18. Terrible Conversations #2
The tears came unbidden. I just broke, my heart cracking open and the world blurring.
Everything roared around me, all the hateful memories falling on me like wolves on an injured doe, hot tears clawing at my eyes and my chest and throat aching.
I couldn’t stop the sobbing, staggering backwards, away from Alluin, my whole person held captive to that awful moment when a sword had sliced into a child, into Dain.
The fear, the terror, and the overwhelming, sickening guilt—
Strong arms caught me as I staggered. I tried to shove myself away, didn’t deserve compassion, didn’t deserve to do anything but to do better, but I was falling apart and all I could do was batter ineffectually at him, my breath cutting my lungs as I sobbed hysterically.
Alluin dragged me down to the ground and halfway onto him, hooking a leg over mine to keep me captive, holding me as I collapsed and clutched at him.
“He almost died, Lu!” I wailed, my heart broken and all the grave-worms that had been eating me alive for the past decade spilling out.
“He almost died, he was bleeding so badly, they almost killed him—”
“Oh, shaeulo,” Alluin said, his voice thick. He pressed his cheek to mine. It was wet, Alluin crying for me, Alluin crying, Alluin, who had done nothing wrong, who didn’t deserve to be caught in my awfulness.
“No, no, no, no,” I sobbed out, his shirt clenched in my hand. “No, don’t cry, you shouldn’t cry, it was me, it was fucking me—”
He kissed me. He— He kissed me, tilted his face and breathed my air and pressed his warm mouth to mine as if that was the most natural thing in the world.
I couldn’t even respond, so shocked that I froze, my eyes flying open and my breath catching in my throat.
I kept shaking and my lungs kept wanting to sob, but I couldn’t do anything but stare frozen as Alluin broke the contact and brushed the hair out of my face.
“It wasn’t you,” Alluin said, his eyes reddened and my depths of sorrow reflected in his hazel eyes.
“How could it have been you? You saved him.” His thumb skimmed along the track of my tears as I took another juddering breath, the tears coming anew but the hysteria broken by his touch.
“Have you truly blamed yourself all this time? Is that why you can’t seem to bear to look me in the eyes? ”
I crumpled under the weight of his gaze. I started weeping again, soft and broken, hiding my face against his shoulder. “I le-het them get c-close to him,” I sobbed out. “I let them have swords, I should have checked their blades, I didn’t check the blades—”
“I didn’t make them swear,” Alluin said, cutting me off. “I asked for volunteers and I didn’t make them swear not to seek his harm. Do you understand, Zhi? You asked me for help and I gave you assassins.”
That only made me cry harder, my whole body tense and shaking. “I should have known—”
“How?” he asked, sounding desperate. “Gods, Zhi, they were mine and I didn’t know.
You love him and I love him, and we didn’t understand how much they could hate him.
It’s not your fault. It was never your fault.
” He pressed his face against mine. “Can’t you let me pull the poisoned arrow from your breast?
Can’t we be each other’s favorite people again? ”
“Alluin, I— I just— I can’t—” I choked out, blinded by tears, unable to even complete a sentence. I didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of what I even could say, the back of my throat burning with acid and Alluin holding me like he loved me.
“Oh, Zhi,” he said, heartbroken for me as I’d never wanted him to be. He tilted my chin up and kissed me again, his warm mouth against mine, the contact soft and sweet.
“Why do you keep kissing me?” I asked in a wail.
“Because I think you think you’re disgusting, and I think you’re anything but.
Because most of the time you won’t even touch me, and I spent years thinking it was to punish me, until I finally realized it was to punish yourself.
” Alluin shifted positions, settling me so that I was cuddled halfway on top of him, my face tucked against his neck and my thigh across his.
“It’s so awful to be locked out of your life that it feels like I’m dying, Zhi.
I’m not white linen. You won’t ruin me. Just let me in.
Let me be down in the mire with you, if that’s what it takes.
” He took my hand off his shirt and pressed a third kiss to my palm, trembling, his breath warm against my skin. “I miss you.”
The corners of my mouth shook. Hot tears kept seeping out of my eyes.
He smelled so good and felt so good and he kept saying all the things I desperately wanted to hear and violently refused to believe.
But he was saying them, not with prevarication but as unassailable truth. Alluin believed every word.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, too,” I said in a ragged whisper, cringing closer to him. “I’m so sorry, Lu. Gods. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Don’t be sorry, shaeulo,” Alluin replied, as easily as breathing.
“I claim no debt from you. How could I?” He rested his face against my head.
“You spent more than a century loving me while I wallowed in despair. You’ve sought me in the darkness again and again, and you did it without ever asking for repayment. ”
I shuddered, the paroxysm of weeping dying away into sluggish sorrow. “I… You… That’s different,” I said through the ache in my throat.
“Is it?” he asked gently. “How, might I ask?”
Embarrassment warmed the tips of my ears. “That’s you,” I whispered.
“Mm-hmm.” He stroked the backs of his fingers along my side, leaving a tingling wake behind. “Do you need me to list my flaws for you? I can. In excruciating detail, if I must.”
“No need. I’m familiar,” I said in a thick voice.
Tears heated my eyes as I thought about all the things I missed about him—how much I’d missed simply touching him.
“You hog the sheets when it’s cold. You take the olives out of my cocktails without even asking, and if I get extras, you take those, too.
” I laced my shaking fingers through his and clung to his hand.
“You’ve never brought me flowers. You drop your wrist slightly on the balestra before you lunge in formal duels, but usually only when you’re tired. ”
Alluin breathed a mirthless laugh. “Remote. Reticent,” he said in reply.
“I struggle to understand the emotions of people around me, even the ones I dearly love. I’m prone to melancholy and to obsession.
When I feel things, I feel them so deeply it’s like I’m drowning, and I often can’t even name my desires, only knowing that I’m consumed by a relentless, thundering want.
” Alluin let out a shaky breath and held my hand tightly.
“I overwhelm people. I overwhelm myself. And so I hold back, almost always. I wait, too long. I so little demonstrate my devotion that even my shield-love couldn’t seem to believe that I would choose his side. ”
Tears pricked my eyes again at the raw despair in his voice, a sound I’d hoped to never hear again. I pushed myself up slowly, moving so I could frame his body, looking down at him.
“That’s not true,” I whispered.
“Which part, Zhi?” he asked, looking at me the way a dying soldier looks at the rising sun.
One tear fell from my eye to splash on his chest. “I always knew you would take my side. I just don’t think I deserve it.”
He reached up and cupped my face. “Then don’t deserve it,” Alluin said, “but have me anyway.”