Chapter 26 #2
‘What you’re saying,’ I muttered, feeling the chill of the night for the first time, ‘is that as long as I’m blaming myself, I’m letting Lark off the hook as well.’
‘Yes. Or at the very least, you’re taking far too much of the blame, trying to shield him from the ugly consequences of his own actions, at the cost of your own sanity.
While as far as I can see it’ – the calm certainty in his voice suggested that was rather far – ‘the core of the matter is that he hurt you.’
When I’d talked to Lark, somehow, I’d always made myself sound wrong.
And the horrible, dangerous thing about Durlain was that he did the opposite – that somehow he always made me sound right, obviously right even, no matter what I’d thought I knew before.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He pushed himself off the windowsill, a fluent, easy motion, and nudged the fluttering curtains out of his way.
‘So eat your soup, thorn of mine. Go get some fresh air. Take a bath or punch some walls or scream into your pillow for a while. And when you’ve done all of that, I suggest you practise fighting back. ’
I ate my soup.
I took a bath.
Then I sat on the edge of my bed in a clean nightgown, towel around my hair and blankets around my shoulders, and stared at the vial of blood in my palm.
Lark’s blood. Lark’s life. The key to Niflheim’s gates that had kept me from throwing myself onto my knives when I’d found his body, that had kept me going in those first horrible days by Durlain’s side …
and now I looked at it, small and fragile in my hand, and it no longer felt like an ally.
It no longer felt like an encouragement.
Rather, the feeling bubbling up in me was something like …
Apprehension?
Dread?
You’re making a hopeless mess of it again, witchling.
‘No, you made a fucking mess of it,’ I told the drops of blood clinging to the thin glass walls, and it felt better than talking to a bottle should make me feel. I tried to imagine Lark’s face if he heard it, and realised I couldn’t, because I’d never said anything of the sort to him.
Would he laugh? Would he shrug? Would he turn his back on me and ignore me for days?
Would he fight?
The vial most certainly couldn’t fight, and perhaps that was the reason I sat there for what felt like hours, trying to figure out what to do – because how did one fight back when there was no attack?
Lark had hurt me, yes. But even if I wanted to hurt him back – which did sound childish in the first place – then how would I possibly go about it?
He was dead. If I flung the bottle into the wall in a fit of rage, he would still be dead and probably never notice the difference.
Did I even want him to stay dead?
It sounded terrible. Like murdering him again.
Was it really worth killing him over a handful of lies, no matter how devastating?
Wouldn’t it be better to bring him back and confront him with the secrets I’d learned, or to bring him back, break his nose in a couple of places, and see if that made me feel a little less terrible?
If I brought him back, perhaps it’d turn out he’d truly loved me after all.
There might be an explanation for all he’d said and done. I might be mistaken. What if I ruined my only chance at love in a fit of heartbroken rage? On the other hand … what if he came back, laughed in my face, and called me a fool? Would I survive the humiliation?
So much I’d learned, and yet the longer I stared at that little bulb of glass in my palm, the less I knew.
I needed to move.
It was too beautiful, this house. It felt like a lie, a dream that might end at any moment and deliver me back onto the real world’s doorstep – and I couldn’t make decisions based on dreams, could I?
I still had to live with myself if I found myself back in some ratty alley in two months, punching others into the mud for my own daily bread.
I still had to understand why I’d done what I’d done if I ended up sleeping in haylofts again next winter, without a pair of arms around me to keep me warm.
Fresh air, Durlain had said, and perhaps the bastard was on to something.
Vial around my neck again, I tiptoed down the stairs, found a coat in the hallway, and pulled it over my nightgown without checking whose it might be.
My own boots stood waiting beneath the coat rack, so I put those on as well.
The door was locked, but the key was sitting in the keyhole.
It didn’t give so much as a creak when I turned it.
The night was cold enough to draw a hissed curse from my lips. No matter – at least it made me feel awake and alive, and I needed clarity more than I needed comfort right now.
Alright.
Where to go?
Somewhere Lark couldn’t follow me. I felt his presence like a millstone around my neck as I took my first steps down the garden path – as if the man I’d loved and trusted was lingering just beneath the earth, hearing every step I took, waiting for me to join him in hell’s misty halls.
He’d know, wouldn’t he – that I hadn’t died yet?
Would he be proud? Impatient? Angry? The vial against my chest felt like all those emotions and more, and I couldn’t tell whether they were my own or merely some imagined attack from a heart that no longer felt anything at all.
Fight back.
Before I could decide where that fight was supposed to take me, a door clicked behind me.
I swivelled before I’d fully identified the sound, prey instinct honed even in this quiet, safe place.
My hands shot up. My fingers bent to shape thorn.
And then I recognised the tall, muscular silhouette stepping onto the garden path behind me, quiet as a cat despite his bulk and brawn – silver beard, silver braid. Errik.
He recognised me in the same moment. His steps slowed, although he didn’t take his hand off the sword on his hip.
‘Ah.’ Low, quiet voice. ‘Out of bed?’
That was not the question, of course. He could see the answer for himself. The question was where I was going and why, and whether he ought to let me.
He was in his nightshirt, trousers and coat pulled on swiftly, boots untied on his feet.
I had been very, very quiet, and yet I must have woken him.
Which made him an excellent guard, and also a hell of a nuisance right now – because how in the world was I going to explain any of this to a man I didn’t know beyond the maybe twenty words we’d exchanged?
Don’t worry, Errik, I’m only trying to work out how to salvage my broken heart.
Might require some indirect murder, but then, that’d hardly be the worst I’ve done …
‘Needed some fresh air to think,’ I said. ‘Sorry for waking you.’
‘It’s my job.’ His weathered face remained unnervingly impassive in the sliver of moonlight. ‘Do you need company while thinking?’
I barely managed not to flinch. ‘No, thank you.’
He remained where he stood, a grizzled rock of a man – showing no sign he’d heard me and no inclination whatsoever to return to his warm bed inside.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, a little more emphatically now, even though the vial of blood was a burning brand against my chest and the world was very, very dark around us. ‘I’ll just walk a bit and then come back inside. I really don’t want to keep you out of bed.’
‘I appreciate your consideration,’ he said in that slow, deep voice, and remained unmoving.
Death’s fucking balls.
‘Right,’ I said, considering how much trouble I’d be in if I put a slowing spell on his legs and made a run for it. Too much to be worth it, probably. ‘That wasn’t a question, then?’
‘It was a question,’ he stoically pointed out.
My huff was a glittering cloud in the cold night air. ‘Yes, but are you going to listen to the answer?’
‘Not necessarily, no.’ His expression was unreadable, but the tone of his voice seemed to betray a hint of a smile. ‘You haven’t eaten in two days, and now you’re walking out into the freezing night without a word of warning. I’d prefer not to find you at the foot of a cliff in the morning.’
Hell.
The worst part was how easily he could have been right – how close I had been in Svein’s Creek, waiting for the gallows to take me back to Lark.
A white shape loomed from the darkness before I could speak, hairy and horse-sized.
If I’d had any hope of running left, that sight put a swift end to it – because I might have been able to shake off a human guard hindered by runes, I might have been able to hide from human eyes in these dark woods, but I was quite sure I’d never outrun a hellhound.
‘I really am fine,’ I said weakly.
Errik merely inclined his head a fraction, moonlight streaking over the tightly braided silver of his hair. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
He still didn’t show any intention of retreating.
What are you thinking, witchling? Lark demanded in the back of my mind, in that tone of barely restrained fury he only ever used when I was putting myself in danger. You know what his sort is like. You know what they do to your kind. I can’t keep you safe if you won’t stay close to me …
Phantom bars.
Had I ever been in danger, or had I just come too close to the edges of the cage?
To hell with it. Durlain trusted Errik. Estegonde trusted Errik.
He knew I was a runewitch, and he’d come after me to save my life all the same.
Sure, it was possible that this was some intricate, elaborate scheme to take advantage of me in a distant and nebulous future …
but wouldn’t it be conceivable, or even plausible, that this self-controlled, duty-sworn man was simply trying to help?
I made my decision in the span of an inhale.
‘You know things about fighting, don’t you?’ I said.
If Errik was at all surprised by that turn of the conversation, he didn’t show it. ‘I do have some skill in that department, yes.’
Men who spoke about their battlefield prowess in understatements were always the worst, life had taught me. They didn’t give me the one advantage I had over their reckless, brawny, arrogant peers – they didn’t make the mistake of underestimating me.
‘Imagine you have an opponent,’ I said, shoulders tight against the cold, ‘and you may need to fight them someday, but you’re not sure of it.
You’re also not sure if you want to fight them at all.
You might be better off just avoiding them for the rest of your life and be happy in your separate existences, or alternatively, fighting might hurt you more than it would hurt them. ’
His expression didn’t shift. ‘A dilemma, yes.’
‘Quite.’ I swallowed. ‘So what does one do, in those hypothetical circumstances?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, as if it was the simplest answer in the world. ‘Time always brings clarity in these cases.’
I blinked at him.
That did not sound like a warrior’s answer.
‘Of course,’ he added, so incomprehensibly patient I almost wondered whether he was making a point of illustrating his argument, ‘one does need to make sure the opponent is in no position to cause trouble during the wait. I would never suggest surrendering just to avoid the discomfort of making a choice. But once the defence has been taken care of, once one has time to think without the pressure of constant vigilance – well, why rush to a solution if a better one may yet present itself?’
No position to cause trouble.
The vial lay heavy against my chest, like a prodding finger poking into my breastbone. Lark’s blood. Lark’s words and sighs and curses still in my mind, Lark’s gaze still lingering on the back of my head.
Once the defence has been taken care of …
I blinked again.
And just like that I knew what I had to do.
‘Of course,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Thank you. Thank you. That does make a lot of sense.’
This time I did see his smile – just a crinkle at his eyes as he inclined his head again. ‘I’m glad to have been of use. May I suggest we return inside, then, if you have no other pressing questions? My nightshirt wasn’t made for these temperatures.’
I barely heard the last few sentences. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Sorry to have dragged you out. I’ll go right back to bed, I promise.’
More or less, at least.
My plan was made … and all of a sudden, every second with that weight still on my shoulders was an eternity too long.