Chapter 15 #2
Beneath layers of wool and linen, his heartbeat thundered dully against my ear. His voice was jarringly sharp in comparison, and so low I barely heard him over the shrieking and screaming from the hall below. ‘Are you injured?’
I shook my head, still struggling to find words. My throat felt raw – as though I’d been the one to take a fireball to the lungs.
‘Good.’ He swept around a corner, coat billowing behind him, as if he didn’t hear the shouts and running footsteps close by. The smell of perfumed candles almost made me gag. ‘I’ll refrain from bringing him back for another heartfelt conversation, then.’
Hell have mercy.
He wasn’t supposed to be angry.
He wasn’t supposed to care.
He was not my ally. He was not my friend.
Words I could repeat to myself as often as I liked, cradled in his arms as he hurried down the maze of corridors …
but the Durlain Averre who’d spoken them to me two nights ago wouldn’t have stormed in maskless and bare-knuckled to beat the living daylight out of a man assaulting me.
He wouldn’t have carried me out of the place.
He certainly wouldn’t have spoken those words—
She’s entirely her own, you shit.
I’d heard him lie before, and that had sounded like the opposite of it.
Behind us, footsteps were hurrying closer, fists banging on doors.
On the other side of the inn, someone screamed for guards.
Durlain barely quickened his steps as he swivelled around a corner and then another, ending up at the door at the end of our corridor.
Even then he didn’t release me, leaning over instead to push down the doorhandle with his elbow.
He carried me into the perfumed room with two swift strides, kicked the door shut behind him, then lowered me onto his own broad bed. The mattress was surreally plush – a downy softness that seemed almost impossible to exist in the same world as the putrid smell of a man burning to death.
I slumped into it. I wasn’t sure what else to do.
Durlain seemed icily controlled again as he stalked back to the door, locked it, and unbuttoned his coat with swift, precise movements.
But the candleflames flickered in unnatural ways around his shadowy silhouette as he passed – as if even now his magic was tugging at a leash within him, hooking its claws into every spark of fire it could find.
He was really very tall.
The fact had never seemed so reassuring before.
‘How …’ My voice came out on a croak. ‘How did you …’
‘Didn’t find you here when I came back.’ He vanished into the bathroom, returned with a glass of water, and pressed it into my hand without meeting my gaze. ‘And with First Fruits being what the bastards have made of it …’
Not what it is.
What they’d made of it.
Fucking hypocrites, he’d hissed against my temple.
I took a sip of water, hands shaking. ‘You … you seem angry.’
‘Yet another astute observation.’ He propped himself against the edge of the dinner table, eye meeting mine now. ‘A matter of habit. Don’t take it too personally.’
And there it was.
Not your friend. Not your ally. As if he too had realised the warning needed repeating, glasses of water and venomous punches be damned.
‘I won’t,’ I muttered, mouth dry despite the drink.
‘Good girl,’ he said absently and averted his gaze again, lips twisting into something that was more scowl than smile. ‘Do you want to talk plans, or would you rather soak in a bath for the next four hours? I should be able to talk my way around your spontaneous disappearance if anyone asks.’
That was … considerate.
That sounded a damn lot, really, like something a friend would say.
I pushed that thought away, cursing the pathetic neediness of my heart as I forced myself to straighten in the blankets. I’d almost defeated him at lunch, damn it. I was not going to crawl, Valern and his greedy hands be damned. ‘Let’s talk. I’m fine.’
He gave me a single probing glance. It was the sort of glance that seemed to announce an are you sure? or even an I think you might best go for that bath anyway … but the moment ticked by, and all he did was sigh and say, ‘Alright. Was he alone?’
Straight back to business.
I nodded wordlessly, not sure if I ought to be relieved or disappointed.
‘Good,’ he muttered, and there was no trace of feeling in that single word – nothing but the air of an army commander exploring his battlefield. ‘And did anyone pass you by? People who could report having seen or heard him with you?’
‘No,’ I said hoarsely. ‘No, I’ve been very careful not to draw attention.’
An odd silence fell.
The good I expected didn’t come this time.
His gaze was piercing on my face. Or perhaps it wasn’t his gaze but rather his expression, a sudden edge to his features that hadn’t been there a moment before – an ominous exactness in his voice as he slowly repeated, ‘You’ve been … careful.’
Shit.
Was that bad?
‘I … yes?’ If not for my heroic resolutions, I might have scuttled behind the bed and out of his sight. ‘You told me to be unremarkable, and he’s a personal favourite of Aranc. Was. I thought if … if I made too much of an impression, word would get out to Mount Estien before—'
‘Thraga,’ he said.
It didn’t sound as though he’d even heard the last three sentences I’d spoken.
I swallowed heavily, fidgeting with the incomprehensible softness of his blankets. ‘What?’
‘You— Oh, mists fucking take me.’ He stepped away from the table and collapsed into a dining chair with unexpected heaviness, more like an exhausted labourer than a murderous prince in full control of the proceedings.
‘Never mind about the hell-cursed plans. Are you telling me you were deliberately not fighting him, Thraga?’
I stared back, caught between twin urges to take a swing at him and to hide below his blankets, as far away as possible from the footsteps thundering up the stairs outside.
‘Merciful flames,’ he said below his breath.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ Anger, fear and shame tangled in my chest like ink-black brambles, tightening around my heart. ‘It’s better than getting killed, alright! It’s better than being tortured to death! If he had realised what I am—’
‘You could have stabbed him without any witchcraft involved,’ he cut in, and somehow it didn’t sound like he was arguing.
‘That would have caused more trouble in the end,’ I said hoarsely. ‘If you fight back, they’ll hurt you worse, that’s—’
He stiffened. ‘Who told you that?’
‘What?’ I blinked. ‘About fighting back? That’s just—’
‘Was it Lark?’ He almost snapped the question, unmistakable urgency below the surface. ‘Who imparted that piece of venerable wisdom to you?’
I stared at him.
It took me half a second to realise my jaw was still hanging open mid-word.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Durlain muttered, sinking back into his chair and closing his visible eye.
‘Maybe no one told me anything!’ I sputtered, not sure what he was accusing Lark of but sure he was pointing some sort of finger, and that it was my responsibility, my heart-sworn duty, to make that right.
‘Did you consider that it might just be a witch’s lived experience?
That as a contender to the Ashen Throne, maybe you simply won’t be able to see—’
‘I don’t presume to know anything about a witch’s experience, Thraga,’ he interrupted in that same eerily exhausted tone, eye snapping open. ‘I just know it’s not the full truth of yours. I’ve seen how you fight back, you see.’
I froze, retort dying on my lips.
He didn’t move, returning my gaze as if to challenge me.
‘What?’ I said numbly.
‘If you fight back, they’re dead.’ A small, bafflingly offhand shrug. ‘And therefore, the occasional exception aside, no longer in any position to hurt you, let alone worse than before.’
‘That’s … that’s not how it works when you’re a witch.’ I forced a laugh. It ripped from my throat sounding rather like a shriek. ‘If I kill someone – if anyone finds out it was me – I’m done for. It’s that simple. You … you know what they do to my kind.’
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, slowly, he said, ‘Right.’
It didn’t sound as though he was agreeing with me. Something dark writhed beneath the surface of that one cautious word – something fanged and venomous.
‘I don’t see—’ I started.
He abruptly leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees.
His gaze was searching my face – that lock-picking look again, as if he was trying to peel back layers of my skin to see what lay beneath.
‘And that’s why you prefer to never use your magic at all?
The notion that fighting back against anyone will always make everything worse for you, no matter the circumstances? ’
‘It’s not that I never use it.’ My voice caught in a tremble. A net was closing around me, and I had not the faintest fucking clue where it was dragging me. ‘Just … just not recklessly. Not without Lark around if I could help it. That’s simple good sense.'
‘Oh, I see.’ His dark eye flashed. ‘So you could use it only when darling Lark gave you permission to? Yes, I suppose that fits.’
I opened my mouth.
I let it fall shut again.
Nausea stirred out of nowhere in my gut.
‘It’s … No.’ It came out too feeble. This was madness. Foul, vicious madness, and yet it felt like I’d been slapped square in the face, mind reeling from the impact. ‘You’re twisting everything again. He protected me. He—’
‘Of course he did,’ Durlain interrupted sharply. ‘Everyone else was a danger, but as long as you kept him around, you’d be safe. How very convenient.’
No.
No, but also—
Yes?
Bile was rising in my throat. ‘But I did need—’