he should have seen that from the start.
He swallowed hard. “You have my word.”
She nodded and returned to her chair, her movements worryingly stiff. “I am ready to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“The Red Dawn. You just said that you would tell me.”
Oh, right. But now?
Instantly, Rune regretted that he’d spent no time at all since she’d left figuring out a better way to explain to her what she’d done.
He braced himself. “Everything I told you at first was accurate. The fall of Sunview, the great army you took into the Malice, and that you went back to sleep without clearing away the malsites. But the part between those last two events—that’s what I skipped before.”
It was difficult to watch her face as he spoke. She listened with the same intensity she did everything else, and Rune rather felt as though it wasn’t just what he said that she was listening to but how he said it.
“The stories say simply that when you returned you went mad and slaughtered every royal in every kingdom. That is the Red Dawn: the blood of kings and queens staining the walls of Honor’s Keep, Solspire, and the royal estate in Athelney. You were sent back to your tower, after. Forced, I assume. I have no idea how.” Having seen her fight, it must have been a deadly task.