“Stop that, Davren,” Kezra said right away, her voice cutting through his self-reproach with clean, steady care. “Listen to what I’m actually telling you. You didn’t bring Captain Vale to Kilnstep. You didn’t command the Cairn Host to march south. You didn’t set fire to Father’s freight cart.”
Davren lowered his hand from his eyes, looking at her with hollow, confused misery. “Kez, if I hadn’t left—if I hadn’t come north chasing corps boundaries—you wouldn’t have had to search for me, you wouldn’t have awakened a map maker class, and Krail wouldn’t have sent soldiers to our door.”
“That’s pure arrogance turned inside out,” Kezra said. She leaned across the table until her face was barely two feet from his. “When you were nineteen, you thought you were the solitary hero who would solve the mountain roads and make our family rich. Now you want to pretend you’re the solitary villain who authored every tragedy between here and the lowlands. Both of those stories are lies, Davren. The world is vastly larger than your choices, and people’s lives don’t revolve around your guilt.”
She pointed toward the northern shutter where the dark mass of Stonewake Citadel loomed invisibly against the stars.
