Chapter 16 #3
Knowledge is my dearest weapon.
I should have known he would dig. Should have simply told him to go fuck himself, too …
except that that would mean hiding again, crawling again, and I was so very sick of being small before him.
If he could pretend to be a whole other person for hours on end, surely I could pretend for five minutes that I wasn’t afraid at all?
‘Yes,’ I said again, and then, sounding almost natural, ‘I didn’t know fireborn princes were being taught about runes these days.’
‘Just the writing system. They don’t tell us anything about the magic.’ There was a small pause as he returned to his previous position and resumed his braiding. When he spoke again, his voice was still pointedly level. ‘Thorn is the letter th in writing, yes? Th as in Thraga?’
Of course he’d have bloody noticed that.
‘Most of us are named for the marks we’re born with,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Kjell had kaunan on his chest – the rune of fire.’
‘Ah. Fitting, for a smith.’
I pressed away the familiar twang of hurt. ‘There’s usually some sort of natural talent involved, yes.’
‘There is? Interesting.’ His fingers scooped a wisp of hair away from my nape. ‘So what is the meaning of thorn, in terms of magic?’
Mists take me.
Did I even want him to know?
It was impossible to think like this – that soft, unnervingly attentive voice far too close behind me, his quick hands skimming across my skin in feathery almost-caresses.
I should come up with some clever lie. Alternatively, with a decent excuse not to tell him.
But my mind remained painfully blank as the seconds passed by, and my tongue and lips broke the silence before my sensible thoughts could intervene – ‘It’s the rune of attack. ’
His fingers stilled.
A pulse of silence went by.
Then – his court-polished voice so excruciatingly polite that its intention had to be the very opposite – he said, ‘Dare I make the obvious remark?’
Oh, the hell-cursed bastard.
‘I’m not imposing any choices upon you,’ I said impatiently, tilting back my head to glare in his general direction. ‘I should point out that my elbows are pretty close to your liver, though. Do with that what you want.’
He choked on his breath.
He—
Death fucking save me. He laughed?
It was barely more than a startled huff – unwillingly given, quickly stifled. But it had been a laugh, and the sound of it sent an uncanny shiver down my spine – because it had seemed genuine, and that …
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
‘I appreciate you making my point for me,’ he said, voice just not level enough to hide that odd echo of his amusement. ‘Thorn in my side, indeed.’
‘That’s not a very pleasant thing to say,’ I heard myself inform him, as if – hell take me – I was joining in on the joke.
‘Oh, it really isn’t.’ A last few tugs of his fingers, and my braid thudded against my upper back, finished and tied. ‘Then again, I warned you before that I am not a pleasant person. Your hair is done.’
I carefully touched the crown of my head, then the sides. An intricate maze of strands twisted across my scalp, the pattern impossible to make sense of through touch alone.
For the first time that night, I wished he hadn’t covered the mirror.
‘Not bad,’ I said anyway, because it seemed I had to say something.
‘It’s rather good, in fact.’ He easily slid off the bed, inspecting me from the front with a quick tilt of his horned head. ‘Yes, you could make a decent entry at court this way. Barring the rest of your appearance, that is.’
There it was again. The monster’s shield, the sudden, haughty indifference.
You can stop playing the villain, I should tell him. I’ll hate you plenty even if you stop putting in the effort. You’re wasting both our time and energy.
Leave Lark out of your games from now on, I should tell him.
And yet—
I faltered.
There was that tightness about him again as he stood there, the feel of something stretched too long and too thin beneath the veneer of his composure.
His eyes were too dark in the shadows. The hint of a sneer on his lips was too deliberate.
His scars peeked from beneath his collar and his rolled-up sleeves, ice-cold and grotesquely beautiful – reminders of a sacrifice I suspected he wanted to face as little as I did.
An unpleasant person, yes.
Still … a person.
‘She’s lucky to have you for a brother,’ I heard myself say, words rushing past my lips without thought. ‘Cimmura.’
On the edge of my sight, the candleflames stopped flickering.
He’d gone perfectly still himself.
For a long, tense moment, nothing seemed to breathe in the room as he stared at me, hollow-eyed and unmoving – searching my face for something I wasn’t sure existed. A reason, perhaps. A plan, an intention. Something that might, somehow, be a weapon.
Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he stepped back, slim shoulders rigid beneath the folds of his shirt.
‘You’ll regret saying that,’ he said quietly.
And before I could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, he’d retreated to the bathroom so swiftly I couldn’t call it anything but a flight.