Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I awoke in my room once again.
I recognized the location immediately. While before I had known it by its innate familiarity, now I knew it by an indescribable difference—every one of those familiar smells and sensations just a little changed, like the light had shifted in some inexplicable way.
I lay there, not moving. At first, I thought that the last day—had it been only a day? How long had it been?—had been a dream. Surely I had dreamed of betrayals and confessions and broken curses and goddesses— goddesses —standing right before me.
But my hand lifted and touched my cheek, my finger tracing the path a goddess had touched. The skin felt so deceptively normal. And yet... not normal at all.
The threads were tangled, my grip on them awkward. I sat up, re-establishing my hold?—
—And came face-to-face with the conqueror.
He was lounging in the armchair in the corner, one heel propped up on the coffee table, a mirror of his pose the first time I had woken up in his presence, months and a lifetime ago. In his hands was a dagger.
The dagger.
“I was starting to think,” he said, “that you wouldn’ t ever wake up.”
He looked at the blade, casually twirling it from one hand to the other, not at me.
He would execute me with it. I was sure of it.
“I’m a bit surprised I did,” I said, and if Atrius understood the implication of that sentence, he didn’t react to it at all.
He didn’t say anything at first, still examining the dagger, eyes lowered. I could not help but drink him in—the presence of him that had grown so intimately familiar to me. How could the man who was about to kill me feel so comforting? Why did I want to press his threads to my soul, deep enough I’d take their memory with me when I went?
I traced my awareness over the planes of his lowered, serious face, the tendrils of his hair—the ridged darkness of his horns, on perfect display with the angle.
“You still have those,” I said. “Even though the curse is gone.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “She couldn’t be too kind, apparently.”
No, no one could say that Nyaxia was too kind. But then, no one could say it for any of the gods, I supposed. I had the distinct feeling that the only reason Acaeja had declined to take my head as repayment for the Sightmother’s was, somehow, entirely selfish, even if I didn’t understand why.
Useful , she had called me.
He picked up the blade again, turned it slowly between his fingertips. “So. This was the weapon that was intended to kill me.”
My jaw tightened.
I was prepared for this, I told myself.
I inclined my chin. “Yes.”
I wouldn’t lie. Not anymore.
“I recognize it. You traveled with it for hundreds of miles.”
“Yes.”
“It’s nothing special to look at. But when I wielded it, I could tell that it was magically enhanced.” He flipped it in one smooth movement, grabbing it by the hilt. “Well made. Deadly. Which was fortunate.”
Deadly enough to take off the Sightmother’s head with just a few strokes. Fortunate indeed.
“The Arachessen take their jobs seriously,” I said. “It had to be good enough to kill quickly.”
“Kill a vampire warrior quickly.”
I was prepared for this, I told myself.
I knew it was going to hurt.
I blinked behind my blindfold, ignoring the faint prickling. “Yes.”
I wouldn’t defend myself. Wouldn’t explain. What could I say to him? He had already seen the truth.
From the moment I had disobeyed the Sightmother’s orders, I was ready to die for it. I preferred that it would be by his hand.
He stood up, and I did the same, bracing against a wave of dizziness that greeted me with the movement.
His brow rose, looking me up and down, and I answered his unasked question with, “I prefer to meet death standing up.”
Another flippant echo of our first meeting. But this time, I had to say it past a lump in my throat.
He scoffed, turning the dagger in his hands again. “You think I’m going to kill you.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I do.”
“Do you know how long you’ve been asleep?”
I shook my head.
“Two days. Two very busy days. And yet, as I was clearing the Salt Keep and claiming the palace and solidifying my hold over this kingdom, do you know what I was thinking about?” He paused, like he expected me to answer. When I didn’t, he said, “I was thinking about you . Your lies. Your betrayal.” His gaze lowered to the blade. “I was thinking about this dagger.”
Then those eyes speared me right through the chest, deadlier than any blessed weapon.
“And I thought about how you had used it,” he said. “To protect your people and mine. To save my life. To slay your kingdom’s tyrant.” He dropped the knife to his side, knuckles white around the hilt. His words were rougher now, like they bubbled up from somewhere deep inside himself. “I thought about killing you for the crime of carrying a dagger you did not use. And I decided I couldn’t. I told myself a million reasons why, but the truth is one I didn’t want to admit.”
My throat was so tight, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat hammered against the inside of my ribs as he stepped closer, his stare fire.
“I cannot kill you because I know you, Vivi. I know every moment you lied to me, because I know every moment you told the truth. I know your truth. I can’t ignore it. Even though it would be far easier if I could.”
Weaver, I was prepared for death. Wanted death, compared to this—compared to the way every word he spoke drove another strike through the most vulnerable parts of my heart.
I felt each one deep inside myself. So terrifyingly true that every instinct told me to run.
I said, voice raw, “There is nothing I can say to erase what I did.”
“I don’t need your words.”
He was so close now I felt his breath on my face. Felt that truth on my skin.
“So show me,” he murmured. A command. A plea. Somehow both giving and taking, in equal measure. “Show me I’m right.”
It went against everything I had always been. I wanted to cower from it. Wanted to hide.
Instead, when Atrius’s hand rose to my face, I reached to the back of my head and untied my blindfold.
The little strip of silk fluttered to the ground.
I opened my eyes.
Arachessen were never without their blindfolds, not even in sleep. The air was cold and foreign against my eyes. My eyesight had been destroyed long ago. I had never even tried to examine the scraps of whatever remained.
But I could see Atrius.
Barely—just a little. I could make out the shape of his form, blurry and silhouetted, and the dim suggestion of his pale skin and silver hair.
Almost nothing. And yet, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed. Beautiful in an intangible way that made me think of scraps of paint flying out over the sea.
It is the sea.
I opened my mouth to say something—wasn’t even sure what—but what came out was only a garbled sob.
Atrius nodded, as if he still understood exactly what I meant, and he cradled my face between both hands. I closed my eyes, and he kissed one, then the other, catching the beginnings of tears on his lips.
His presence surrounded me, warm and stable and firm, such a perfect mirror of my own, scars and all.
I choked out, “I’m not afraid of death.”
But I am afraid of this.
Atrius, of course, already knew.
“Me too,” he murmured, the words warm against my lips, and I wasn’t sure who moved first, only that our kiss was long and fierce and brutally honest with all the words we didn’t say.
My arms wrapped around him, and his around me. Our bodies intertwined. All lies withered in the space between us.
I kissed him and wept and kissed him some more, and I was so happy, I couldn’t even be terrified.