Chapter 20 #2
He turned at the sound – pale and tense, but with a familiar glint of venom flickering in his one dark eye. A single glance at my tunic, my bare legs, my warm socks, and he sardonically said, ‘At least you’re still charming as ever.’
No questions.
I didn’t think I’d ever been so grateful for an insult in my life.
‘Wish I could say the same about your face,’ I grumbled, and his lips curled almost imperceptibly.
The fire was burning merrily now, its warmth slowly driving the frost from my bones.
Whatever Durlain’s trouble with the cold had been, it seemed to have passed.
He didn’t appear particularly in the mood to talk about it as he draped soaked pieces of clothing over roof beams and shelves, and so I focused on my own work instead: untacking the horses, wringing out clothes in the stables, then hanging them out to dry as well.
By the time we were done, the place looked more like a laundry room than a bakery, the moist smell of damp linen mingling with the scent of woodsmoke.
It was a smell like home, like Kjell’s smithy at Hjarn’s Bay, and perhaps that was what made me reach for Wunjo without thinking.
I felt Durlain’s gaze between my shoulders but refused to care as I began carving runes into the house’s battered front door.
Naudiz, sowilo, kaunan – taking, vision, fire – because if anyone were to pass by Nettle Hill at this hell-forsaken hour, I’d rather they didn’t see the line of firelight above the threshold.
Algiz, laguz – protection, water – in case the cracks in the wood gave way to the relentless pouring of the rain.
Algiz, isa, too – protection, ice – because in this corner of the room, farthest away from the oven, the warmth of the fire was losing the fight against the cold draughts from outside.
The effect of that last spell was immediate, and rather pleasant.
I moved to the next stretch of wall and repeated it there – algiz, isa – with neat scratches into the weathered wooden boarding. The southern wall, too, and—
‘You used them the other way around, didn’t you?’ Durlain said behind me, so sudden I almost dropped Wunjo. ‘When you were duelling me?’
It took me a long moment to remember – the very first attack he’d made in the dead wood by Brainne, and my reflexive defence. Isa. Algiz.
Hell.
He remembered those signs?
‘Different spell,’ I said, warily turning back around.
He’d spread out a blanket on the stamped earth floor before the oven and sat down on his knees, bag in his lap.
‘That was a shield made of cold, so isa came before algiz. This is a shield against cold, so algiz comes first. Rune order is a rather finicky thing.’
I’d expected him to shrug and go on digging in his bag; it was rather a surprise when he shoved his luggage aside instead, eyes narrowing into an expression suspiciously like interest. ‘Which is why you needed several hours to figure out that spell for my face, then? To work out the order of the signs?’
For my face. Not for my eye, as if even a mention of the mutilation would be too much to bear.
‘It gets trickier the longer your spell is,’ I said sheepishly.
Which was where I should leave it, of course.
This was none of a fireborn prince’s business, and even if it were, it seemed unlikely he’d want to listen to me blathering about it …
yet he didn’t nod, didn’t avert his gaze, looking at me expectantly as if the matter was the most intriguing question in the world.
‘There … there’s some ambiguity in the scope of most signs, you see? ’
His brow quirked up. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. Enlighten me.’
‘Um.’ Wunjo felt suddenly awkward in my fingers.
‘Well, for example, raido – that’s change – is usually followed by the thing you want to change, and then what you want it to change into.
So raido, ing, algiz turns earth into a shield.
But then if you want to turn earth into an ice shield, you end up with raido, ing, isa, algiz, and then the issue becomes …
are you doing what you thought you were, or are you changing frozen mud into a shield? Because …
‘Because isa could also go with ing,’ Durlain said slowly, ‘and then they become the first element of raido together. Yes. I see.’
I gaped at him.
He cocked his head. ‘So are you just supposed to try until you hit the right formula, when it comes to more intricate spells?’
‘That— Well. Yes and no.’ This was ridiculous.
Was he trying to make up for his earlier moment of weakness by indulging my rambling?
‘There are some pretty universal rules when it comes to the behaviour of runes, Rigmor’s Law and the three compound maxims and a couple others.
And some runes always introduce subordinate clauses within a formula, like othala, which never stands on its own but always connects to … to …’
I faltered.
Not everyone is obsessed with runic grammar, witchling.
‘Anyway,’ I stammered, turning away just too late to hide the mortifying embarrassment. ‘There are some rules, is what I’m saying. Not terribly interesting, probably, but—’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ he cut in.
I blinked and turned back to him, forgetting once again about the last spell I’d wanted to carve into the wall.
He looked puzzled. Genuinely puzzled, eye dark and full of questions, the small crease between his brows all the more pronounced in the flickering firelight.
His dressing gown had slid half open, revealing a sliver of lean chest and the brutal glimmer of a deathmade scar.
He didn’t even seem to notice, watching me from the pool of light – that same spine-chilling interest with which he’d interrogated me in our Svein’s Creek cell, except this time it didn’t feel cold.
The shivery sensation in my guts was decidedly feverish, really.
I opened my mouth to say, Lark warned me not to make a fool of myself.
Then closed my mouth again, because all of a sudden I could hear those words through his ears, and they didn’t sound good.
‘Ah,’ he said – softly, so very softly, a voice like falling ash. ‘I see.’
The world was unbearably quiet for a moment.
The rain thundered against the roof. The fire crackled; our wet clothes dripped.
Durlain Averre, the prince of broken hearts, sat before me in his decadent dressing gown and watched me, and something within my chest was slowly and irrevocably slipping from my grasp.
‘Dinner?’ I croaked.
He reached for his bag without comment, shifting on his blanket to make room for me.
I really shouldn’t have sat down so close to him.
Not while he was only wearing that flimsy fucking gown, or while my legs were bare to the point of indecency.
But the alternative was the dusty floor, and I’d stained enough of my clothes today – so I warily sank down on the other side of the blanket, tucking my legs beneath myself and keeping my gaze painstakingly away from the ever-widening opening of his robe.
He swiftly untied the linen-wrapped packages of food, then put them between us. Salmon sandwiches and sticky raisin cakes. Boiled eggs and wedges of herby cheese. It felt like an absurdly extravagant meal given the circumstances, but there was no denying my stomach’s grumbling approval.
Durlain ate in elegant silence beside me, as if to give my thoughts the space they needed.
Which might have been considerate, if I’d wanted to spend any time contemplating the thoughts in question; as it stood, it felt like being left alone with a starved, snarling wolf. My memories were tangled like brambles.
Lark, sighing deeply as I tried to explain the working of my newest spell.
Lark, feigning a yawn as I puzzled over tricky formulas.
It had hurt, and I’d accepted the hurt, because who else should take the blame for my outlandish obsessions?
Lark was kind. Lark was gentle. If I’d just liked normal things, he’d have been kind about those, too – it had always made so much sense, and now Durlain had looked at me with that keen, fascinated look in his eye, and it no longer did.
Why wouldn’t it be?
And then there had been last night’s conversation, those words that seemed an eternity away already—
Persuading you to never use your most powerful weapon.
Filthy, twisted manipulation, I’d insisted to myself, and only now – chewing on a bite of cheese without tasting the peppery chives in it – did I realise that couldn’t be the whole of the matter.
Because he’d known. Durlain had known. I’d given him crumbs of information, and he had drawn conclusions that had hit sore spot after sore spot – so no matter how unflattering his rendition of the facts, how had he known about the facts at all?
Trust me.
All at once, I could no longer bear it.
‘How?’ I burst out – too loud, too sudden, that one word more plea than question. ‘How did you know— All those things you said about him— Right from the start …’
My voice stammered into nothingness.
Durlain was silent beside me. It was a silence of warring opposites, the shield of his caustic, quick-witted mask versus whatever creature lived beneath those many faces – a silence, it seemed, that tried to decide whether he should frostily remark on my grammar or answer my bloody question instead.
I’d finished my cheese by the time he sighed and said, ‘The tunnel by the Moon Lake.’
That was not what I’d expected.
‘By the waterfall?’ As if there was any other tunnel he might be speaking of. ‘What of it?’
‘I asked how you knew about it,’ he said, staring ahead at the dancing, crackling flames, weary rather than snarky. ‘And you informed me that you’d wandered off into the place, and then Lark had been forced to come after you and discovered it.’
I frowned. ‘Yes?’