Page 13 of Starside

Regret pierces me deeper than any blade could. I shouldn’t have left. I should have joined him in the forge. This never would have happened—

His arm shakes with effort as he reaches to tap my pocket, and the copper blade inside of it. It’s weak, nothing like his.

His. I look at his scabbard, only to find it empty.

No.

This is my fault. One of the challengers must have seen me use the dagger, seen how easily the glimmering steel cut through bone, and shattered steel. They knew it would be invaluable during the Culling. They came here to get it.

He hands me my own blade. I know what he means.

He wants me to kill him. He wants me to claim his dagger. If I don’t, the person who did this will.

But I can’t.

I shake my head. A sob rips from my chest, echoing through the room.

He takes my hand. It’s trembling. “Listen to me. Listen. Find Vander Evren.” His voice is so faint, I barely understand him.

“What?”

He doesn’t answer. All he does is curl my fingers around my dagger. All he does is drag both of our hands toward his heart. His eyes are pleading.

“Kill me,” he says, choking on the words.

I remember the figurine, still sitting on my bedside. I remember the day he let me accompany him to a Great House to hand-deliver a sword. I remember the village just outside the estate, and how he opened the tattered bag of metal scraps he kept in his front pocket and used one of his only copper ones to buy me a sugar-encrusted piece of fried bread. How I looked up at him and smiled wide after the first bite. How I stuffed half of it into his mouth, and he pretended not to like it, but I knew he did. How he taught himself to sew to make me long-sleeved shirts that covered my marks up to my throat—that kept me alive—when I was too young to make them myself, and before the weaver set up her shop. How, whenever I failed at something, he would tell me to rise from the ashes and call me a phoenix.

“I can’t,” I say, tears blurring my vision.

“Fool,” he says, and then he dies.

I stay with his body until dawn turns the floorboards scarlet. Until the sun sparkles in his lifeless eyes.

Until there is a single knock on the door, and a high-pitched screech.

Carts creak outside. There’s the murmuring of voices.

My tears have all been used up. They’re dried against my heated cheeks. The dark pit in my stomach, the one where all my worst memories and emotions live, is churning. I push it down. I push it all down, because if I don’t, I will never get up again. I will lie beside Stellan and finally let the rage and agony extinguish me.

The only thing that keeps me from doing just that is the fact that Stellan would have hated it.

My voice is pure conviction. “I will find who did this, and I will kill them. I will use everything you taught me, everything you made me, and I will kill them all.” I press my lips to his cold forehead.

Then I take my things, get in a cart, and watch as my village becomes nothing more than a smudge of ash.

3

I’ve never been this far east before. Stellan used to travel to the castle often, to bring weapons to the king. He never let me go, even though I pleaded. Now I’m going to find out why.

Stellan. Thinking of him rotting on our floorboards makes my stomach turn. There was no time for a burial, but I should have dug him a plot. I should have listened when he told me to stay home that morning.

It’s my fault he’s dead.

It’s my fault all of them are dead.

I push the pain and regret down, bury it all below my ribs and in the darkest pockets of my mind. I let it fuel the forge within me, hatred turning, boiling.

For him. I’m doing this for him now too.