In a quiet room, set apart from the main living quarters of Wyvern’s Keep, Ivy sat by Helios’s bedside and remembered a time, not too long ago, when she had tended to another Drakharin’s wounds. She and Dorian had not been friends then; they had been something only slightly less than enemies. Circumstance had positioned them on the same side, but time and effort had allowed Ivy to see another side of him. It would not have been possible if he had not been willing to grow beyond the limitations of his hatred. He’d shed his well-worn prejudices like snakeskin. He had become someone Ivy could trust.
But trusting one Drakharin was not the same as trusting them all. She had let herself forget that they were enemies. Not just to her – in the great scheme she was not an individual, but rather a stand-in for a people, an idea – but to all the Avicen. Months of friendship with one would not – could not – overcome centuries of hatred. Only a fool would have thought so. A naive, optimistic fool.
Her hands went through the motions of checking the bandages on Helios’s head. The force with which Tanith had struck him had sent him careening into a wall of solid stone. There was probably a Helios-shaped hole in the throne room now.
“Serves you right,” Ivy muttered. Even so, her hands were gentle. Once the white-hot flare of her anger had subsided – she had trusted him – she found that she didn’t want to hurt him. With Dorian, the fear and mistrust had come first – when he frightened her, hurt her, she had wanted to hurt him right back – but Helios … Helios had been kind to her from the moment their eyes met across the courtyard of Wyvern’s Keep, when a backstabbing warlock had delivered her right into Tanith’s waiting claws. He brought her food. He helped her escape. He told her to be brave.
And then he turned on her. On all of them. They had welcomed him into their home. He had tended their garden. He had stood beside Ivy in the kitchen, sweating over a steaming cauldron of boiled bloodweed, assisting her as she distilled its putrid essence into an elixir that would save the very same lives he was planning to jeopardize.
And still, Ivy did not want to hurt him.
She stared at him. His face was motionless, eyes still hidden beneath their lids, too deep in his pained slumber to be plagued by dreams. His pale skin was even lighter than it normally was; Ivy could see the blue lines of his veins beneath the surface. Bruises blossomed along one cheek; the line of them extended across his jaw, down his neck, and along his collarbone (likely fractured).
“That doesn’t sound like the Ivy I know.”
Ivy turned from her study of Helios’s many wounds to look at Dorian. He was leaning against the doorframe. The battle had left him with but one injury: a gash across the knuckles of his right hand. One of the other healers had wrapped it with gauze after applying a salve. Ivy could smell the witch hazel from where she sat. He’d been watching her work in silence. No one was to be alone with the prisoner, according to Caius, enthroned once more as Dragon Prince. Dorian had silently volunteered to act as guard, though Ivy didn’t think an unconscious Helios was much of a threat. Not anymore.
“Really?” She arched a brow, but she wasn’t nearly as good at doing so as Dorian was. “Because I’m such a saint?”
That pulled a tired smile from Dorian’s lips. “Not saintly, no. Just kind.”
Ivy snorted. “Right. Kind.” She turned her attention back to Helios. His chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths. Her gaze stayed resolutely attached to the slope of his collarbone. She didn’t know what her expression betrayed; she had never had much of a poker face, and she didn’t feel like having Dorian – or anyone – dissect the thoughts she opted not to voice. “That’s probably what makes me such an easy target.”
She didn’t see Dorian approach the bed, but she heard the scrape of chair legs as he pulled up the only other seat in the room. His movements were slow as he sank into it. Maybe the burn on his knuckles wasn’t the only memento the fight had bestowed upon him.
“You’re not an easy target,” Dorian said. “Being kind is not a weakness. And that is not something I would have said a year ago.”
Ivy huffed. She didn’t want a pep talk. But then, she also didn’t not want a pep talk. She didn’t know what she wanted in that moment, but it was easier, somehow, with Dorian beside her. Even if he insisted on resorting to shallow platitudes as a clumsy attempt at consolation. “Maybe if I had been a little less kind, I wouldn’t have played right into his hands.”
“He had us all fooled,” said Dorian. “Even me.” He quirked a silver eyebrow at her. “Do I look like an easy target to you?”
Ivy did look at him, carefully, knowing full well that the words she didn’t say were written on her face. She couldn’t say that it felt like her heart was breaking. She couldn’t say that she had let herself care about a boy she barely knew. She couldn’t admit that she had been blinded by a pretty face and sunshine eyes and a kind smile. All she could say was “I trusted him.”
Dorian’s injured hand came to rest atop her own. “You saw the good in him. There is no shame in that.”
“I brought him into our house.” Truthfully, allowing Helios access to their home, their sanctuary, their secrets, had been a group effort, but Ivy could not fight the blame that seemed determined to rest on her shoulders. “How can you say that?”
“Because you saw the good in me.”
He said it as if it were that simple. It wasn’t. “That was different.”
Dorian met her glare with a roll of his eye. “I punched you in the face, Ivy.”
“And I forgave you.”
“Well, maybe someday you can forgive him.”
They stared at each other for a moment before Ivy buckled under his relentless onslaught of optimism. “When did you get so nice?”
“I had a very good teacher,” he said, patting her hand with his injured one. She wondered if it hurt.
A movement from the bed drew Ivy’s attention: the shifting of bedsheets. Helios’s lips cracked open to release a soft groan, his hand – also bandaged – rising to inspect the gauze wrapped around his head.
Dorian stood, pushing his chair back and inserting himself as much between Ivy and the bed as he could. She tried to push him aside, but she might as well have tried rolling a boulder away. He stayed right where he was, one hand resting, not at all subtly, on the pommel of his sword. It was a threat, delivered with stone cold certainty. Try anything and say goodbye to your innards.
No, Ivy thought. Not an easy target at all.
It took a few seconds for Helios to blearily open his eyes. He blinked up at Dorian, a wrinkle forming between his brows. Ivy saw it dawn on him that he was alive and then, in quick succession, that he was in a great deal of trouble.
“Captain.” Helios’s voice tripped over the syllables, rusty from disuse and dehydration.
“Dorian,” Ivy said. “Move.” She shoved at his hip, and this time, he did move. Slowly and grudgingly, but he stepped aside to let her see the man lying helpless in bed.
At the sound of her voice, Helios’s eyes, clouded and disoriented but still as brilliantly yellow as ever, cut to her. He swallowed thickly before speaking. “Ivy.” Her name was a whisper on his lips.
Something critical to her structural integrity buckled at the way he said it. Dorian misread her reaction and moved to stand between them again. “No. You don’t get to talk to her.”
Dorian’s kindness was evidently not an infinite commodity.
“What was that you were saying about forgiveness?” It was easier for Ivy to talk to Dorian than it was to look at Helios.
“I said you might forgive him.” His fingers drummed against the hilt of his sword, perhaps for no greater reason than to remind Helios that it was there and that Dorian had no qualms about using it. “I never said I would.”
Before Ivy could conjure a suitable reply, a hacking cough erupted from Helios’s throat. She responded without thinking, the sound of a person in distress flipping the switch inside her that activated her healer mode.
“Out of the way,” she said to Dorian. Her tone held the authority of an order, making it abundantly clear that it was not a request. He got out of the way without protest.
Ivy took up the glass of water one of the other healers had left on the bedside table, intending it for Ivy when it became clear she had no intention of letting one of the others sit vigil as they waited for their prisoner to wake. She held the glass to Helios’s lips, careful to tilt it just enough for him to take a shallow sip. He was propped up by enough pillows not to choke on it.
She was aware of Dorian watching warily from the sidelines, his gaze as sharp as an eagle’s. If Helios made any sudden movements, he was likely to find himself short of a limb or two. Not that such a thing was likely to happen, since Ivy was fairly certain his skeleton was boasting more than its fair share of fractures.
Helios rested back against the pillows when he finished drinking. Wordlessly, Ivy set the glass back on the bedside table.
“Thank you,” Helios said softly.
For lack of anything better to say, Ivy replied, “You’re welcome.”
A great, oppressive silence fell.
Helios’s eyes flitted from Ivy to Dorian. “I don’t have the right to ask …” He worried his chapped bottom lip between his teeth, his gaze settling behind Ivy. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but his words were clearly meant for her. “But can I speak to you? Alone?”
Dorian’s answer was quick and absolute. “No.”
Ivy sighed. “Dorian …”
“I’m not leaving you alone with him. He’s a traitor.”
“And what could he possibly do to me?” Ivy gestured at the bandages swathing great expanses of Helios’s body. “Stare at me vengefully? I may not be much of a warrior, but I’m pretty sure I can handle an invalid.”
For a moment, Helios’s expression turned mutinous, as if he wanted very much to argue her assessment of his physical capabilities. But when he tried to sit up, pain sent him flopping right back onto the pillows. “She’s right,” he said. “I’m not a threat in this state. The only person I’m capable of hurting is myself.”
Words, Ivy thought, were sometimes better weapons than fists. But she kept her musing to herself. While a part of her had no interest in Helios’s groveled apologies or flimsy excuses, she was too curious to ignore an opportunity to hear what he had to say for himself.
“I’ll be fine, Dorian.” That was probably a lie. “Just give us a minute.”
Dorian hovered beside her, a silent sentinel, for so long that Ivy thought he was not going to move. But then he heaved a weary sigh and relented. “Fine.” To Helios, he added, “But I’ll be right outside that door. If Ivy calls, I will hear her and I will come back in. You don’t want me to come back in, Helios.”
A shallow, terse nod. “No, sir.”
“If you say anything to upset her, I will gladly cut out your tongue.”
That was a lovely visual. “Caius wants to interrogate him later,” Ivy said, out of a sense of obligation.
Dorian shrugged. “He doesn’t need a tongue for that. We can supply him with paper to write his answers down.”
Helios, to his credit, seemed remarkably unperturbed by their glib discussion of his possible mutilation. “The last thing I want to do – the last thing I ever wanted to do – was hurt Ivy.” His yellow eyes flicked to Ivy. “I’m sure you think the worst of me, but please … know that.”
Dorian advanced on him. “You have the audacity —”
“Dorian.” Ivy held up a hand.
He didn’t wrest his glare from Helios when he spoke. “Right outside that door,” he promised.
Helios nodded a fraction. “Understood.”
Ivy watched Dorian leave. The door clicked shut behind him, and she kept her eyes on it because she wasn’t sure what she would see or think or feel when it was just Helios in the room with her. It had been far simpler when he’d been unconscious.
“Ivy.”
She turned back to face him, slowly. “What?”
Dorian thought she was kind, but she was more than that. Kindness wasn’t a passive quality. It was a choice one had to make, and right then, Ivy didn’t feel much like making it. The wound of Helios’s betrayal was too raw for kindness. Maybe Dorian was right. Maybe one day, she would dig deep within her soul and find the capacity for forgiveness he was so certain she had. But today was not likely to be that day.
Helios closed his eyes, lashes dark against his sallow skin. She’d once found him obscenely handsome. She still did, if she was honest with herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tensed as if expecting a blow.
“You’re sorry,” Ivy repeated, her voice hollow. “That’s it? You’re sorry.”
He risked a glance at her. “Does anything else matter?”
The question caught Ivy off guard. She could not have said what she had expected, but it wasn’t that. “I … don’t know.”
“I won’t insult you by offering you excuses, but I wanted to say that to you first. I’m sorry. I mean it.”
As much as Ivy wanted to doubt his sincerity, she found that she couldn’t. “Helios …”
He shook his head even though the effort caused him obvious pain. “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I did what I did and I will face the consequences. You just – you deserved to hear that. I never lied to you, Ivy. Not once. And I’m not lying now.”
“Never lied to me? How can you say that?” Everything he’d ever told her had been a lie. Every moment since the first had been a lie. “When I asked you why you were helping me – helping us – you said you wanted to do the right thing. You said you couldn’t stand by while Tanith ripped the world to shreds. You said you watched her cut down her own people and it made you sick. Did any of that even happen?”
Helios’s mouth hardened into a grim frown. “It did.”
“Then why?” Ivy was struck by how badly she needed to know. “Why did you keep working for her? You could have come clean; we could have helped you.”
His expression shuttered, as if he were slamming down a window. “It doesn’t matter why.”
“It does,” said Ivy. “To me. If she threatened you —”
“It wasn’t me she was threatening.” For a brief moment, his countenance faltered and his face was an open book. He tried to gather himself, with visible effort, but Ivy had peeked behind the mask and saw the truth he seemed so determined to hide.
“Who?”
Helios shook his head again. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “Not anymore. He’s probably already dead. After what I did …”
“Helios, please,” said Ivy. “Tell me.”
Despair flitted across his face, as plain as day. “My brother.” Helios swallowed thickly. “She said if I didn’t do as she commanded, she would kill him. And it would be slow. She gave me that locket with his picture in it to remind me. The one I showed you in the garden. I used it to send messages to her. The same way you used that pendant to communicate with Dorian when you were being held captive in the keep.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Our parents died when we were very young. It’s always just been me and him. I couldn’t …”
He trailed off, and Ivy felt a tug in her chest, the gentle pull of compassion that drove her to study the healing arts, that guided her hands as she worked.
“I’ll see if I can find him,” Ivy said.
Helios opened his eyes to study her. “Why? Why would you help me after what I’ve done to you?”
Because it’s the right thing to do. But Ivy said nothing. She started packing up her supplies, her emotional reserves exhausted.
After a full minute passed in silence, save for the glass vials of salves and elixirs clinking as Ivy placed them back in her basket, Helios spoke again. “You should hate me.”
Ivy gathered up the folded bandages and placed them in the basket. She looped the handle over her arm and stood. She didn’t speak until she was at the door, one hand on the knob.
“I don’t hate you, Helios. And I don’t want to.”
She turned the knob and opened the door. Dorian was right outside, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. His eyebrows rose when he saw her. She wanted him to hear what she had to say too.
When she turned back to Helios, she found those sad, bright eyes boring into hers. “Hate is a choice. And it’s not one I’m interested in making.”