Chapter 37
I woke to the smell of grilled meat and toasted bread, the blankets cold and empty around me, a hearty fire sizzling nearby.
It took a few moments before the last twenty-four hours returned to me.
Birds. Belloc. Lava and mist. Bath, truth, Durlain, and at long last my head shot up, memory finally connecting to smell and sound and conscious thought: Durlain, who’d saved me.
Durlain, who’d fucked me within half an inch of death.
Durlain, who’d whispered those ominous words into my hair in the moments before I’d fallen asleep …
except that I might have dreamed that bit, because he didn’t even distantly resemble some darkly tortured soul now, sitting by a fire near the entrance of the cave and grilling dripping sausages on a fork.
Hell. Sausages.
I decided in the blink of an eye that the ominous words could wait.
Only when I untangled myself from the makeshift bed did I realise I was still naked – a fact that seemed significantly more alarming by day than it had done in the forgiving firelight.
But Durlain turned before I could reach for my clothes, and something about the gleam in his eye suggested he didn’t exactly object to the sight of my scarred, rune-marked skin.
I could watch you for days.
I managed, with effort, not to yank up the blankets and cover myself. ‘Morning.’
‘Closer to afternoon, in fact.’ He nodded pointedly at something beside me, then turned back to his breakfast preparations. ‘Feel free.’
That was rather cryptic until I found the object he’d indicated – his purple silk dressing gown, folded with soldier’s exactness next to where my head had been.
I wanted to object, then realised that he likely wasn’t making the offer for politeness’ sake and that I was glad to stay away from my travel-grimed clothes a little longer, and began wrapping the precious garment around my body.
It was soft. It was feathery light. I’d never worn anything this stupidly extravagant in my life, and I felt like a pebble set into a shining golden ring.
Durlain’s glance when I joined him by the fire was unmistakably appreciative, though.
I had not the faintest clue how to do this, the new normal of a morning after – how to look him in the eye, how to not look at any other part of him, how to sit down beside him as if I didn’t still feel his hands and mouth on every inch of my skin.
He handed me toast and sausages without a glimmer of awkwardness, though, and sipped his own tea without any forced chatter to avoid the threat of looming embarrassment.
Somehow, it was that lack of desperate effort that kept the silence from turning uncomfortable – as if everything hadn’t shifted between us last night, as if we were simply the same two people going through the same old routines.
Maybe he just had plenty of experience with these situations, I considered with a disconcerting stab of resentment as I dug into my food.
He was a prince, after all. He’d probably fucked dozens of people without any strings attached, and there was no reason at all for me to feel like burying Eihwaz into each and every one of them.
I did, though.
Balls. What was I doing?
But speaking any of those tangled thoughts out loud would hardly lead to more clarity – so I ate my breakfast instead, then accepted a cup of tea and sipped in silence.
Outside, grey waves rolled across the glittering black beach.
A few lumps of dark stone had appeared at the foot of the cliffs, where lava had dripped over the edges; no other traces of last night’s eruption showed around the cave.
The breeze was mellow. The sky was a bright mother-of-pearl that one could almost call white.
Not a bad day to break into a heavily guarded fireborn palace, and I wondered for a wistful moment if we couldn’t simply go ahead and do exactly that – go to war, kill a bunch of mages, and pretend there was nothing else for us to discuss.
‘So,’ Durlain said.
Probably not, then.
‘So,’ I agreed and left the matter at that, because if he had that much bloody experience dealing with these things, he could damn well do the heavy lifting here.
The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘No particular regrets?’
‘No,’ I said, then considered that a moment longer and cautiously added, ‘That is, assuming you don’t have them.’
I would regret that – being a less than pleasant memory to him. It was almost disconcerting to realise just how much I would regret that.
‘Not in the slightest.’ He moved to lean against the irregular side of the cave, long legs stretched out before him – the very picture of unconcerned idleness, except it suddenly seemed a fraction too unconcerned and a whole lot too idle.
His swift smile looked genuine yet oddly tense at the edges.
‘Not in the direct sense of the word, at least. We need to talk.’
That sounded ominous.
Indirect regrets – what the hell did that even mean? And that tight twitch of a smile … Mists take me, was his calm composure just another mask, hiding bad tidings beneath? Had our breakfast seemed too effortless to be true because it was, in fact, not true?
I shifted on the stone, my hot mug suddenly clammy in my hands, and stammered, ‘If you’d rather not repeat any of this, you won’t hurt my feelings by saying so, of course. And obviously you needn’t— I mean, you’re free to— It’s not as if I—’
‘Thraga,’ he interrupted, squeezing his eye shut as if in pain. ‘With all due respect and heartfelt admiration, please shut up.’
I shut up.
‘Thank you. Most obliged.’ He opened his eye again and drew in a long breath, like a man about to embark on a painstakingly prepared speech.
‘So. First things first: I would in fact be delighted to repeat all of this, and do a lot worse than that, too. Don’t reject yourself on my behalf.
Which does, however, present me with somewhat of a dilemma, given that …
’ A tense flick of his hand, seemingly to indicate the whole of the unnamed situation.
‘Oh, damnation. I don’t want to take you to Mount Garnot. ’
I blinked.
He dropped his horned head back against the black rock, firmly aiming his gaze at the ceiling rather than my face.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I don’t want you breaking into Mount Garnot.
’ His fingers gave an almost indistinguishable twitch – the only sign of the mask wavering, the only sign there even was a mask at all.
His voice remained unnervingly placid. ‘It was probably a terrible idea from the start, and it’s only become a worse idea since. After last night …’
He didn’t finish that sentence. The eloquent twist of his lips said enough.
Indirect regrets.
I stared at him and felt a horrible, horrible suspicion rise in me.
‘Do you … do you think I can’t do it?’ I remembered my knees collapsing under the onslaught of Belloc’s fire. Heard myself whimper in his arms. Worst of all, heard my own breathless moans, my pleading for his cock, my shameless surrender. ‘If you think I might be too weak to—’
‘What?’ He shot upright, with a speed that instantly shattered the deliberate poise.
‘Oh, hell have mercy. I’m a terrible man in plenty of ways already, Thraga – there’s no need to invent new and inaccurate ones every morning.
What sort of degenerate would call you weak for sharing in the pleasure of an excellent fuck? ’
‘But you—’
‘I care about you, you impossible creature.’ He sounded wretchedly and grievously vexed by the fact.
‘I’ve tried not to, I’ve spent days telling myself not to be so ridiculously sentimental, and it’s been a spectacular failure – so here we are.
I don’t want to see you harmed. Mount Garnot will harm you.
For the love of hell’s wandering souls, let’s change our plan. ’
Care.
I blinked at him, owlishly, and felt that one word seep into my mind like rain into the parched summer’s earth.
Did it make sense? He’d feared for my life.
He’d soothed my fears. He’d fucked me like a lover would.
But he’d told me so, so many times not to expect a single thing from him, to brace for the moment he’d turn his back on me and cast me aside like a rusted tool, that even now it sounded laughable, too good to be true – care about you.
So I’m not the only one? I wanted to stammer … except that it felt much, much too dangerous to speak those words out loud. Like walking bare-skinned into a field of brambles – too needy, too greedy, a wide-eyed invitation for the scorn to come.
‘But your sister,’ I said hollowly.
His sharp jaw twitched. ‘Yes. I know.’
‘You can’t do that for me. You can’t—’
‘I am in fact very much intending to do it.’ The short flash of lost control had been snuffed out again.
In its place came this icy, immovable resolve, and somehow that seemed more vulnerable – Durlain Averre, clinging to his composure.
‘Although not for you, may I remind you. You haven’t asked me for it.
Don’t try to turn this into your responsibility. ’
Death’s fucking arse.
‘You’re doing it because of me, though,’ I said hoarsely.
Not your responsibility – he could get in the sea with that.
‘And if your sister ends up dragged into your father’s hands next month, you may still damn well resent me for it – so don’t you think you should at the very least give me a vote in this change of plan? ’
‘She won’t be.’ The stiff certainty in his voice suggested more doubt than audible doubt would have done. ‘I’ll find another way to get her out.’
I put my tea aside, crossed my arms over my knees. ‘Like what?’
‘The point of the future tense,’ he said testily, ‘is that it has not yet happened, Thraga.’
‘Have mercy. Not grammar.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘However will I refute that argument? Oh, right – the point of the future tense is that it might not happen.’
He glared at me, his stupidly kissable mouth a thin, furious line.