"I am so sorry, Giana. I am so sorry I did not see. I am so sorry I did not save you from any of it. I am so sorry that the only love you knew from her was this—bruises and broken bones and twisted words—while I sat on this mountain and thought myself a healer."

  I clung to him, my face pressed against his chest, and I felt the faint tremor in his body—the King, the Linchpin, the immortal guardian—shaking with a grief and rage he could not fully contain, even for my sake.

  His hand stayed on my back, warm and steady, holding me together as I shattered. And for the first time, I understood that I was not the only one who had been broken by my mother's madness.

  The tears eventually slowed, then stopped. I lay against his chest for a long time, listening to the steady rhythm of a heart that had beaten for millennia. When I finally spoke, my voice was raw but steady.

  "You couldn't have known. I hid it. Everyone hides things from the healer."

  "I am not just the healer." The words were sharp, sharp as the pain that had just left my body. "I am the King. The Linchpin. The one who sees all that happens on this mountain and in the lands around it. And I did not see you." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the galaxies were dimmed, clouded with something that looked almost like grief. "I have failed you. For years, I have failed you."

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  "You didn't—"

  "Do you know what it costs me," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "to watch you climb this mountain day after day, to see you smile and laugh and tell me stories of your village, knowing now—knowing—what waited for you at the bottom? Do you know what it does to me to realize that I could have stopped this, could have healed you years ago, and I did nothing because I did not see?"

  His hand, still resting on my now-healed leg, trembled. The King—the immortal, the ancient, the being who had watched empires rise and fall—trembled.

  "I am sorry," he said. The words were so simple, so human, that they shattered something in my chest. "I am sorry I was not what you needed. I am sorry I did not see. I am sorry for every step you took in pain, every night you cried alone, every moment you suffered while I sat on this mountain and let you carry it all by yourself."

  I reached out and took his face in my hands—this face that was older than my world, this being who had never needed comfort from anyone. I held him like he had held me, and I whispered, "You are here now. That is all that matters."

  For a long moment, he simply looked at me. Then, slowly, he leaned into my touch, closing his eyes as if savouring something he had never known he needed.

  "I could breathe. For the first time in days, I could breathe without wincing. Thank you," I whispered.

  He said nothing. But his hand stayed near mine for a long time after, as if he couldn't bear to let me go.