Chapter 8 #2
With a long-suffering sigh, Carus rolled his eyes. “First of all, you’re welcome. I really wanted to drop you. Second of all, you are an idiot. And if you’re wondering exactly how you fell into my arms—ask your wife.”
It took Morgen a moment to make sense of those last words, and Nya understood why. Their marriage didn’t feel real, and for Carus to reference it so casually was a harsh slap of reality.
Morgen blinked a few times, evidently still regaining a grasp on his surroundings. When he saw her standing over him, scowling, he grinned.
Gods, he was really smiling at her, broadly and unrestrained.
Despite her anger at him and the fact that she had every intention of finding a way out of all of this and leaving him behind, his expression hit her like a punch to the gut. She had never seen him smile like that, without any check on his emotions. Without control.
“Riiight,” he said, the expression holding even as his eyes fluttered shut. “I married you, and now you’re really mad at me.” He sighed, the sound oddly contented. “But you came back. I knew you would, oíche rionn.”
Nya opened her mouth and shut it twice before she actually spoke, trying and failing to make sense of the way he was acting. “Carus? What…what is happening?”
Carus rubbed at his temple. “Thanks to you, he is drunk off his ass, and now I will have to deal with his caterwauling until he hopefully passes out.”
“I didn’t give him anything—”
“Not on wine. On his own magic.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Carus!” Morgen groaned, slapping Carus in the face. “You should kick me in the head again before it explodes like last time.”
“Nope,” Carus said, attempting to drag him towards the tunnel entrance as lightning cracked across the sky in the distance. “Not this time. I told you not to do this again, and you are going to live with the consequences, migraine included.”
Nya watched, unsure of how to make sense of the strange scene. She followed Carus, and as soon as they were inside, Imeria appeared, laughing softly.
“Gods, really?” She sighed. “I thought he learned his lesson last time.”
Morgen was muttering something now, over and over again, his voice slurred but insistent. It took Nya a moment to realize it was her name.
“Look, Ima, can you just take care of Nya while I get His Majesty to bed before he causes too much of a scene?”
Imeria rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
Carus nodded and turned his attention back to Morgen. “Alright, you big, dumb fucker, let’s go.”
Morgen opened his eyes, still saying her name. His irises were completely flooded with both silver ether and the bright gold of the embers, the strange light broken only by pupils that were dilated a concerning amount.
“He’s really just…drunk?” Nya ventured, glancing at Imeria.
Imeria snorted. “Essentially. When he uses too much magic too fast, the strain of it nearly kills the part of him that’s mortal, and then the embers come to the rescue to keep him from dying.
But his internal magic tends to overdo it, and it goes to his head.
Don’t worry, he’ll be back to his normal, broody self within a couple of hours. ”
“Does this happen often?” Nya asked, her eyes on Morgen, who appeared to be trying to crawl away from a very irritated looking Carus.
Imeria shook her head. “No, only a handful of times. He knows his limits and doesn’t usually push them like this. It leaves him far too vulnerable.” She raised a brow, watching as Carus fought off Morgen’s haphazard slaps. “Obviously.”
“Nya!” Carus called. “Will you please come over here and assure Morgen you are still breathing, have not fallen off a cliff, and are not going to hate him forever—all things he will not shut up about, by the way.”
She bit her lip, and Imeria nudged her arm. “If you want some peace today, you’d better do as Carus says. Take my word for it.”
“Right,” she muttered before approaching tentatively and kneeling on the floor where Morgen was half-propped up against the damp tunnel wall. As soon as he saw her, he stopped flailing and trying to hit Carus in the face.
“Nya?”
Oh gods. He sounded so…scared, almost boy-like in a way she was sure he really never had the safety to be.
“Carus said you were worried,” she said softly. “But I’m fine. You should probably try to go and sleep this off.”
His brow creased. “Everyone is angry with me.”
“Damn straight,” Carus muttered.
But Morgen didn’t look away from her. She was caught, trapped by his wide-eyed gaze.
“I’m used to it,” he whispered. He still wore a crooked smile, though it was sad now. “No one has ever loved me, not even you.” His eyes fluttered shut. “I just don’t like it when you look at me like you hate me.”
She didn’t look away from him. Couldn’t. “Carus, can you help me carry him to bed?”
Carus cleared his throat, and his gruff voice was softer when he replied, “Yeah, let’s go.”
Morgen didn’t protest this time, slinging one arm over Carus’ shoulder and wrapping the other around her. Imeria watched them go, a slant to her brow Nya couldn’t quite read. She would deal with figuring Imeria out later.
She would deal with all of this later, because that pain in her chest she had felt earlier, when they’d just emerged from the portal—that had been because Morgen was dying. She didn’t want to think about what it would feel like if he was actually gone.
“Alright,” Carus said under his breath as they rounded a corner, revealing a hammered metal door that had been constructed to fit the dimensions of the cavern entrance. “Here we are.”
He kicked it open with his foot, and they shuffled into a hollowed-out space containing a large bed, a desk covered in neat stacks of parchment and a few daggers, and a weapons rack in the corner.
Very little about the room felt personal.
Perhaps nothing, if it hadn’t been for the small wooden rack hanging just to the right of the desk.
From small hooks, mementos that would be meaningless to anyone else but her had been hung: a small leather pouch that contained river stones she had carefully selected, a string tied to the end of a long, blue-black feather, a page from a book folded to look like a dragon, and a woven crown of long-dried wildflowers that had sat atop her head on her twenty-fourth birthday.
Her chest tightened, and she blinked away the burning in her eyes, re-focusing on the task of helping Morgen onto the bed. Once he was flopped haphazardly across the mattress, Carus sat back against the wooden headboard with a sigh.
“Go on,” he said, adding with a wink. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t accidentally smother himself.”
But she didn’t smile, instead glancing at the rack of mementos again. Still, she stood, forcing herself to start walking to the door, but Morgen caught her wrist before she could get far.
Eyes half shut, he muttered, “Don’t go.”
She froze, blinking rapidly. It made her head spin, trying to reconcile the ruthless god who had forced her into a marriage and tricked her into an unbreakable bond with the man lying on the bed, begging her to stay with him.
In the end, she couldn’t. But she couldn’t leave him like this either.
So, she glanced at Carus and said, “Ah, I should probably stay. Just in case he freaks out again.”
Carus tilted his head. “Can I trust you not to attempt to murder him, or shall I remain here?”
She shrugged. “Even if I tried, he could easily stop me.”
“And if you managed to get the knife in him while he was asleep?”
Her lips twitched. “I doubt I could injure him in a way that was too fatal for his body to heal.”
Carus’ eyes flicked to Morgen’s throat for a split second and then back to her. “I doubt so too.” He scooted off the bed and strode to the door, stopping short just before he left. “Nya.”
She bit her cheek, flooding her mouth with the taste of copper. “What?”
Carus tipped his head back and let out a long breath.
“Once he’s back to normal and you go back to lying to yourself and pretending you hate him, perhaps at least attempt to understand he has very little idea of how to properly treat someone he cares for.
He’s balancing a lot right now—more than you know or could even understand—and he’s still trying. ”
“Trying?”
“Not to let it go to his head. Not to be like his father.”
Her laugh was little more than a harsh puff of air. “He doesn’t have to try, because he’s never been anything like Kronos. I’ve never doubted that. I just hate that he lied to me.”
Carus stared at her for a long moment, his jaw working, but he didn’t say anything else about it. He just turned and left, the door closing quietly behind him. She sat on the edge of the bed, taking deep breaths, until her pulse slowed and her anger faded.
“You don’t have to do that, you know.”
She twisted, finding Morgen looking at her with half-lidded eyes. His words were still slightly slurred, his voice unguarded, so he clearly wasn’t himself yet. Still, she asked, “Do what?”
He shrugged, closing his eyes. “Lie to him. Carus has known me long enough that he understands the truth.”
“The truth?” Her voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper, but he heard it.
“My own mother didn’t even want me, up until the day I killed her by coming into this wretched world. I was born wrong, and nothing can fix that. Even as a child, I knew it.”
His voice was fading as he slipped closer to sleep.
Nya took a deep breath and shook her head before curling into his chest and whispering, “No one chooses their life, not at first. The only thing that matters, the thing that makes us who we are, are the choices we make. I am very angry at you, Morgen, but…if you were anything like Kronos, you would have done much worse than use marriage to me as a political pawn. Men less evil than Kronos would have probably done unspeakable things to me the other night simply because they could.”
She was sure he was almost asleep, but he shuddered, his arms wrapping around her. This close, he smelled the same as she remembered and was just as warm. She could almost pretend nothing had changed between them.
Tomorrow, she decided, she would hate him. Tomorrow, she would use threats and ultimatums and call his claim to the throne false. But for now, she let herself love this idea of him for the last time.
When she was sure he wasn’t awake any longer, she pressed a hand to his chest, feeling every steady beat of his heart. Tears dampened his shirt when she shut her eyes, and, silently, she confessed the one truth she would never speak aloud.
You were wrong to say you have never been loved. I love you. I love you so much, it’s destroying me.