Page 67 of Sword & Shadow
“It will take time—”
“She had a panic attack today, Jonn,” he spat. “Because you took the Relic from her. What happens if she has another in the Keeps, huh? You’re going to risk her life to help her ‘heal’?”
Deckard’s gaze grew sharp. “The Relic wasn’t helping, Thom. It was masking the pain she felt. She couldn’t keep the Relic forever. This would have happened eventually, and the longer we waited, the worse it would have been. Now, she has six days to recover before we enter another Keep.”
“You think she can heal from Hewitt’s death in six days?”
“I wouldn’t begin to presume that she could fully heal from that in six lifetimes.”
“Then why would you take away the one thing holding her together?”
“It was hindering her,” Deckard insisted. “The Relic made her forget that she had anything to heal from. She wasn’t getting better. She never would have. In order for her to ever find some semblance of peace with his death, she had to give it up.”
“So she just has to endure this alone?” Thom raised his brow knowingly, accusingly. “Or is it that you want her to be reliant onyou?”
Deckard’s shoulders drew back as if Thom had shoved him. “Excuse me?”
“I know how you are. You like people to be dependent on you. It makes you feel important—special. The Relic took that from you, so you took it from her.”
Deckard’s mouth hung ajar in disbelief. “Do you really think I could do something so cruel?”
“Why else would you do this to her?”
“It isn’t as though Iwantedto. Ihadto.”
“I know her better than you.” Thom pointed to his chest. “I’mher friend. What are you? The man she was forced to marry?”
Deckard scoffed. “If you know her so much better, please, enlighten me: Why did she tell me that she doesn’t want the Relic back?”
That surprised Thom, but he shrugged it off. “Because she knew that’s what you wanted to hear.”
“Evylin never withholds her true opinion. That’s one of the things I’ve always—” Deckard stopped himself before he said aloud the damning truth they all knew: He loved her.
Thom clenched his jaw.
“Always appreciated about her,” Deckard concluded.
Ignoring the accuracy of his brother’s assessment, Thom glared at him. “She can’t fight like this, Jonn. She almost killed me today because she was lost in some...mania. I don’t know who she thought she was fighting, but it wasn’t me or Raff. Without the Relic, we risk her turning on us, or worse, having another attack in the heat of battle. We could lose her. Are you willing to take that chance?”
“Today was a mistake,” Deckard said. “It was the result of the Relic’s repression of her emotions. She has the next six days to process her grief and train to strengthen her control of her senses, ensuring that she’s capable of entering the Keep.”
“How can you be so careless with her?” Thom demanded. “She needs more time.”
“And what would you have me do?”
“Give her the Relic.”
“To face another breakdown like today’s, a week from now?”
“She needs relief, Jonn.”
“She needs to heal,” he countered. “And she won’t do that if she has the Relic.”
Thom ground his teeth. He heard the logic in the argument. But he couldn’t help thinking that Evylin needed something—anything—to help her through her grief. Ifhewere her husband, he wouldn’t leave her side until she felt so safe and cared for that her pain melted away like the last of winter’s remnants on a sunny spring day.
Hands curled into fists at his sides, Thom held Deckard’s stare. “I won’t let her hurt like this, Jonn. I won’t stand idly by while you abandon her to agony.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
