Chapter 13 #3
‘Yes?’ Hell, I didn’t want to think about any of it – that moonlit night in the Estien gardens, those warm, strong arms around me.
Didn’t want to remember how relieved I had been, down to the very marrow of my bones.
‘I … I was about to sneak out and he found me. Told me to wait so he could come with me and keep me safe, and if I just … if I hadn’t been the sort of mess to need his help … ’
He’d have lived.
My lips faltered on the shape of those words.
I heard them anyway in the silence; they were louder than the gurgles of the creek, louder than the screeches of ravens overhead. Durlain had to have heard them too, because finally, finally a glimpse of understanding was rising in that one dark eye – of what I’d done, of what I was, of—
‘Right,’ he said softly.
Just that one word, barely audible, and I winced all the same.
‘Happy now?’ I managed to croak out – knowing I’d brought this upon myself with my stupid bloody questions, that he was doing nothing but what I’d done to him, and all the more furious for the fact. ‘Or would you like to mock a dead man a little more for trying to save my life, perhaps?’
Durlain opened his mouth.
Then closed it again with an unexpected sense of resignation, an impression of claws sinking back into their sheaths.
And all he said was, ‘Go wash your hand.’
I blinked at the limb in question. It looked rather as though I’d tried to strangle a fruit cake and lost the fight.
‘Go on.’ He didn’t even sound impatient. Just … curt and contemplative. ‘I’ll wait.’
What he would be waiting for, I didn’t even know.
But insisting on staying here with my palm covered in crumbs and plum juice seemed more than a little ridiculous, and hell knew I was glad for an excuse not to look at the bastard’s face for a moment.
So I muttered a curse and hauled myself to my feet, making for the narrow creek on the other side of the clearing.
The water was cold as ice; by the time my hand was clean again, I no longer felt the tips of my fingers.
When I turned back around, Durlain had moved – sitting with his back against one of the bleached tree stumps, his cloak and hair and eyepatch almost unnaturally black against the backdrop of pallid grey and washed-out brown.
Above us, the sun was a pale white dot in the pale grey sky.
The shadows played tricks with his features, sharpening his jawline and deepening the hollows of his cheeks – a half-dead creature in a half-dead land, and for a flash of a moment he looked so stunningly inhuman among those lifeless trees, so hauntingly other, that I almost gasped at the sudden gut punch of it.
He wasn’t looking at me, thank hell and its misty halls.
His gaze lay on the forest ahead instead, dark and heavy and almost … conflicted.
I swallowed something bitter and began making my way back to him, fists tight by my sides.
He didn’t look up until I dropped down beside him, and even then that odd shadow of restraint lingered on his features – something that whispered I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t, and at the same time, but I want to.
‘Well?’ I said bitterly, because in this uncannily quiet place, the gravity of his silence was getting on my nerves. ‘Any more answers I owe you?’
He sat motionless for one last moment.
Then he sighed – straightening, decision taken.
‘Let me make sure I’ve understood this correctly.
’ The venom had seeped from his voice. Everything had seeped from his voice, leaving only quiet, weary hollowness behind – something as dead as the bare, drooping branches hanging over us.
‘Your Lark decided, despite you not making any request to that effect and in fact making plans in the very opposite direction, that he needed to come with you on this doomed flight from Mount Estien … and that was your fault?’
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected.
It definitely wasn’t that, though.
‘I … Yes?’ Something about the way he’d phrased his summary felt entirely, deeply wrong – like an itching garment chafing over tender skin. ‘Because I needed the help. Because I—’
‘—can’t fight or talk or navigate,’ he interrupted, closing his eye for a brief moment. ‘Yes, I’ve heard plenty of that, thank you. And I suppose he reminded you of that regularly?’
I blinked. ‘What?'
‘It’s such a shame you’re so terrible at navigation, Thraga.
’ The biting drawl emerging from his lips was nothing like Lark’s voice – nothing at all – and yet there was an undertone in there that dug like iron nails into my heart, twistedly and sickeningly familiar.
Coming from Lark, it had never been anything but careful, gentle concern.
On Durlain’s lips it was somehow similar yet the exact opposite, stifling and patronising.
‘Now I’m the one who has to do all the work for you. If only—’
‘No!’ It burst from my lips like the blast of a geyser – a hurry to interrupt him more than a desire to say anything myself. ‘He never put it like that! He was happy to do it for me – he—’
‘Ah, yes,’ Durlain said, lips twisting in unpleasant ways. ‘But he had to inform you it was done for you? He couldn’t just shut up and do it?’
I stared at him.
The itch was turning into a chafing ache.
‘You … you’re distorting things.’ He was.
I couldn’t yet see how he was doing it, but there was something deeply, fundamentally wrong with his rendition of the facts – something that had absolutely nothing to do with the truth of Lark, and everything to do with his own scheming Averre mind.
‘Of course he was a little frustrated with me at times. That’s natural! That doesn’t mean …’
Didn’t mean what?
That he’d been … what, belittling me?
I didn’t have the words. Didn’t even have the thoughts.
I summoned the memory of Lark – safe, beautiful Lark, the sunlight bright in his golden hair, the laughter shining in his gentle eyes – and clung to that image like a drowning woman.
I knew who he was. I knew who I’d loved.
Was I going to let some fireborn monster provoke these tendrils of doubt around the one thing I had always, always been certain of?
‘You have no idea,’ I heard myself whisper. ‘You have no right to talk about any of this.’
‘Hmm.’ His expression didn’t change, flat and biting as the edge of a knife.
‘For your consideration, I’ve spent the greater half of my life protecting my little sister from a court of vipers, at no small cost to myself.
If I’d reminded her every morning at breakfast what a shame it was that her existence caused me all that trouble, even though I was happy to make the effort for her …
what would your opinion of me have been? ’
Worse.
Fuck.
No, no, no. That wasn’t the same thing at all. Of course it would make him a monster, this man who had killed an innocent woman and still hungered for a tyrant’s throne … but Lark wasn’t like that. Lark would never—
If I didn’t love you, witchling, I’d despair of you at times.
‘That’s different,’ I sputtered, and I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him or myself. My thoughts were dissolving into a deafening shriek.
‘Is it?’ The tilt of his head was a challenge. ‘Why?’
‘Because your sister was a child! Of course you couldn’t expect her to protect herself, and—’
‘Except,’ Durlain interrupted, alarmingly pleasant, smile deadly as whetted steel, ‘that according to darling Lark, you couldn’t be expected to protect yourself either, could you?’
Darling Lark.
Iron bands were tightening around my chest.
No. I had to calm down. I had to stop listening to this venom, put my thoughts back in order, and end, end, end these treasonous wavers of my heart – because Lark had protected me with his life and this bastard had only ever done the opposite of that, Lark had made me laugh while Durlain only ever sneered at me, and I was so much better than this.
I could shut him up. I had my runes and my knives, and—
Did I?
Shit. Ehwaz – yes, still there. Uruz, still there. Isa—
‘If you’re thinking of stabbing me,’ Durlain added, sounding about to heave a bone-deep sigh, ‘I hope you keep in mind that the facts will be no less true with ten inches of steel lodged between my ribs.’
‘They aren’t facts!’ Kaunan. Wunjo. Eihwaz, and again. Ehwaz. Uruz. ‘You’re just … you’re just taking your revenge for my prying, aren’t you? Trying to make me lose faith in Lark and … and …’
A flicker of icy amusement crossed his pale, knifelike face. ‘If I can make you lose faith in him with a handful of questions, surely he didn’t do much to earn it in the first place?’
It was barely a decision.
My hand already lay on Uruz’s hilt. My veins were already brimming with violence. Moving didn’t feel like acting – it felt like giving in.
Last time I’d surprised him.
This time, he was already on his feet when I lunged at him.