Chapter 16
We ate dinner together in loaded silence, the commotion in the inn all the louder in comparison. No guards showed up at the door to interrogate us. Whatever Durlain had told them on his brief trip downstairs, it must have been convincing – and hell, of course it had been.
Prince of many faces. Prince of broken hearts.
My mind felt like it was running three days behind.
If I’d felt inclined to see these revelations as a sign of improving trust and partnership, Durlain seemed determined to discourage any such notions as efficiently as possible.
His whole bearing radiated cold deterrence, a wall as sharp and high as the obsidian cliffs of Garnot; his lean shoulders never loosened, and his gaze never met mine, fixed on his plate as he methodically cut and chewed his food.
In the candlelight, the hollows of his cheeks and throat cast deep shadows on his pale skin.
They turned his face into something statue-like, something skull-like, the black of his eyepatch a void that seemed to absorb the flickering light.
As if I was having dinner with a hell-cursed ghost.
It was almost a relief when he finally put down his knife, lips a thin line and spine straight as steel, and coldly said, ‘You might want to take that bath now.’
You stink, the undertone informed me.
That was the Durlain Averre I knew again, turning every potentially helpful remark into the suggestion of an insult – except that it seemed almost too venomous this time.
He’d saved me from Valern, for hell’s sake.
He’d carried me in his arms and told me his secrets.
He’d been, even if just for a moment, a man with a conscience – and having glimpsed that version of him, that vicious little sneer in his voice became painfully performative.
Like a line re-drawn, hopelessly late. Like armour put on only after the battle.
‘I might,’ I agreed, rising without bothering to object to his wording.
I probably did stink. My last wash had been a quick one, the feel of Valern’s wine-drenched breath lingered on my face, and there still had to be particles of Svein’s Creek mud in my hair.
‘Are you willing to share your little luxuries with mere humans now?’
His eye flashed. ‘Oh, less and less.’
All the same, he didn’t move to stop me. I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door before he could change his mind.
The ivory bathtub alone was larger than the sorry excuse for a bedroom in which I would have to spend my night, which told me all I needed to know about the priorities of the people who’d refurbished this building.
Candles burned in burnished bronze sconces.
Piles of plush, amber-coloured towels waited on wooden shelves.
The floor was mirror-smooth and inlaid with the soft pink marble that was mined only in the dead Thuel lands, and crystal bottles full of dried herbs and flowers stood along the rim of the bath.
No need for buckets and hearth fires here – the inn had a fireborn heating system installed, hot water available at the twist of one’s fingers.
I checked the lock two more times, then turned on the tap, restrained the urge to empty an entire bottle of rose petals into the tub, and began to undress myself.
Tunic. Trousers. Undershirt. Then I was naked but for the vial around my neck, crimson blood clotting against fragile glass, and for a moment, every thought of Durlain and his schemes fell away, leaving nothing but—
Lark.
Every fibre in my body remembered how his blond head had rolled aside when I’d pressed that same little vial against his half-severed throat. Every fibre in my body remembered the cold, clammy touch of his bloodless skin.
But my mind—
So you could use it only when darling Lark gave you permission to?
My breath caught in sickening ways.
I wasn’t going to listen, of course. His bloody Highness could go crawl up his own arse with his sneers at a dead man he’d never even met; he had no right to draw conclusions about who Lark had been based on nothing but the workings of his own black heart.
I was going to absolutely, entirely disregard each and every one of those baseless accusations – I just wished it didn’t take so much of an effort to do so.
I just wished I could remember a single time Lark had told me I was brilliant with my runes.
I hesitated a last moment, glancing at the rapidly filling bath; then I hooked my thumbs beneath the thin leather cord and cautiously pulled the necklace over my head for the first time in twelve days.
Better to be careful. The cork might not be able to withstand so much water, and then what was I going to do?
I carefully tucked the vial away on the floor in the corner, where it couldn’t fall, where I couldn’t accidentally step on it. Then I slipped into the giant bathtub and stopped breathing once again, for entirely different reasons this time.
The heat was blissful.
Baths were a rarity in the barracks of Mount Estien.
The only ones I’d ever taken were the ones I’d heated myself, bucket after bucket into a barrel by the fire – the sort of bath that was already cooling down when you stepped into it, and tepid by the time you’d washed your hair. This, on the other hand …
There was nothing in the world but warmth.
I sank into it with barely supressed gasps, deeper and deeper, muscles loosening as the water enveloped me.
The tub was big enough for me to lie in.
Big enough for me to stretch my arms from side to side.
For a few glorious moments, I did nothing but float, eyes shut and ears beneath the water …
and then I remembered those rose petals.
I didn’t throw in the entire bottle.
Close, though.
Fragrance taken care of, I took a bar of soap and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed – until my skin was raw and pink and so pristine I no longer even smelled of human but only of crisp, perfect cleanliness.
Only then did I untie the leather wrap that held my braid together.
Combing out the waving strands with my fingers, I lathered them, then dunked my head underwater to rinse out the last suds.
By the time I emerged, I felt like a woman reborn.
The water, miraculously, was still warm.
I lay in it for longer than I could justify to myself, watching the whorls of steam and the rippling reflections of candlelight on the ceiling.
I tried to think of Lark, tried to sort out the memories that would once and for all counter Durlain’s suggestive probing …
and instead I remembered fists flying, surrounded by glittering mist. A curling upper lip, as sinister as it was sensuous. That hoarfrost whisper—
She’s entirely her own.
I hadn’t thought of myself as my own in a long, long time, and something about the notion made my skin tingle with disconcerting eagerness – as if Lark’s blood wasn’t lying on a cold floor five feet away from me, glaring at me accusingly, waiting for me to do what I had to do.
Damn it all. Perhaps I should spend some thought on Durlain and what in the world to do with the bastard.
Durlain, who’d burned a man for me.
Durlain, who’d poisoned Pol for his sister’s sake.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the flickering candlelight.
It reminded me too much of the way the candles had sputtered around him moments after Valern’s death – true, unrestrained fury, and that was the problem more than any nettling questions undermining my memories of Lark.
The fact that the mask had slipped. Which meant there had been a mask in the first place.
Now that I’d realised it, it seemed too obvious to have overlooked it before. What had I thought – that I was the only person in the world the prince of many faces wasn’t lying to?
It was just …
It was such a strange lie.
She was in my way – the most unfavourable explanation possible, and he must have chosen it knowing exactly what the effect would be.
Why would he have wanted me – actively have wanted me – to hate him?
Even now, he’d tried to backtrack from the glimpse of decency he’d shown me: his fury at Valern, at the bastardisation of the First Fruits festival, and as soon as we’d returned to safety, he’d hastily reminded me not to take it personally.
Insanity.
The bath was finally cooling down. I turned on the hot tap and sunk back into the water, not yet ready to return to the room and face him.
What to conclude? That Varraulis’s youngest son wasn’t so much of an arsehole after all?
No, that was taking things too far. He still hungered for a fireborn throne and didn’t care about the lives squashed in his wake; he still believed all witches worthy of death. So his morals were undeniably lacking. Just, perhaps, not entirely absent. Merely … dangerously selective.
And like that, understanding crystallised.
I’ve spent a good dozen years of my life keeping a young, vulnerable, highborn, and therefore coveted girl alive …
Durlain Averre was not a heartless monster.
Rather, a ruthless, damaged, unnervingly flawed individual who wouldn’t shun any methods to protect what was dear to him – and perhaps that was much, much worse, because he would commit his monstrous deeds all the same, and tell himself he’d been right to do so afterward.
Perhaps that was why he’d rather have me see the monster. A monster at least couldn’t help being what he was.
Whereas this deathmade bloody prince …
He was too sharply aware of himself – too damn intelligent for wilful blindness. If he took his morals down to hell with him, he’d be aware of every step along the way.
I knew that feeling a little too well.
Which meant there was no way I could possibly humour the twisted shred of pity that rose in me – not if it meant I needed to work up the same compassion for the creature the world had forged beneath my own skin.