Chapter Eighteen #2
“I choose to trust you,” he said, and the words came out in almost a tone of surprise, as if he’d never even imagined choosing to trust someone in his life.
“We’ve been fighting off the northern raiders for many years.
You know that.” I nodded. Everyone knew that.
The summer campaigns were a Calatrian fact of life.
Treviso had kept goodwill with the Calatrian people in large part because he’d been such a skilled soldier and commander, protecting our populace well despite his insanity.
“Under Benedict’s command, we’ve been fighting them more and more successfully.
As a result, they’ve turned their attention to the villages on the Arthovi side of the mountains, even though the terrain’s harder to navigate.
Arthovia blames us for that, or they’re trying to, because they don’t want to commit troops and resources to defending their own land, and they want us to do it for them.
I was part of a diplomatic delegation to Arthovia until I returned a month ago.
The talks went nowhere. But I wasn’t there to talk. I was there to…gather information.”
To spy, he meant. My mind whirled, everything I knew about Stefan shifting and reforming and slotting into place.
His effete posturing, his drawling manner, his fucking quizzing glass: all the accessories of a man who didn’t want to be taken seriously, so that his real purpose, while lounging about foreign capitals, wouldn’t be suspected.
And I’d made the same mistake the Arthovians had. Did it hurt more or less to know that he hadn’t used me for his own purposes, but out of patriotism? It burned like acid either way.
“All right,” I managed to choke out. “So you, what, hope to use your new foothold in the Arthovi government to…” I didn’t know enough about politics or diplomacy to begin to imagine how he’d turn that to Calatria’s advantage.
But he would. Of course he would. He was Lord Ettori’s son, through and through.
“Yes,” he said. “The plan was for me to take my seat on the council or to designate a proxy to do so, and to get to know some of the members whose estates are vulnerable to the raiders. Stir up dissatisfaction with the king’s lack of action.
And any member can propose motions for a vote.
It’s one of the rare times my father and I have been in agreement on a course of action, although I swear to you, Remi, our motives are different.
He hopes to gain a foothold in Arthovia.
Maybe foment rebellion, even. I just want them to defend their own country.
How many more Calatrian soldiers should have to die because we’re fighting their war along with our own?
While their king won’t divert funds from his own fucking palace renovation to do what’s necessary to protect his own people? ”
Sincerity rang in his every word, and I started to laugh, a sick, hoarse sound that held no amusement at all. I staggered a few steps to my dressing table, propping myself on the edge of it with my face in my hands, sucking in as much air as I could.
“Remi?” His worried voice suddenly came from much closer to me. He touched my shoulder, hand wrapping around as if to support me. “Remi, fuck, what—”
“Don’t!” The hand fell away. I lowered my own and looked up at him, his white face and startled eyes, nothing but fear and concern for me—the man he’d used. The man he wouldn’t have had to use, if he’d only been capable of trust a little sooner. “Don’t,” I repeated. “Don’t touch me.”
He fell back a step, almost stumbling, and nodded, the hand clenching into a fist at his side as if he had to prevent himself from reaching out again by force of will.
At another moment, it might have softened me, that urgent desire to help me in my moment of weakness. But not now.
“I haven’t lost my mind,” I said. “But that’s a worthy goal.
Even worth giving up my inheritance. If you’d come to the abbey.
If you’d told me the truth. If you’d asked me, asked me instead of participating in this, in this—” My voice broke and trailed off into silence. I couldn’t explain any further.
But he nodded again, and he said, with savage force, “I wish to the gods I had.” After a long, miserable moment, he said more quietly, “There’s one thing I want you to know.
He really did tell me you were eager to leave the abbey.
He didn’t mention your sister at all. You have my word on that.
” Gods, if that was true…I prayed it was, for the sake of Stefan’s soul, if for no other reason.
I didn’t answer, and he sighed. “For the rest, I trust you not to tell anyone what I’ve told you.
I do. But I do need to know how you found out about this.
The Arthovi estate. All of it. And what you told the High Priest about our marriage.
A hint of this getting out to the spies Arthovia absolutely has here in Nevaia could be disastrous. ”
“I told him nothing about my suspicions, only enough to make sure you couldn’t lock me in the attic like you threatened,” I said, my tone as dull as my miserable thoughts.
Gods, I needed to be alone. “As for how I found out? I guessed, Stefan. I fucking figured it out on my own! Because nothing else made sense. There wasn’t any other reason,” and I had to stop, my chest tight, and try to suck in enough air to fill my lungs, “for you to do this. Me. To marry me. For either of you to choose me out of everyone in the world who’s handsomer and richer and more important. ”
His lips pressed together. “Richer and more important, certainly,” he said at last. “But not cleverer. And not handsomer, either, although you’re not really handsome, are you? Beautiful is the word I’d use.”
He moved restlessly, as if he’d almost taken another step toward me.
But not quite. My own limbs had gone heavy, weighted by the bitterness and regret thickening the air between us.
Beautiful? He called me beautiful now, at this moment, when I’d be the greatest fool in the world to allow myself to believe it?
As if he’d read my mind, extracted my most romantic, pathetic, adolescent desires, and meant to use them against me.
As he’d used my naivete and friendlessness against me when he married me against my wishes and told me to stay in my room and not make any trouble.
My mouth wouldn’t move, any words frozen in my throat.
“If you were another man I’d suspect you as a foreign agent, part of a network of spies.
Or a homegrown traitor. Because that’s how I think, Remi.
That’s how I live, how I was born, practically.
But I know you’re precisely what you appear to be.
” He shook his head, and he laughed, a horrible, grating sound.
“Too good for—what did you call it? My dreadful family. I’ve spent years distancing myself from them, thinking I was better.
And now it turns out I’m the worst of the lot, at least in your eyes.
The way you’re looking at me makes that fucking clear.
And I can’t even begin to argue with it.
You were a means to an end. And now I—I’m sorry, Remi. I’m so fucking sorry.”
The heaviness in my head, the thickness in my throat, gods, I wished they were the symptoms of an oncoming cold rather than pure misery and rage.
And longing, gods, a frantic, hopeless longing that raced through my veins and caught my mind in a throbbing whirlwind, to trust his apology.
To believe him. I’d paced this room for hours and wished for his regret and his unhappiness—his acknowledgement of what he’d done wrong.
Now I had it. And it made me sick, sicker than that poison his father had given me.
He had to go, leave me alone, even though I wanted to scream and rage and beat at his chest with my fists, and hope he’d make me believe in him again.
If I gave in to the storm before he went, I’d never recover from the shame.
If I gave in to him at all, I’d never be able to look in a mirror.
“You’re fucking sorry, Stefan? It doesn’t change anything,” I choked out, speaking less to him than with the desperate desire to convince myself. “It doesn’t change anything at all.”
“I know,” he said, very low. “Believe me, I know.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t believe anything you say to me, except for your dedication to your duty above anything else.
I don’t want your apology.” A lie, a baldfaced lie, but it had started to come more easily to me, even though it tasted like another dose of poison.
So far, I’d gotten nothing else from my marriage to him—except learning the necessity of lying.
But it wouldn’t be all. I wouldn’t allow it to be all.
I’d made a plan, and I had to carry it through.
“So what I want is simple: I want the, the benefits of my situation. You hatched this plan with your father, and you’ve gotten what you want.
You can have it. Use it to help Calatria.
But you owe me the life of a noble consort, at least, since that’s what I am now, whether I like it or not. ”
“It’s yours. Anything I can give you is yours.”
“Except my freedom to choose my own life, or to choose to help you out of my own love for my country, but that ship’s sailed, hasn’t it?”
I’d thought he’d been pale before, but now he’d gone white to the lips. He nodded jerkily.
“You’ll give me whatever I need to establish a life here, and you’ll introduce me properly to society,” I went on.
“I want whatever freedom I can have. To go where I want and do as I please, without any interference from you or your father. I want you to get him to leave me alone. And I intend to learn to use my magic, no matter what everyone in Nevaia thinks of dawn mages.”