21. Reznyk
Chapter 21
Reznyk
YOU CAN’T STAY HERE
I wake up feeling like my brain is trying to break through the back of my skull and make a run for it. Sunlight pounds its blinding hammer on my temples specifically, and my mouth feels like it’s been packed full of sand. I groan, roll away from the brutal onslaught of light, and press my nose into a scruffy patch of grass.
Great. I blink at the dirt as memories of last night come together like the broken pieces of a shattered vase. Opening that bottle of frost wine. Deciding sleeping outside was a fantastic idea. Babbling to Kira about silver blood on my hands.
“Shit,” I mutter.
If she only knew how much blood these hands have spilled.
I flop over again, then tip my head so I’m staring at my cabin. The door I vaguely remember stumbling through last night is still open, which means Kira is long gone. She probably trashed the place on her way out, searching for that damned amulet. I lift my hands and press my palms to my eyes.
What in the nine hells was I thinking? Alcohol is an acquired tolerance, for fuck’s sake. I can’t go from not drinking anything in months to sharing that many bottles and still expect to function like my old self.
Gods, my old self would be kicking me in the ribs right now. I’m an idiot. I’m lucky she didn’t slit my throat on her way out. I wouldn’t be especially surprised if the Towers had asked her to do that too.
Damn it all, maybe I am lonely. If that’s part of my punishment, then hells, I certainly deserve it. I lower my hands. The birds are too damn loud this morning, and they’re everywhere, screaming their heads off, and someone singing?—
I blink, even though it makes me wince. Singing? Really? Am I hallucinating on top of being hungover?
Magic buzzes under my skin as I shift to my side, then pull myself up to sitting. Xavier’s scruffy head appears in the open door. He regards me with his usual expression of disdain.
And then, yes, singing. It sounds like that damn tavern song about cutting your heart out, sung in a distracted sort of half-hum. My gut lurches as I come to my feet. I spit, then again, waiting to see if I’m about to lose it.
No. I’ll hold on to whatever it is I have. I take a deep breath, then walk back to my cabin.
It’s blessedly dark inside, and it smells like stew and strong tea. I hesitate on the doorstep, staring at the only other human who’s been inside this place since I rebuilt it. She’s standing by the hearth, her thick, fiery hair pulled back into a messy bun and her rather tight pants giving me a lovely view of one of the finer backsides I’ve ever seen.
“Oh,” she says, turning around. “Good morning, sunshine.”
Kira doesn’t look especially well this morning either, which is at least some consolation.
“You too,” I reply. My voice sounds like I’ve just gargled broken glass.
“Have a seat,” she continues, waving at my chair. “I’ll bring you something.”
“If it’s wine,” I growl, “I don’t want it.”
“If you have any more wine, I wasn’t able to find it,” she replies.
I sink into the chair. She crosses the small distance between us.
“You’re still limping,” I say.
“It’s better than it was,” she says as she sets a mug down in front of me.
She turns back toward the fire. Guilt twists inside my chest. Syrus could have healed that ankle perfectly.
“There’s plenty of stew left from last night,” Kira announces. “Honestly, I think it’s even better this morning.”
Her words fade as I stare down at the table. The sweet, thick aroma of strong black tea rises from my mug like an angel coming to lift away my hangover.
She made me tea. I turn from the mug, one of a half dozen I’ve carved on endless rainy days, and watch as Kira fusses with the big copper pot I salvaged from the keep. She’s still favoring her ankle, but other than that, she looks perfectly at home.
Kira turns around. I try to act like I wasn’t staring at her.
“Everything okay?” she asks as she limps back to me, then slides a bowl of stew across the table. “I hope you don’t mind that I made tea,” she continues. “You don’t have much, at least not that I could find. But after last night I thought we could both use some.”
I shake my head, which does nothing to settle the throbbing in my skull. “It’s fine,” I say.
And then, because I’m not sure how to tell her that I can’t remember the last time anyone made anything for me without expecting shills in return, I pick up the mug and bring it to my lips. The tea is strong and hot. I drink it slowly, letting it wage its silent war against the throbbing in my skull. Xavier wanders back inside as morning sun stretches itself across the floorboards, and Kira bends down to scratch him behind the ears. He rewards her with a deep, gravelly rumble of a purr, something it took me months to hear. Little bastard.
I realize I’m smiling as I watch her, this woman who looks almost like she belongs here. She laughs more than Lenore. She smiles more too, and she shows the bright edge of her temper far more easily. Lenore was always calm and composed, still waters revealing very little of the depths below. And Lenore would never spend the night in a place like this, I realize as the warmth of the mug I’m holding sinks into my hands. She would never make tea. Not for me, at least.
Three years ago, was it? Kira said that’s when she was approached by the Exemplars of the Towers. I finish my tea as my smile evaporates. Three years ago I was falling in love with Lady Lenore Castinac in Silver City, and I thought no one knew.
The back of my throat suddenly tastes bitter. I take a tentative spoonful of last night’s stew to cover it. Kira’s resemblance could be the result of a direct family connection. Lenore’s red-haired, blue-eyed father, Lord Rameur Castinac, is hardly a paragon of fidelity. It makes sense that his illegitimate daughter would end up in Silver City’s orphanage.
But I haven’t sensed any magical potential in Kira, and I certainly didn’t sense any in Lenore or in her rather terrifying father. Maybe there’s something I’m missing. I’m hardly an Exemplar of the Towers, after all.
“So,” I say, pushing my now-empty bowl away. “There’s still a question you haven’t answered.”
“This again?” Kira replies. At her feet, Xavier shakes his head like he’s disappointed. “Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m in no shape for another round of Questions.”
“Just one then.”
Kira sighs dramatically, and I have to fight to keep my eyes off the swell of her chest.
“Fine,” she says. “If I don’t want to answer, I’ll just drink the last of the tea before you.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. “What are your plans?”
Kira stares at me. Outside the open door, the throaty scream of a thrush echoes off the rocks and bounces around inside my skull. This godsdamned hangover is putting up a good fight. Later today, I’ll limp over the ridge and come back with willow bark to chew. That will beat it into submission.
“What do you mean?” Kira finally asks.
“Last night, you said no one asked you for your plans,” I reply. “You were generous enough to tell me the Towers’s plan for you, but I still don’t know what you have in mind for yourself.”
She frowns at me in a way that makes me think she’s waiting for the punchline.
“You can’t stay here,” I continue, even though the words make something inside my chest twist. “So, where do you want to go? It doesn’t get any simpler than that, right?”
Her gaze drops to her hands. Guilt pulses once more inside my chest. I try to strangle it. She can’t stay here, damn it. She’s beautiful, she made me tea, and she needs to get the hells away from here before she realizes what kind of monster I really am.
“I— I don’t know how to answer that,” Kira says. Her voice is so soft it’s almost a whisper. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Of course not, I realize, like an idiot. The Towers don’t ever ask. They just pound you into the shape they want and then send you toward their target. If you shatter on the way, hells, they’ve got a quiver full of replacements.
“Give it time,” I say, running my fingers up the back of my neck. “It wasn’t an easy question for me to answer either.”
She blinks a few times, then runs her hand across her eyes. I’m expecting her to push the issue, to ask me how I made my decision or what it was that I wanted or even where that damned amulet is, but she doesn’t reply. I push back from the table, then come to my feet.
“I’m going over the ridge,” I announce. “Don’t follow me.”
Her eyes widen, and her neck pulses as she swallows.
“Shit,” I mutter as my head throbs. “That’s not a threat. Just, rest your ankle, okay?”
“Sure,” she replies, with a frown. “What’s over the ridge?”
“Nothing.”
Her frown deepens. I sigh, then rub my fingers against the blinding ache in my temples. I’m not very good at this anymore. I’ve been alone too long.
“There’s a meadow,” I finally say. “With willow bushes. I need to do something about this godsdamned hangover. Chewing willow bark will help.”
And there’s a pack of direwolves, I don’t dare to say, that is descending the side of the mountain this morning.
With an old god watching them that nobody, not even the Towers, knows about.