Sevensworn

XXII. The Dead, Still Living

It took a full week to get back to Adacian shores. Acaeus woke up on the third day, as they were crossing the sea, begged them to turn around and go back to Kadena, and only gave up when he saw Ronan and Zia, both dead on their feet and entirely somber.

They caught him up on the events that had transpired when they landed. The story was kept brief, told mostly by Zia, as Ronan had lost himself to thought and anger somewhere during their passage on the boat they'd borrowed from a young Kadenan sailor that had hailed from Ashana's village. Any sense of righteousness Acaeus had once possessed bled out of him, and though he apologized sincerely on the road back to Terr'Havel, neither Ronan nor Zia were of the mind to accept it. It was received with two nods and a murmured, "we know," from Zia. Ronan said nothing, and Acaeus eventually stopped trying.

After that, they moved through the world like ghosts. They rose at first light, rode under the fog and the gently falling snow, and retired at the first sign of darkness. They did not speak, they ate only when they had to, and they slept under the stars. The three horses the Ravenpledged had given them were louder than they were, whinnying back and forth as if to mask the silence.

They had all known each other for years, and yet they brushed past each other like strangers. They had long since given up on speech—it had been made clear from Ronan and Zia's prickling hostility that the events they had endured over their stint in Kadena were not up for discussion, and Acaeus' excuses were not going to be welcome for quite some time.

His intentions may have been pure, but they had caused more harm than they had good. It⁠—the lying, the avoidance, the outright disregard for the ways of the Circle—it was too much to forgive in a week, in a month. In fact, by the time the midlands became visible on their tenth day of traveling, the only words that had been spoken in days were out of courtesy or shared briefly between Ronan and Zia as they discussed the safest route to take through the storms in the mountains or how to bypass camps of Rhydellan soldiers. The two of them were not at odds, per se, but cautious; their complete and utter dependence on one another, even for so brief a period, had left their memories all too close to the surface. Their shared pain and terror in Kadena was brought up whenever their eyes met, whenever they happened to brush shoulders. It was easy to block out when they were apart, but even something so simple as Zia clearing her throat was enough to send his mind hurtling back to the reef, to the moment when Zia had choked and lurched forward, going too still too quickly after ridding a portion of the water from her lungs.

He was sure she had the same thoughts.

On the dawn of their twelfth day of travel, Zia said something that nearly made him cry in relief:

"There. Terr'Havel." She pointed, and he and Acaeus followed her line of sight to the manor, shrouded in fog a mile or so up the road.

"Oh, thank the Three," Acaeus breathed. They all stopped for a moment, taking the sight in and realizing that they had, in fact, survived—that they had made it back in one piece, that the scabs that had started to heal into the pink beginnings of scars on Ronan's skin and Acaeus' singed hair and Zia's bandaged head were things that they could one day overlook as a brief moment in their shared past. The moment they were through the doors of Terr'Havel, they would be free to heal. To put it all behind them. To, at the very least, mask the trauma with something stronger.

Ronan spurred his horse forward first, taking the lead, urging his mount faster than it had gone in days. He could tell the mare was grateful, that it had wanted to run, as they flew down the road, not slowing down even when Ronan eased up on his control. It felt like it had been years since he'd seen a place that felt like home⁠—Adacia itself was home, he supposed, but since he'd left Solthorne there had been nowhere that felt safe, nowhere that called out like an old friend waiting to greet him. Terr'Havel may not have been terribly familiar, but since he'd left for Kadena it was all he had longed for. Walls around them, a roof above them, his Circle, unharmed and all in one place. He felt a flare of rage directed toward Acaeus for tearing them from that reality to begin with, and lowered his head against the wind as he drove his mare a bit harder. He heard Zia call out to him, perhaps asking him to slow down, but he kept a steady pace, putting a good twenty feet between them. He only slowed on the way to the gate, waiting for Zia and Acaeus to catch up before he dismounted.