Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Stavros
Iwasn’t trying to break the plate. I only brought it up to my room at all because the buzz of chatter in the dining hall was grating at my nerves.
So the dish happened to be sitting by the edge of my desk while I paced around the room, straining my mind for something I could say to my king to change his mind, some alternate strategy I could offer that would make Ivy’s involvement unnecessary.
And when I kicked the leg of the desk in frustration, the plate happened to hop off and shatter on the floor.
Naturally, Ivy returns while I’m muttering to myself and picking up the broken pieces.
At the squeak of the door opening, I freeze other than the upward jerk of my head.
Ivy slips inside. Her bright blue gaze feels especially penetrating as she takes in my position and the jagged chunks of ceramics on the floor around me.
“What did that poor plate ever do to you?” she asks, her tone sardonic but her body tensed as if she thinks she might need to bolt right back out the door.
“It was an accident,” I mutter, scraping the shards together as hastily as I can between my regular hand and the hooked prosthetic I put on for a late-afternoon workout—which did absolutely nothing to get my head on straight.
While I work, Ivy stalks around the room in her now-typical surveillance for conjured creatures. Apparently finding none, she steps tentatively to the sofa and lowers herself onto it.
Her posture still looks braced to flee.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that she’s been running from me ever since my blunder last night. She’s left every room we’ve been in together as swiftly as humanly possible.
As I bring the mess to the waste basket, I shoot her surreptitious glances. Brief twitches of my eyes for as long as my vision will remain steady.
She’s gazing toward the window rather than watching me. Her mouth is set in a line that looks pained.
Even though the moss-green hue of the new gown Casimir’s provided sets off her pale skin and red-blond hair to impressive effect, it doesn’t suit her quite as well as her sparring clothes. But the fierce strength of her spirit shines through all the same.
That spark in her set my blood thrumming through my veins long before I was willing to accept, let alone admit, the effect she has on me. Now, remembering the way she arched and shuddered against me in my bed last night—
No, better to remember the fear in her eyes afterward. Giving in to my hotter desires before we had a stable foundation to carry us through them is what landed me in this disaster.
I wash my hands in the latrine and return to the common room, half expecting our thief-turned-lady to have darted off in my momentary absence. She’s stayed, sitting stiffly on the sofa.
I consider walking over but decide it’s safest giving her plenty of space. As I prop myself against the front of my desk, my stomach churns with all the things I need to say.
Before I can even open my mouth, her gaze flicks to me. She blurts out the words in a rush.
“My magic got away from me during the initiation.”
Ah. Perhaps it’s not just my blunder she’s been fleeing.
Not that I can take any comfort in that fact. Her body has somehow become even more rigid where she’s perched on the sofa.
Even with my view of her blurring, I can feel her gaze burning into me with its intentness.
If I don’t handle her admission just right, I’ll prove myself exactly the enemy she’s afraid I am. I don’t know if we’ll be able to come back from another misstep so soon on the heels of the last.
I keep my voice perfectly calm. “I can’t say that surprises me, what with the drugs and the chaos the scourge sorcerers were encouraging. What happened?”
She shifts uneasily on the sofa cushions. When I give my head a twitch to get a clearer glimpse of her, it’s obvious from the distant look that’s come into her eyes that she’s as much uneasy with her recollections as how I’ll react to them.
Which only offers more evidence of why I don’t need to be afraid of her.
“Everyone was disguised,” she says after a moment.
“I knew I needed to figure out who they were, that getting out of this whole dangerous mission depended on identifying the conspirators. So my magic decided it would start wrenching off people’s masks, and it slipped my grasp a couple of times.
That’s how I saw Olari and the woman from the dining hall. ”
“I’m not hearing anything horrifying so far. We told you that you should use your power if it would work in your favor.”
Her hands twist together in her lap. “But there’s always a backlash.
Kosmel wasn’t around to guide it, and I don’t know how.
It—it pushed in to balance out the pulling away.
One of the scourge sorcerer’s masks seemed to melt down her face and into her mouth.
They had to break it to stop it from choking her.
And my magic hit one of the horses too—something with the bridle hurt it.
The woman might have deserved it, but the horse definitely didn’t. ”
I consider her account. “Surely it wasn’t a lot of harm for something as simple as removing a mask?”
“With all the magic on the things, I’m not sure removing the masks was ‘simple.’” Ivy sighs. “It didn’t seem as if the horse was outright wounded. But if I hadn’t gotten a handle on my power when I did, I don’t know who or what else it might have hurt.”
“You did get a handle on it, though. Without any permanent damage done.”
“I couldn’t manage it on my own. I was too disoriented. But Julita helped me steady myself and focus.”
Julita. It’s gotten increasingly difficult for me to picture the coy, chestnut-haired woman who cajoled me into taking up her cause residing in Ivy’s head. What has she been saying to Ivy about me?
Is Ivy here right now because of her or in spite of her?
The firmness of her tone suggests her declaration matters to her. And I’m not lying when I say, “I’m glad she was there when you needed her.”
Ivy’s fingers tighten around the edge of the sofa cushion. “She won’t always be, though.”
“And you won’t always be socializing with scourge sorcerers.
” I pause, summoning all the conviction I feel into my voice.
“Ivy, nothing you’ve just told me changes my opinion.
I’m not worried about you or your magic.
You went seven years without ever losing your grip on it before you stumbled into this situation, so I don’t see any reason to think your incredible control won’t work just fine once you’re out of this mess. ”
“You don’t see any reason so far.”
There. There is the crux of the problem, the catastrophe I created.
She was willing to trust me once after I’d been an ass to her when we first met. And then I let prejudice and fear and—being honest—my own wretched insecurities about one part of who she is overshadow all the rest, and wasn’t just an ass but a brute.
How am I ever going to convince her that I won’t make another about-face on her?
I know I won’t. So I’m just going to have to give this appeal my all, no matter how much shame I have to dredge up in the process.
I owe this incredible woman my full truth.
I drop my gaze for a moment, gathering myself. “Ivy… You never deserved anything I put you through. I was wrong, over and over again. There was never any reason, not in anything you did, not even in what you are, so now that I’ve sorted myself out, I won’t imagine any more.”
Ivy’s tone is wary. “If it wasn’t anything I am, then what was it about?”
The corner of my mouth crooks up at a wry angle, but my chest constricts around the words. I’ve buried these unsettling emotions so far down, hiding them under layer upon layer of confidence and authority and comradery.
I never wanted to let them out. Maybe I had the fanciful idea they’d rot and disintegrate like a corpse into the earth, but it hasn’t worked. The stifled anguish has been eating away at me from the inside all this time.
“I have fucked up, so badly. I hurt so many people, so many more than you have, and I was so terrified of making an even worse mistake that I couldn’t see I was fucking up all over again with you.”
When my gaze flicks to Ivy, she’s knit her brow. “You’ve killed people in battle, sure, but I don’t think enemy soldiers count the same way.”
“That’s not—” A rough laugh escapes me. I rub my forehead. “I’ve already told you what happened with Michas. Approximately.”
“A riven sorcerer murdered him,” Ivy says quietly.
“And I didn’t see the danger in time. When I did realize something was wrong, I froze up rather than getting Michas out of there, against every combat instinct I’d already been training in…”
The words snag in my throat. I force myself to go on. “I could have saved him. The riven man was just trying to avoid capture. He struck out at Michas because he was closer and then fled. If we’d retreated sooner…”
Sympathy I’m not sure I deserve resonates through Ivy’s voice. “You don’t know that. You don’t know how many more people that mad sorcerer might have murdered if you hadn’t realized what he was.”
“I know how many people died because of the choices I did make. Michas was only my first fuck-up. I can’t even count how many soldiers have fallen under my watch over the years.”
Ivy lets out a dismissive sound. “I don’t think any general manages to completely avoid bloodshed on our side. That’s not how war works.”
My jaw tightens. “I don’t know. I don’t know how many of those deaths were unavoidable and how many I instigated. Because—have you heard anything about my last battle?”
She shakes her head, still and silent. Waiting for me to go on.
My sight stutters and hazes with each blink. A flare of frustration sears through the tangle of guilt and shame, but the anger is directed only at myself.