Chapter 25 #2
“Fair enough. But then why not sit down with him? Explain why he’s wrong? Try for an armistice or a detente or whatever it’s called. I slept through history that day. Point is, just freaking talk to him.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” He snaps the words back, then visibly calms. “My brother refuses to see anything but the result he believes will come, and he’s willing to destroy what works so he can take a chance on something that will fail. He’s done it before.”
I frown, then look up as understanding dawns. “The Guardian. But what if he’s right? What if the realms really can go back to the way they were before the Sundering? And besides, he gave you your freedom. You’re no longer half of one being. Don’t you cherish that?”
“He gave me the freedom to move in this world,” he says softly. “And without that, I would never have met you. So for that, I cannot condemn him.”
My breath hitches at his words, even as a shadow crosses his face.
“But he also took my brother.”
My gut tightens with understanding as tears prick my eyes. “So that’s it?” I ask, my words soft. “That’s why you won’t even look at his solution—because you’re angry and hurt?”
“No.” He frowns, then slides out of bed and starts to pace, his naked body like a sculpted god.
After a moment he stops and sighs. “Perhaps. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. He’s walking the wrong path.”
“You can’t know that.”
He looks at me. “Maybe not. But neither can he. Or you, for that matter.”
Since he’s right, I stay quiet.
He exhales hard. “I don’t think I’m wrong. And you don’t know him as I do.” His voice is low. Ominous. He turns away from me, shoulders tight, his posture stiff. I want to speak. To find the words to soothe him. But before I can, I hear his sharp intake of breath.
I look up to see a latticework of dark, ugly scars appearing on his back.
They weren’t there before. I explored every inch of his body tonight, and there was no way I could have missed that horrible pattern of raised scars.
The kind of maiming caused by a whip. The kind of scars that are the result of torture.
“Chase…” I whisper. “What—what the hell?”
He says nothing, and I fear he’s simply going to ignore the question. Then the scars begin to pulse, red and angry. Some open, blood and pus seeping out.
I hear a whimper, then realize it’s coming from me.
He’s breathing hard when he turns to me, and I see the pain in his face as he forces out the words. “You want to know the kind of man your Nightmare King is? Then you should understand what he’s capable of.”
“I don’t—”
“He had me locked away. I have no idea for how long. Time meant nothing. All I knew was the torment of the whip, and that he’d given the order.
An order for pain. For breaking me down.
And for scars so deep I would never forget the degradation.
When I was finally released, the bastard who’d done the whipping told me I’d been in that room for a thousand fucking years. ”
I swallow, horrified.
“Whips and fire, Cora, and never a word from him. Neither in hate nor in mockery. Just the torment, vile and unending.”
My stomach twists. “But why?”
“He never said. For stepping into the role I’ve claimed? For protecting the Realm of the Real from the mares? For trying in some small way to still be the Guardian that we were? He never told me. Never had the balls to look me in the eye after chaining me.”
“That’s monstrous.” I hug myself, hardly able to believe the Adric I know could do that.
“Monstrous indeed. So forgive me if I don’t share your optimism about his grand plans for unity.”
I can’t breathe. The weight of it presses down, hot and choking. I hate what he’s telling me—hate that I believed even for a moment that Adric might be misunderstood. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t know.”
He looks at me for a long time. “No,” he says quietly. “You didn’t.”
The silence between us hums, thick and painful. Then he turns away again, the scars fading back beneath his skin as if ashamed to be seen.
I pull my knees up and hug them. “I don’t understand how he could do something like that. I’ve heard what he wants—unity and peace. He’s shown me. It doesn’t make sense that he’d think torturing you would be on that path.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I frown, then wipe tears from my eyes. “Not to me.” A shiver cuts through me. How could I have been so desperately, horribly wrong about Adric?
“Are you familiar with Westeros?”
The question is so absurd that it takes me a moment to make the connection. “Are we talking about Game of Thrones?”
“Daenerys Targaryen tried to unite Westeros, to make it better. And at first, it looked like she’d get it done. But by the end, she was wearing the cloak of a tyrant.”
I gape at him. “Last I checked, that was fiction.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. I was only trying to illustrate my point.”
“I think your point is that you’re jealous.”
To his credit, he laughs. “True. And again I say, that doesn’t make me wrong.
” He meets my eyes. “My brother’s an idealist too—and that’s the problem.
If you turn the pages of history, time and again you’ll see that idealists often end up standing in the charred ruins of their dreams, surrounded by the corpses of those they’ve destroyed. ”
“Game of Thrones is hardly history,” I mutter.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. He’s made his point and he knows it.
For that matter, he may even be right. I’ve never been the best student—hard to nail good grades when you fall asleep in class regularly—but I’ve read enough to know that some of Earth’s darkest periods came when someone was dead-on sure they knew the path and burned everything down to prove it.
But burning the world down? Torturing Chase? I can’t wrap my head around it.
“I know my brother better than you do,” he says, as if reading my mind.
I nod but can’t help but wonder. Because the Adric Chase knew had been a physical part of him ages and ages ago. Now, Adric is the Nightmare King. And I have no idea if Chase really knows that Adric at all.
For that matter, do I? Or have I only seen what he wants me to see?
“You’re thinking too hard,” he whispers, then kisses me again, slow and grounding.
He pulls me back down to the bed with him, and I melt into him, letting the warmth of his body anchor me as sleep creeps up on me.
And as I do, I realize this is the first time in longer than I can remember that I’m not afraid of what I’ll find in my dreams. Because I’ve already found everything I need right here, in the arms of the man who’s been guarding my sleep for years.