Chapter 27 #2
His gaze shot to my chest, and I should not have felt the urge to scoot a little closer – to watch his eyes cling to me. Stunning little fool.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘I can’t keep him around my neck.’ It was no longer even a question.
Something in Errik’s calm, deep voice had wiped all doubts and tangled feelings away – a simple matter of strategy, and this was the cornerstone on which all else had to be built.
‘I can’t think like this. That is to say – I can think, but I’m thinking his thoughts, too, and I’ve already done far too much of that.
So I need to be rid of him for a while until I figure out what my mind is saying about matters. ’
Durlain looked at me.
Just looked, speechless.
Good at spotting weaknesses, he’d said, and hell have mercy on us both, that was weakness in his gaze.
What and why – I didn’t have a clue. But something had cracked open in the inky depths of his eye, something had softened in the set of his brows …
and for a single moment, I thought he might avert his gaze, curl up on the bed, and confess to the worst of his crimes, some secret he hadn’t even told himself before.
Instead, what left his lips was, ‘I’m not a terribly trustworthy person, Thraga.’
‘Bold of you,’ I said, ‘to think I hadn’t noticed.’
Now he did look away, although not swift enough to hide the tremble of his lips. ‘And yet you’re happy to put your lover’s life in my hands, worthless liar though he might be?’
I shrugged. ‘Who else do I ask?’
‘Ah.’ He contemplated that for a moment. ‘Yes, I do see your point.’
‘It’s just for a few days. A few weeks at the most.’ Or so I hoped, at least – but surely some shred of clarity would come to me sooner rather than later?
It had barely been a week since we’d left Svein’s Creek behind, for hell’s sake.
These things could happen fast, apparently.
‘But there are too many questions inside me right now, and I don’t want to make any decisions before I’ve had some time to answer those. So I need your help until that time.’
There really was no need to make it any more complicated than that, was there?
We would be stuck together for at least the time it took to reach Mount Garnot and Cimmura’s cell.
More than likely, I’d have made some decisions by then.
Worked out some answers. So even if I shouldn’t trust him, I could safely trust that he and Lark’s blood would still be around once I’d figured out what to do – and he ought to know it as well as I did.
Yet all the same, he looked conflicted.
Another weakness, now that I thought about it. A man without a conscience wouldn’t have had anything to be in conflict with.
‘Durlain …’ An appeal to his scruples. How had it come to this? ‘Help me. Please?’
His eyebrow shot up, vulnerability shattering at once. ‘Oh, don’t you dare beg, thorn of mine.’
‘I’m not begging.’ It came out with more force than intended – because my insides did some strange, twisty things at those last words, and I’d rather have woken up half the household than allowed him to see that much. ‘I’m trying to ask nicely. You know, as you made me promise?’
While he was pressing me into his blankets.
While his arousal was growing into steel against me.
That, the minuscule widening of his eyes told me, had been entirely the wrong thing to say – or entirely the right thing, perhaps. What was the difference these days?
‘We both know you’re being unnecessarily evasive about this,’ I added before he could retaliate, because pressing while I had the advantage was just sensible strategy.
‘I’m not giving it to you because I trust you.
I’m giving it to you because you happen to be around, and letting you keep it is a more convenient option than burying it in the forest and having to dig it up later. What is so hard about that, exactly?’
Hard.
Oh, sweet hell below. That had not been the right thing, either.
He blinked, a fraction too emphatically, as if to scrub something off his mind’s eye. ‘Do I need to point out to you that we’re making a mess of our bargain, Thraga?’
‘What do you—’
‘You were going to free Muri. I was going to revive Lark.’ His lip twisted into that half-sneer I’d almost started missing – aimed at himself, I figured, rather than at me and my begging.
‘So what does that make of us now? Do you realise you don’t have a single reason left to help me burgle Lesceron’s dungeons, if it turns out you don’t want the bastard back in your arms after all? ’
That was a solid point.
That was such a solid point I wasn’t sure how I’d missed it until this moment.
It felt alien, the thought – too good to be true.
I could just … walk away? Done with the court politics.
Done with the fireborn kings. Could find an abandoned shepherd’s hut by the sea, nick a few goats and chickens, polish up on my fishing skills, and earn my own keep for the rest of my life.
It wasn’t so very different from the future I’d imagined as I’d fled Mount Estien; all I had to do was give up on Lark, on the last hope that maybe, just maybe he’d loved me all along.
Could I do that?
Did I want to do that?
I ought to be doubting. I ought to recall the sunlight in his hair, the spark in his eyes, ought to feel despair at the thought of never hearing his voice again … and yet the dread scratching at the edges of my heart had nothing to do with Lark.
Because I’d have to leave here, too.
I’d have to ride away from the Dawn House and its abundant meals – or walk, maybe, because Durlain had bought Pain and he didn’t have any reason to part with her for my sake.
I’d have to turn my back on the home that might know my mother’s secrets.
I’d have to abandon the dream of people who cared, most of all – Estegonde’s wink and Errik’s crinkling eyes.
I’d have to forget about Durlain’s shaking shoulders.
I had to not care, somehow, about the girl he loved to death and beyond, still rotting away in a cruel king’s dungeons.
A fool’s thought.
But the alternative felt like crawling again.
‘I think I have plenty of reasons,’ I heard myself whisper, the night suddenly very quiet around us. ‘But thank you for making me realise it.’
His nostrils flared. ‘Thraga.’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t even think of doing any of this for me.’ His voice was quiet and cutting, a tangle of brambles. ‘You know better than that. You—’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because I’m not a good person,’ he said sharply, ‘and sooner or later I will fail you. You’ve had too many people betray you already. Don’t make yourself vulnerable to more of that.’
So he cared.
Which wasn’t the intended conclusion, presumably.
He was still trying to push me away, even if I could no longer hate him, even if he’d saved my life ten times over; he was still erecting those ice-and-acid walls between us like he’d been doing from the start.
But at the start, I’d thought he was protecting himself. His lies, his schemes, his secrets.
And only now did I realise the walls may well have been built for my sake.
Because he cared. Because he couldn’t allow himself to care, and hated himself for it.
‘I’m not so sure you aren’t a good person,’ I said.
His lip curled in what looked like genuine disgust. ‘Spare me, Thraga.’
‘Oh, for hell’s sake.’ I threw him a glower, mostly because Errik would probably come take a look if I started throwing punches. ‘If you have to be a pain about it … You’re a bad person, but for good reasons. Happy with that?’
‘Happy is too strong a word,’ he said under his breath, averting his gaze as he rubbed his temples with long, spidery fingers. He seemed genuinely agitated. Anxious, almost. ‘Life was much easier when you just called me a limp-dicked wife-murderer and slammed some doors in my face.’
Easier.
When had anyone last made a genuine attempt to trust him?
‘As you wish, you limp-dicked wife-murderer,’ I said, tugging the leather cord over my head without taking my gaze off him.
He still wouldn’t look at me. But I chucked the vial onto the blankets between us, and his eye did snap towards that – as if the drops of blood might break through the glass and throttle him.
‘Here’s a proposal, then: I help you save Cimmura, and either you revive Lark for me, or if I decide I don’t want you to, you find me a safe and comfortable place to live the rest of my life instead.
And in the meantime, you keep that vial. Deal?’
His lips parted a sliver.
A frozen instant passed, and he didn’t speak.
Instead, he cautiously lifted his hand towards the glimmer of glass between us, scarred fingers faltering half an inch away from the smooth surface. As if it might shatter at the first touch. As if he was holding himself back from shattering it at the first touch.
Then, with a motion so swift I barely followed it, he snatched it from the bed and slid it into the elegant drawer of his nightstand.
A tap of glass on wood, a thud of the drawer closing, and it was gone – no more blood, no more Lark.
I blinked at the sudden absence with a feeling I couldn’t have named if my life had depended on it: an aching grief, a hollow rage.
An immediate, inexpressible relief.
Durlain held out his hand before I could speak, pale, slender fingers stretched out in invitation, and it looked like a test. Would I take it with Lark gone? Would I demand the vial back, unable to trust him after all?
‘Deal?’ he said.
I laid my hand in his.
Right choice. Wrong choice. I could no longer tell the difference.