Chapter 28 #3
‘Durlain.’ There was only so much dancing around matters I could take. ‘Fuck off. Talk to me.’
‘Those are contradictory—’
‘You know what’s contradictory? Getting your head stuck up your own arse, which is a very real risk you’re running right now.’ I glared at him. ‘Talk.’
I could see his jaw working for a moment – trying to hold back, presumably, the point that there was nothing particularly contradictory about getting rectally beheaded. Three, four heartbeats, then finally he sagged on the edge of the table – averting his gaze, unclenching his fingers.
A breach in the wall.
I waited.
‘I don’t think you’ve ever been able to accuse me of lack of thoughts,’ he said stiffly, a hint of acid seeping through. ‘Although you are free to disagree with the thoughts in question, of course.’
‘Generous,’ I said. ‘Would have been nice if you’d actually informed me of those thoughts at any point in the past four days.’
‘You didn’t ask—’
‘You pressed your cock against my arse for minutes,’ I snapped, ‘then suggested I prioritise my own wellbeing over your sister’s freedom, then held my hand for another few minutes, and now you have the fucking gall to blame me for your utter failure to at least acknowledge those facts to my face? Is that really the best you can do?’
He didn’t turn towards me.
His profile was razor-sharp in the low light, like cliff edges or shards of glass. But the corners of his lips twitched, unwillingly yet unmistakably, and this time there was nothing forced about the motion.
‘Durlain,’ I said.
A strangled exhale. ‘You do have a way with words.’
‘Yes, thank you. So?’
‘I’m trying to imagine what would happen if we were to put you in a room with my father,’ he said, finally meeting my gaze with a spark of that wry amusement flickering in his eye. ‘Also, you do admittedly make me sound discourteous.’
I scoffed. ‘Entertain me and try to make it sound any other way.’
‘You keep seeing me as someone I’m not.’ In the blink of an eye, all amusement vanished, his features hardening like molten sand into glass.
‘Noble intentions beneath the unpleasant exterior. Saveable. Even halfway to trustworthy. Which – and I’m not sure how many times I need to keep telling you this – is a mistake. ’
‘The fact that you care—’
‘Proves what, exactly?’ he cut in, speaking faster than I’d ever heard him before.
‘I know I’m a heartless bastard, Thraga.
And I’d rather have been born into a home that wouldn’t have turned me into a heartless bastard, but that doesn’t mean I’ll change my wicked ways now and become someone else, do you understand?
I care to the point that I’d prefer not to needlessly hurt you.
I don’t care to the point where I will not hurt you. ’
There was a faint echo.
He hadn’t raised his voice, exactly. But the usual restraint, that soft, murmuring inhibition … it was nowhere to be seen.
‘I see,’ I said.
It was mostly true, even.
‘You don’t,’ he said, lips curling around the words, ‘because if you understood the full extent of what is happening here, you would not be wishing for my company or my conversation, and you certainly wouldn’t wish to find yourself anywhere near my bed ever again.’
I considered that and decided he believed it.
I said, ‘Noted.’
He gave a slow blink. ‘Thraga—’
‘And you appear to think you’re the only heartless bastard between us,’ I continued, not slowing down, managing somehow not to flinch as the words poured from my lips.
‘Or the only one who’s keeping secrets, for that matter.
Sorry to break the news to you, but you might be missing a thing or two there.
So perhaps you should be a little less concerned about hurting me, and start considering the possibility that I might just as well end up hurting you? ’
I wasn’t sure where that last sentence had come from.
And yet … yet the words tasted like truth on my tongue.
He was wrong, that much I knew, with a complete and utter certainty that felt alien in my bones – something he said that didn’t fit the things he did, something he did that didn’t fit the things he said.
I wasn’t yet sure of the secrets behind it.
I didn’t know how to untangle those threads now.
I just knew they were tangled beyond comprehension, and most important of all, that he seemed unaware of it himself.
And that was weakness.
A flaw he hadn’t yet noticed, an unseen crack in his perfect shield. Durlain Averre was going to surprise himself one of these days, and he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
The playing field seemed to have levelled itself between us in the course of a few unthinking sentences.
Because I was still the destitute witch on the run, sure enough …
but he was no longer the invulnerable prince dragging me along.
He was no longer the blank obsidian wall on which I could beat my fists bloody without ever leaving a dent, and no matter how stony his face now, no matter how cold his eye, I wondered if he knew it, too.
‘I understand you’re trying to protect me,’ I added, warily, handling my words with a care that felt like I’d borrowed it from him. ‘And I appreciate your protection from the rest of the world, as mercenary as you tell me it might be. I could use it. But against you …’
He didn’t move as I paused, sorting through my words, picking out only the truest of them.
‘You seem to have decided you need to protect me from yourself,’ I said finally.
‘As if the power is all yours and the risk is all mine. But you’re the fool who taught me to fight back.
You’re the fool who let me out of that cage – so if you end up betraying me, I don’t think I’ll be the only one suffering.
You’ve given me too much to work with already. ’
So, so many glimpses of that ink-black heart. I didn’t want to sink my knives into it – but I knew who I was. I knew what I’d done. I had no doubt I could, if forced, if sufficiently provoked.
Durlain had to hear it too, that note of premonition – because he did not laugh or scoff or tell me I was raving mad. Hell, of course he didn’t; he’d seen my claws long before I found them myself.
‘Ah,’ he said, tone carefully neutral.
I shrugged, holding his gaze.
‘Making enemies is a terrible pastime.’ It wasn’t just amusement now, that edge tugging at his faint, mirthless smile. It was something suspiciously like approval, and my heart forgot how to beat for a count or two. ‘But if I need to make them anyway, you are at least a creation I can be proud of.’
I laughed; there was no helping it. ‘Is that your idea of a compliment?’
‘Oh, I have many ideas for compliments. You inspire them more easily than you realise.’ His soft voice was light like the gossamer brush of fingertips over a bared throat.
‘You’re – forgive me the tired metaphor – playing with fire here, Thraga.
Of course I’m holding back. Consider it my own makeshift cage for the occasion – and once I open that lock, I’m not sure how easily I’ll manage to step back in again. ’
Wicked, he’d said. Riveting. Brilliant. Stunning.
I thought of Lark, smiling down at me.
I thought of Aranc, wrapping his hand around my neck.
I thought of all the doors I hadn’t opened, all the windows I hadn’t even dared to glance at, all the dangers I could hide from for the rest of my years.
A lifetime of stifling the thrill that was now uncoiling in my chest – something that wasn’t soft or safe or romantic but rather the brand new exhilaration of a game to play.
I understood, suddenly, why anyone would like risks.
And Durlain Averre – who had punched Valern to bloody shreds, who had protected his sister from the wiles of men, who had pinned me to a bed and rolled off me – might not be the worst risk to take.
‘I’m quite enjoying the view without bars,’ I said. ‘I think you ought to join me.’
His eye narrowed a fraction.
It was a brief gesture. Less than a blink. But there was no amusement in it, no patronising condescension; the look of a man assessing a genuine threat, and the breathless rush beneath my ribs whirled faster.
‘Excellent,’ he said and pushed himself back onto his feet with a swift, nimble motion. ‘Dinner?’