27. 26 #3
“I don’t blame you.” He turned away from me, staring out back to the house as he pulled a leaf from the nearby shrub. “I just cannot believe I was so stupid.”
I shook my head. “You’re not stupid.”
He chuckled darkly. “It seems we both are.”
I released my hands and stood, smoothing my dress down. I don’t know what made me stand, but it was his tone, I suppose. This knowing condescension that I couldn’t stand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He turned and folded his arms, his eyes flashing. “You’d seriously return to Ekris now? After all of this? After actually learning what life is like outside that prison?” He dropped his voice. “You’d fuck strangers again?”
I flinched. “That’s my family.”
“That place isn’t a family.”
I glared at him. “Not to you.”
He glared back, and the silence now was entirely different. I had hurt his feelings without meaning to, but the result was there, and now he was punishing me back. We were sharpening our words into pointy sticks, and one or both of us would come away bleeding.
Davien drummed his fingers on his arm. “Tell me, how do you see your life playing out?”
This, again, surprised me. “What do you mean?”
“We find the murderer. We find where Ragnifort is and please your God. You return back to Ekris.” It was matter-of-fact, assuming a conclusion we both knew was uncertain.
But his voice was icy. “You return to men with no idea how to touch a woman, how to please a woman. They choose you and touch you until you’re too old to appeal to them. ”
I did not react. This was not a new idea to me.
He stared, waiting for a response. “Then what? In ten years, fifteen years—you die? You join Ekris’ harem and do the exact same thing forever in the afterlife?”
His words were a poisoned heresy that entirely devalued the principles I’d lived by. The words were ignorant of love, of my devotion to my god. I could sooner swear life off than love. “You don’t get it.”
“Explain it,” he hissed.
“Ekris is a God. I made a promise, I promised him that my body belonged to him, and him alone.” It was not a promise I was ready to break again, when Robar had shown me so clearly the error of my leaving.
Men were fickle. Gods were eternal. Besides, this was more than just the logic.
This was my life. I did not shrink from Davian. “He’s always been there for me.”
“You left. You’ve already broken your pact with him.” He shook his head. “I’m not telling you what to think. Just… Don’t go back.”
How dare he ask that of me? Tell me to leave my god just so he could fuck me? So he could use me for whatever he wanted, until the next woman caught his attention?
I fought to keep my voice level. “How do you see my life playing out?” Davian blinked, and I could tell my echoed question had caught him off-guard. “If I left him? If I gave my body to you and gave up any chance of returning?”
He faltered. “I—You would have your own roof in the city. As I promised.”
“To do what?” I responded. “I have no trade. I have no status.”
Davian looked at me with uncertainty, trying to figure out the right answer, the one that would pull me away from Ekris. He didn’t know the answer. I didn’t either.
I didn’t fill the gap. I waited for his wise view on my alternatives.
“You could do whatever you wanted,” he eventually said.
“With what coin?”
“Mine.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, the House of Pain’s?”
“Yes.”
I laughed, softly. “I can’t just be another pet of your House. I don’t fit in there.”
He laughed back, harder. Spite coated every word. “With a bunch of fucked up and damaged misfits? With a god who can soothe all of that shit that feels like it’s strangling you from the inside out?” I stiffened as he gave me a black stare. “Yes. You do.”
This wasn’t an Ekrissian game anymore. This wasn’t diplomacy and persuasion. This was entirely Samiscan, and I couldn’t help but join in.
“So your solution is to be with you, then,” I summarised flatly.
He paused. “I don’t—”
“And when your favour runs out?” I asked.
“Annie—”
“Either way, my livelihood is dependent on pleasing someone else,” I said simply.
This was a dagger, pointed at my own heart as much as his.
“I believe it was you who called me childish before. Desperate to believe Robar could offer me another way out. Maybe I’ve learned my lesson.
Forgive me for choosing the God I have spoken to for ten years, over a man I have known for weeks. ”
He flinched. Davian, the Samiscan who knew pain like a friend, actually flinched.
Had I gone too far?
I bit my lip. “Davian.”
“No. You’re right.” There was no heat there any more. “It was unfair for me to ask you to leave your God.”
He was apologising, but it wasn’t better. “I—”
Davian straightened his tunic and looked back towards the taverna. “You’ve made yourself clear. I’ll not press the matter again.”
The game was over. I had won. It felt terrible. “Thank you.”
“Let’s find our killer, then, and get you back to your owner,” he said, as I wrapped my hand into his offered arm. It was my turn to suck in a gasp of pain. He did not blink. “Sorry. Your God.”