Chapter 25 #2
He’d held me. The first time since Kjell’s death that someone had held me, and even now I could feel the inconceivable relief of it, my limbs surrendering to the unthinkable, impossible promise of help.
If you fight back, they hurt you worse.
‘Admirable problem-solving,’ Durlain muttered, fingers rubbing slow circles over his ice-scarred knuckles. ‘And, forgive me the question, was this before there was any romantic interest from his side or after?’
My mind went blank.
He was staring at the fire again.
‘No,’ I said numbly, barely feeling my own lips. ‘Oh, no, no. You’re not going there. You’re not going to act like—’
He frowned. ‘I’m just—’
‘You’re not just!’ The words burst out with too much force. ‘You know exactly what you’re doing, damn you! What are you trying to tell me – that there’s nothing about me he could potentially have wanted except for my bloody magic? That I’m an unlovable creature only good for fighting and—’
‘Thraga, stop it.’
I clamped my mouth shut, breath a ragged mess.
‘That is not what I’m trying to tell you.
Not even close.’ His voice was strained – a roar barely squeezed into civilised language.
His eye was wide. ‘Hell take me, how do I put this more clearly? Of course the sorry bastard should have wanted you because you’re a foul-mouthed little fighter with an unnervingly wicked sense of humour and an absolutely riveting obsession with runes.
If he’d had any sense, that would have been all he cared about.
But given that he didn’t allow you to fight, or to laugh, or to talk about those same damn runes, it doesn’t appear that those were the particular aspects he was most interested in, does it? ’
I stared at him.
The rush of blood in my mind was deafening.
Little fighter.
Wicked. Riveting.
There was no version of reality in which those words had anything to do with me. Lark was funny. Lark was smart. I just … was, and tried not to be too bad at that. I just …
My mouth moved.
No words came out.
‘Thraga …’ Durlain rubbed a hand over his forehead, dark curls tumbling around his fingers like locks of midnight sky.
‘Flames have mercy. The only thing I’m saying is that there’s a possibility – a possibility, mind you – that he was being a calculating little shit about your heart.
Not that you’d have deserved that. Not that he’d have been right to do so. Alright?’
Fuck. How did I manage to mess up even the receiving of compliments?
‘I’m sorry,’ I squeaked. ‘I thought— I didn’t realise—’
‘No, of course you didn’t.’ His voice was too stiff.
Too stilted. ‘Because you’ve been led to believe for years that he’s the light and the fire and you’re nothing but ashes, haven’t you?
Except that no one has reminded you of the other side, which is that ashes are only ever ashes because the fire made them so. ’
Lark.
Oh, hell, Lark.
My chest was burning, a hollow, gaping ache against the vial of his blood. He’d held me, Hawk’s corpse bleeding on the ground. He’d smiled at me the next morning. He’d sat by me at breakfast when no one else would. He’d convinced Aranc, somehow, to send us on a mission together.
He’d kissed me, on the moss-covered banks of Lake Kelda, and even the message we’d delivered had no longer mattered.
Ashes.
‘After,’ I choked out, somehow. ‘The interest came after.’
Durlain didn’t speak.
‘But he loved me!’ Even though he’d lied to me.
Even though these weren’t misunderstandings and phantom bars anymore, or some escalated urge to protect – but hell have mercy, all those stolen nights, all those hard-won kisses …
‘He saved me from Aranc! He risked his life to get me out of there! He wouldn’t have—’
‘Where did he take you?’ Durlain cut in.
His family.
What did that have to do with anything?
He must have lied about his family too, yes.
Not poor cabbage farmers, presumably, if he was a friend of bloody Prince Nalzen himself.
But he had wanted to take me to his family home all the same, and surely that was a good thing?
Surely, if he was willing to introduce me to his mother, he had cared despite the lies and the secrets?
‘We rode to the northwest,’ I said hoarsely. ‘He said they were living on the west side of Estien, close to the Thuel border.’
‘Right.’ Durlain rose from his chair, face grim, shoulders tense. ‘Straight line to the family estate, then.’
The—
What?
‘The estate?’ I sputtered.
‘Yes. The Iscarat grounds.’ He spoke the name as if it personally offended him. ‘Including about half of—'
I didn’t hear the rest of that sentence. ‘He has a fucking estate?’
‘His father does, but yes. Good place to hide.’ His look at me was a measured one – like Kjell estimating how many more blows his steel could take. ‘And I can’t help but wonder—'
‘But he told me he couldn’t leave!’ My voice broke. ‘He said we wouldn’t have anywhere to hide if we fled Mount Estien, that there was no use in getting out if it meant we’d spend the rest of our lives holed up in some gutter!’
Durlain’s lip curled into a blistering sneer. ‘Leif? In a gutter?’
‘Why else wouldn’t he have tried—’
‘Because he wasn’t interested in trying.
’ He looked away, golden daylight streaking across his horns, his temple, the slashes of his cheekbones.
‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that he was all out of options for years, until you’d had enough and tried to leave?
That he was suddenly able to find a solution to your problems then? ’
I stared at him.
His jaw was tense, muscles drawn tight in the pale, scarred expense of his throat. His fingers flexed, unflexed, and flexed again. Aimless, restless power – like an arrow about to hurtle from its string, ready to bury itself deep between some poor sod’s ribs.
I didn’t want to hear the next sentence he’d speak.
I knew. I knew. I didn’t want to know.
‘So it seems the only explanation is he wanted to stay until that moment.’ Every syllable was quietly, icily savage.
‘He had a job to do, didn’t he? If he wanted to do it well, his only option was to stick around as long as possible and squash everything that might pull him away from his duty to king and crown. ’
Squash.
Me.
I’d sobbed in his arms, helpless and broken, caught in the never-ending horror of life as Aranc’s witchling bird. He’d kissed me. He’d comforted me. I’d begged him to take me away, to leave with me, gutter or no gutter, and all that time—
An estate.
Waiting for its heir to return.
‘While Aranc …’ A gag constricted my throat. My lungs were folding in, in, in. ‘He was keeping me there while Aranc was … was making me …’
He turned then.
And I understood why he hadn’t looked at me before – because there were no more masks.
No more lies. Nothing calculated about the seething darkness in his eye, that smouldering rage that could burn a city to the ground – Durlain Averre himself at last, the prince of broken hearts, laid bare and raw before me.
‘So it seems, yes.’ His voice was flat as ice. ‘I’m so sorry, Thraga.’
I opened my mouth.
I gagged again.
My feet were quicker than my mind. They were bolting for the bathroom before my conscious thoughts caught up, stumbling and trembling; I reached the toilet just in time, clammy palms slipping on the cold, hard ceramic.
There was no stopping the vomit surging up my throat, and every burning retch tore another wretched shred of my heart out with it.