Page 49 of Guardian of Exile

“Edward Caruthers isn’t the only person I’ve killed. Not that day, and not since. He probably won’t be the last.” There was a challenge in his words, one that confirmed her belief in why he’d brought her here. He wanted to tell her what he had probably never been able to tell anyone else—the extent of what he’d done. And if he flung the words out in a tone that said he was certain she couldn’t accept them, she thought the tone and the armor was because he did want her to accept them. He wanted absolution and she, as someone who already knew the basics of what he’d done—and who could potentially understand why—was the perfect person to offer it.

“Why did you kill him?”

He shrugged. “Because it was that, or kill myself. And why should I be the one to pay for what he’d done? I was nine when my mother gave me to those people.” His voice hardened. “You know what she told me? ‘Be brave, Tristen, and do what they tell you.’ So I tried. Because I didn’t believe she would send me anywhere bad. But it was so strange here. I almost died crossing over into—what did you call it over here? Dead Earth? It felt like everything that made me me was being ripped out.

“I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel the Congregation. I was in and out of fevers for three days—new experience for me—and I remember hearing them talking about me. About how they were going to be late with delivery, and what if this planet deadened my magic too much for me to be useful? Maybe they should just kill me and cut their losses.

“When I finally came to enough to be cognizant, one of them grabbed one of the others, slit her wrists and shoved her down in front of me. Healing—especially healing life-threatening wounds—is a compulsion for Shamans at that age. We can’t resist it unless someone teaches us how.

“I didn’t know how. And I didn’t have the strength to resist it at that moment even if I had. My magic latched onto her. It was slow, and it was inelegant, but it did save her life. It also took almost all the magic I had. So when they delivered me to Caruthers, I didn’t have much left in me to work with, and boy was that not the right state to be arriving in.

“He’d wanted me for two reasons. One, he had an obsession with immortality and he thought I could give it to him, and two, he’d made a deal with a very bad man whose son had a rare form of brain cancer and a very short amount of time left to live. He got what he wanted from the man in return for promising he could save his son’s life.

“By the time he got me—delivered late—the guy’s son was almost dead, and I didn’t exactly perform a miracle healing on the spot. Most of a Shaman’s healing is instinctual, but that instinct comes from the Congregation, in the beginning. And when we’re young, we need them to do complex things we haven’t done before.

“I could finally sense them again, but I couldn’t really hear them. And I hadn’t recouped much magic yet. I managed to stabilize the kid, but no one was happy with me, which Caruthers made clear by slapping the shit out of me.

“Anyway, it took me a week and finally being able to sense the Congregation enough again for them to guide me, but I did manage to heal him over several days. That was probably the most pleasant week of my time here. It went downhill after that. Rich people in this country get up to some truly heinous shit.

“You’d think Caruthers would have wanted to keep that from me—or at least that he would have found having a kid around all the time annoying—but he thought it was funny to make me watch. Funny to make me heal the people he hurt so he could hurt them again.

“I don’t know how long that might have gone on. How long I could have gone on. But by the time I was twelve he was getting real unhappy with me because he wasn’t getting any younger. I fixed everything that was wrong with him, but he couldn’t understand that getting older isn’t a disease, it’s just life.

“He thought I was lying to him. So he decided to incentivize me to do what he wanted. But hey, at least he left me balanced, right?” He waved his hand. “Take the fingers off the right side, foot off the left. Of course, I was right-handed originally, but what does that matter, right?”

Nyx winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t want your fucking pity.”

She snapped. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to feel bad that terrible things happened to you. Can you ever forgive me?”

His glower broke, a smile taking its place.

Nyx threw up her hands in exasperation, nearly knocking over the drink she hadn’t touched yet. “Do you like it when I snap at you?”

“Yes. It’s incredibly refreshing.”

To avoid saying something else refreshing, she finally took a sip of her breve. The whipped cream was half-melted into it already, and the hit of sugar and richness was a stark contrast to what she’d been drinking lately. The sweetness was a balm against the conversation they were having.

Since he seemed to prefer bluntness, and he’d brought up the topic, she asked what she’d been wondering since she met him. “I thought Shamans could heal themselves to the same extent they could anyone else. You couldn’t…” She trailed off.

“Fix it? If he’d given me my foot and fingers back, sure, could have put everything right back together. But I can’t regrow a limb. I don’t think he understood how quickly a Shaman’s body will move to seal a wound, either. Someone else loses a finger, and as long as you stop their bleeding and put the digit on ice, I can reconnect it up to a day later. My own? I would have needed it back within fifteen minutes.

“But, since Caruthers took the foot first and I permanently lost it, he was very convinced that threatening to take more would get me to comply. So he took a finger. And another. After that, if I’d known how to make that fucker live forever, I would have done it. When I didn’t—when I couldn’t—I thought he’d finally understand that what he wanted couldn’t be done. I thought he’d leave me be.”

Tristen shook his head. “But he wanted what he wanted, and I don’t think he cared anymore whether it was actually possible or not. I was supposed to have been able to give it to him, and if I couldn’t, then I had to pay for it either way. When he came back again, I knew if I didn’t stop him he would just keep taking until there was nothing left of me.” Tristen swallowed. “I broke. I’ve never hated anyone like I hated him. I wanted him to die, and my magic knew how to make that happen.”

In the silence that followed, Nyx said, “You were just a kid.”

“I was then. And all I wanted then was for him to stop. So his heart quit. But I’m not a kid anymore. And as an adult? I don’t regret it. The only thing I regret now is that it was quick. I wish I could go back and make it hurt. I wish I’d made him suffer the way he made me suffer. If I had it to do over again, I would do it again, and I would do it worse.

“I know what the right response is to taking a life. You’re supposed to feel bad about it. I didn’t. Not about him, not about the others in his home I killed to get out. And when people threaten me, my first response is to make certain they can’t threaten me again.”

He stared at her with a little too much intensity, waiting to see how she would react. She wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted from her, didn’t know what response he was looking for. All she had was the truth, so it was what she gave him.

“I don’t hold the lives of terrible people sacred. Anyone who could do that to a child—to anyone—is not someone I mourn the loss of.” The boy who had killed Edward Caruthers had been trafficked across multiple planets, abused, and used for a gift that should have been his alone to give. “You saved your own life.”

“You make it sound so simple,” he murmured. He might not regret what he’d done, if he was telling her the truth about how he felt, but he clearly thought he should regret it.