Chapter 26: Interlude - The Door That Stayed Closed

THE FIRE HAD burned low again.

Kote stood behind the bar, his hands flat on the wood, his eyes fixed on something very far away. He hadn’t spoken for several minutes. The silence stretched between the three of them—Kote, Bast, Chronicler—like a held breath.

“Reshi?” Bast’s voice was soft. Careful. “Are you—”

“I’m fine.” The words came automatically, empty of meaning. “I just need… a moment.”

Chronicler set down his pen. His fingers were cramped from hours of writing, but that wasn’t why he stopped. There was something in Kote’s stillness that demanded respect. Something broken.

But respect didn’t mean silence. Not for a man who made his living finding truth.

“I have questions,” Chronicler said, his voice careful but firm. “Things that don’t add up.”

Kote’s eyes focused, the distant look fading slightly. “Of course you do.”

“Yllish knots that control behavior. A patron who turns out to be a Chandrian. A woman being ‘written’ like a song.” Chronicler spread his hands. “These are extraordinary claims. You understand why I might have doubts?”

“You’re a scribe who writes down stories about magic. Surely you’ve encountered extraordinary claims before.”

“I’ve encountered stories people believe are true. That’s different from them being true.” Chronicler held Kote’s gaze. “How do I know this isn’t just… grief? A man who lost someone he loved, constructing an elaborate mythology to explain why he couldn’t save her?”

The silence stretched. Bast shifted uncomfortably.

“You don’t know,” Kote said finally. “Not yet. But you will, before this story ends.” Something flickered in his eyes—not anger, but something older. “Ask your questions. I’d rather have an honest skeptic than a credulous fool.”

Chronicler nodded slowly. “You knew,” he said, returning to the narrative thread. “By this point in the story, you knew what was happening to her.”

“I knew enough.” Kote’s voice was flat. “I knew she was being written. I knew her patron was Cinder. I knew the song was designed to do something terrible.”

“But you didn’t stop it.”

“I couldn’t stop it.” For the first time in hours, emotion flickered across Kote’s face. Pain. Old, familiar pain. “That’s the whole point of the story, Chronicler. I knew everything that mattered, and I still couldn’t stop it. Because knowing isn’t the same as understanding. And understanding isn’t the same as wisdom.”

“What would wisdom have looked like?”

Kote laughed—a hollow sound. “Walking away. Leaving her to her fate. Accepting that some people can’t be saved, and that trying to save them only makes things worse.” He shook his head. “But I was seventeen. I was in love. And I was absolutely certain that I could fix anything if I just tried hard enough.”

“Pride,” Bast said quietly.

“Pride.” Kote nodded. “The same pride that made me challenge Ambrose. The same pride that made me play Elodin’s games. The same pride that made me speak to the Cthaeh and think I could walk away unchanged.” He picked up his eternal cloth, began wiping the bar. “Pride is the door that never stays closed. You lock it, and lock it, and lock it again. And somehow it always swings open just when you need it shut.”

Chronicler waited. He’d learned, over these three days, that Kote’s silences were often more meaningful than his words.

“There was a moment,” Kote said finally. “In the garden, after she ran. I could have done something different. Could have made a different choice.”

“What choice?”

“I could have followed her. Not to save her—I know now that wouldn’t have worked—but to listen. Really listen.” His hands stilled on the bar. “She was trying to tell me something. Even through the bindings, even through the compulsions, she was trying to warn me. And I was already walking the other direction.”

“What was she trying to tell you?”

“That the lines weren’t where I expected them to be.” Kote’s voice was distant. “Heroes and monsters. Good and evil. The Chandrian and the Amyr. I thought I understood the shape of the conflict. I thought I knew which side I was on.”

“And you didn’t?”

“I was on my own side.” He set down the cloth. And said nothing more.

Bast stood abruptly, walked to the window, stared out at the night.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“Am I?”

“You didn’t cause what happened. Cinder caused it. The Cthaeh caused it. The people who’d been manipulating events for centuries—they caused it.” Bast turned back, and his eyes were fierce. “You were a boy, Reshi. A brilliant, arrogant, impossible boy who was caught up in something so much bigger than he could understand.”

“That doesn’t absolve me.”

“Maybe not. But it explains things.” Bast crossed the room, stopped on the other side of the bar. “You’re telling this story like it’s a confession. Like you’re the villain. But you’re not. You’re just the person who was there. The person who tried to do the right thing and got it wrong.”

“Does it matter? Right intention, wrong result—the result is what people remember.”

“It matters to me.” Bast’s voice cracked. “It matters that you tried. That you cared. That you loved her enough to risk everything.” He reached across the bar, gripped Kote’s arm. “Reshi, please. Stop punishing yourself for being human.”

Kote looked at Bast’s hand on his arm. Looked up at Bast’s face—the desperation there, the hope, the love that had sustained him through years of exile and silence.

“I’m not punishing myself,” he said quietly. “I’m just telling the truth.”

“Then tell the rest of it.” Bast’s grip tightened. “Tell us what happened next. Tell us how you tried to save her. Tell us how you failed, and why, and what it cost you.” His voice dropped. “And then tell us how you’re going to fix it.”

“I don’t know if I can fix it.”

“Then figure it out.” Bast released his arm, stepped back. “That’s what you do, Reshi. You figure things out. You find solutions that nobody else can see. You’re not done yet. Not while you’re still telling the story.”

The silence stretched again. But it was a different silence now—not the hollow quiet of despair, but something closer to consideration.

“He’s right,” Chronicler said. “About the story, at least. We’re not finished. And the ending isn’t written yet.”

Kote looked between them—Bast, desperate and hopeful; Chronicler, patient and waiting. Two people who believed in him, against all evidence. Two people who refused to let him disappear into his own guilt.

“Very well,” he said finally. “But I warn you—the next part is harder. What happened at the University was just the beginning. The real tragedy… that comes later.”

“We’re ready,” Bast said.

“Are you?” Kote picked up his cloth again, began the endless ritual of polishing. “The door I told you about—the one that stayed closed? I should have walked through it when I had the chance. Should have listened to Denna, trusted her warnings, stepped back from the game I was playing.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because the Maer sent a summons. Because there was a door in the Lackless estate that called to something deep inside me. Because Bredon had beautiful games to play, and I was too curious to refuse.”

He looked up, and his eyes held the first spark of life Chronicler had seen in hours.

“Let me tell you about Severen. About the secrets I uncovered. The truths that should have stayed buried.”

He set down the cloth.

“Let me tell you about the unraveling.”