My eyes adjust slowly as our location finally comes into focus. We are at the back of High House, overlooking the mountains and an elegant peristyle garden below. Overhead, the stars are beginning to give way to the grayish light of dawn.
It reflects off Ravod’s skin, making him look like he’s made of moonlight. Except for the dark smudge of soot on his cheek. The edges of his clothes are singed.
I finish the water and hand the canteen back to him.
“How did you find me?” I ask. He nods, pulling a second canteen off his belt and handing it to me. “Thank you,” I say.
“Drink.”
I take a thoughtful sip of water, but lower the canteen as my questions finally rush to the surface.
Ravod shifts uncomfortably. “I was on my way to the dormitory, but when I opened the door, somehow it opened to a stairway in the ruined tower.” He pauses, worried. “I was about to turn back when I heard your voice. There’s an old rumor, a legend really, that the castle will lead certain people where they need to go.” A frown tugs at his mouth. “Looks like I was just in time. Any longer and you might have been permanently injured. Or worse.” His voice cracks on his last word.
I’m silent for a long time.
“Let me see your hand,” I finally say. “The left one.”
“Why?”
“Please, I have to see it.” I need to know it wasn’t him who set the fire.
Slowly, Ravod displays a gloved hand in front of me. There are so many questions in his eyes, but I can’t bear to look at him.
Ravod does not question me, displaying his hand on both sides. His glove is undamaged. “Take off your glove.” He does. His hand is unblemished. I look between it and his mouth quickly. He is not using a Telling.
He’s not the Bard who attacked me in the tower.
At that realization, whatever was holding me together gives out, and I feel like I’m tumbling into an abyss.
“I was so close,” I whisper.
“What happened in there?” Ravod asks.
I sniff, which turns into another cough, and I take a few more sips of water before answering.
“There was another Bard, but I didn’t see a face. They set fire to the room. I couldn’t fight back. I only managed to chuck a piece of burning wood at them. Obviously it didn’t help much.”
His body tenses. “Whoever they are, I’ll find them. This is a violation of everything we stand for.”
“This is much bigger than a rogue Bard.” I gaze at him levelly.
“There were some disturbing things in the tower,” Ravod says. “I would hate to think you’re mixed up in that.”
“If you think that’s true, why save me?” I ask. “I was there looking for answers, nothing more or less.”
Ravod’s lips narrow into a line, and he turns away, looking thoughtfully at the mountains.
“I believe you,” he says slowly. His voice is quiet, as if he has been holding back from saying those words for a while. “I didn’t want to for a long time. But once you pointed out the cracks, I couldn’t ignore how deep they really were,” he says. “And I knew they were there all along, I just didn’t want to see them.”
“Ravod, none of this is your fault.” I rest a hand gently on his forearm. He flinches, and I think he’s going to pull away, but he relaxes fractionally.
“A contraband-riddled tower collapses, a Bard tries to kill you, Cathal put you in the sanitarium…” he whispers, and saying the words aloud seems to finally allow him to understand what they mean. His face contorts with disgust. “Shae, Montane is dying. There has to be a reason why.”
Ravod is right. The world is a mess. But maybe it isn’t too late to change that.
“We need to find the Book of Days,” I say. “It can fix everything.”
Ravod gives me a sad look. “The Book of Days is a myth, Shae. A bedtime story. If one of the other Bards told you it’s real, they were messing with you.”
“Cathal told me about it,” I reply. “He wants it and thinks I can find it for him.”
“Is that why he taught you to read?” Ravod asks. He immediately notices my eyes darting away defensively and continues, “I came to check on you in the sanitarium. I wasn’t allowed in, obviously, but I saw Cathal in there with you. It’s how I knew you’d understand my warning.”
I recall Ravod, and his warning, in the darkened cell window of the sanitarium. That was real. One less potential bout of madness to worry about. I nod in answer to his question, and Ravod goes quiet. The silence is uncomfortably heavy between us.
“Why does Cathal want the Book of Days?” he finally asks.
“I…” My heart thuds with a dark, sickening jolt. “Cathal never explained why. He just said it would help me discover the truth about my mother’s murder.” I am unafraid of the word as I say it.
Ravod fidgets, but says nothing. His dark eyes search for something on the horizon.
“Can I ask you a question?” His voice is low.
“Anything.”
He doesn’t ask immediately, and I begin to wonder if he is reconsidering asking at all. When he does, he keeps his gaze locked on whatever he is looking at in the distance. I have to strain to hear him.
“Let’s say you find out the truth about your mother. What then?”
I’ve been so preoccupied with finding out the truth, I haven’t thought of what happens after.
“I guess I’ll know when I find out.”
“And what if you don’t like the answers you discover?”
“Could it be worse than not knowing at all?” I counter.
He considers this. A breeze passes by, shifting a lock of black hair across his forehead. With effort, I resist the need to smooth it from his brow.
“I never found out what happened to my parents,” he confesses. “My father was not a kind man. At his worst, my mother would take his temper upon herself so I wouldn’t get hurt. It was like that for years. One night, when I was about six years old, it reached the worst I’d ever seen. I was in the corner, trying not to listen, but I drew their shapes in the dust on the floor and crossed them out. When I looked up, they were gone. I never saw them again.” His face is emotionless, but there’s a deep sadness in his eyes when he finally looks at me. “My first Telling.”
His parents. He lost them too.
My heart breaks for him as I absorb what he said. I see traces of the terrified little boy in the face of the young man before me. Everything clicks into place. Why he’s so guarded, so controlled. Why he doesn’t use his Telling.
“That’s—” I stop, not knowing what to say. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
Ravod tears his gaze away from me.
“I’m not saying this for pity. I want you to understand that I respect you,” he says. “I know that’s not what you want to hear from me. But it’s true.”
I draw my hands away from his. Coldness settles over me as disappointment curls around me like a shield. The same disappointment that pierces me every time Ravod shuts down on me, closing off any hint of emotion. I manage a smile, remembering with a mixed pang of awkwardness and heartache how I confessed my feelings to him … and his rejection. But even if my affection is one-sided, I am still grateful that he chose to confide in me.