Chapter 37 #2
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your …’ Care. ‘Caution. Pleasant surprise. That said, deciding on my behalf that I’ll stay at home to do the laundry because you’re concerned for my safety sounds a damn lot like building me another pretty cage, doesn’t it?’
He winced.
Actually winced, as if I’d kicked him in the balls over our breakfast fire. ‘Thraga.’
I shrugged. ‘Blame yourself.’
‘Oh, trust me, I do.’ His lip curled ever so slightly, face rigid with tension. ‘And I’m not trying to decide anything for you, if that needs clarifying. But I was the one forcing you into this mad endeavour, and I’m retracting my side of the bargain. That’s all.’
Except that it was not all.
It was not remotely close to all, because the prince of broken hearts had killed for his sister and stolen hellhounds for his sister and betrayed his life’s work for his sister, and yet he would not sacrifice me for her.
I thought of a servant girl sentenced to blindness. Of a young boy who’d heard his mother die and learned to braid a toddler’s hair.
Damn it all. Into the brambles I’d go.
‘And the problem,’ I said, forcing myself not to look away, not to cower and hide behind the flimsy silk of his dressing gown rather than meet his gaze, ‘is that you’re not the only one who cares too much.’
His face was all shadows. All hard lines and angles.
‘I’ve spent all my adult life doing the bidding of terrible men, you know.
’ It was so simple, put like that. So very obvious.
‘I’ve been told to be quiet and to swallow my fear and to play along with games I could only ever lose, and I didn’t even remember I could do better until you made me hold that bloody door.
I attacked Belloc yesterday. It was stupid, but I chose to attack Belloc. You gave me that, do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was rough, unwilling … but of course, of course he understood. ‘Yes, but—’
‘No, shut up. I’m not done yet.’ The words were tangling on my tongue, untested and delicate, but impossible to hold back now that I’d started.
‘The point I’m trying to make is you’ve already fulfilled your side of the bargain, you fool.
You’ve given me so much more than I ever imagined I could bargain for.
And yet you’re still trying to help me, the way you’re trying to protect everyone and everything around you all the time, and it’s …
I’m so very sorry, Dur. I wish someone had helped you when it counted – that someone could have saved you from becoming what you didn’t want to be. ’
He was no longer objecting.
He stared at me, pale as death itself, his eye a wide, gaping gap in his armour.
‘So.’ I forced a smile. ‘I have to help, because what right do I have to shake my fist at the rest of the world if I’m just as much of a coward?
You gave me back myself, I’m going to get your sister back for you, and that’s the end of it.
Unless you want to fuck me a few more times, of course.
I wouldn’t be opposed to that either, if it’s not too much of an imposition. ’
His mouth opened.
Then closed again.
Something not unlike a whimper escaped him – laughter or despair or sheer, stifled disbelief, I wasn’t fully sure.
‘I know,’ I said, scowling amiably back at him. ‘I do have a way with words.’
That broke the spell.
He moved too fast for me to follow. Stood before I could blink, crossed the yards between us before I could open my mouth to speak.
His hands grabbed me beneath the arms, hauled me to my feet as if I were weightless – and then he was clutching me against his chest, fingers digging bruises into my back and shoulders, breath shallow and uneven against the crown of my head.
A desperate hold. As if I might slip from his grasp and dissolve like smoke – as if he was already counting down the seconds until the end.
I breathed in, smelled dark roses. ‘Dur …’
‘You fool,’ he whispered, voice choked. ‘You brilliant, glorious fool.’
I couldn’t have responded if I’d wanted to.
His arms tightened impossibly around me, squeezing the air from my lungs – and hell, what did it matter?
I’d said plenty already. So I hugged him back, as hard as I could, and waited for his breath to gradually settle against my hair, for his staggering heartbeat to become even again.
He still sounded unusually tense when he finally loosened his hold a fraction and muttered, ‘I would really, really like to change your mind on this.’
I snorted into his shoulder.
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’ A small, pained groan. ‘Thraga, I truly don’t deserve—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I said crankily. ‘It’s unlike you to be boring.’
That did shut him up.
His silence was heavier this time, more agitated, as if words and plans and arguments were wrestling beneath the surface of him.
I was just starting to wonder whether it would be too ill-mannered to hit him if he brought up my safety again – I tended towards no – when he abruptly released a breath, shoulders tautening. Decision made.
‘Could we compromise?’ he mumbled.
I frowned against his shirt. ‘Depends. What would you suggest?’
‘If we really must do this …’ A small pause, as if he was hoping against his better judgement that I would agree that was a mere hypothetical. ‘If we must do this, could we at the very least agree you won’t use magic inside the palace?’
I froze.
He had to feel it, because the next sentence came out noticeably more hurried. ‘I don’t mean—’
‘You’re telling me not to use my magic?’ It took some effort to pull away from his hug; his arms gave way only reluctantly. ‘You are telling me not to use my magic? What good is it to take a witch along at all if I can’t—’
‘Thraga, please.’ His expression was too tight, fraying restraint battling fraying nerves.
‘You can use your knives, of course. We can make preparations using your magic. But Lesceron is a fanatic when it comes to witchcraft, and I really, really don’t want him to make an example out of you, alright? ’
You know what they do to your kind.
The part of me that had spent a lifetime cowering was still there: chains and cages, stones and razors.
But another part – a troublingly large part – bristled at that reminder of Lark, at the very fucking notion of shutting myself away again, and it took a long moment to bring my voice down to a civilised volume.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said, swallowing my stronger thoughts. ‘About Lesceron.’
‘He’s not as theatrical about it.’ It came out short and unpleasantly vague, as if these were tales even a fireborn prince would rather not linger upon.
‘If we’re caught breaking into his palace, I might still be able to talk us out of it.
If you’re caught using magic, I don’t think anything I could do would save you – not in his own bloody home, around his own bloody fires.
So … please, Thraga. I don’t want you to take that risk for me. ’
Don’t try to turn this into your responsibility, I wanted to fling back – except that he was looking more and more miserable before me, pale and tense, and I had the unnerving feeling he might crumble at a single witticism too many.
Which was something to chew on. Because he must have known about Lesceron’s quiet witch hunts all along, and had recruited a runewitch to help him free his sister all the same …
But then, of course he had.
Heartless bastard. None of that should be news to me.
‘Alright,’ I said, because even if my newfound principles chafed at the thought, I had to keep my head about me.
If Durlain paled at the thought of my fate in Lesceron’s hands, he’d presumably have good reason to.
‘No signing or inscribing runes once we are inside the castle, and no visible spells on any objects we’ve prepared beforehand.
And I’ll use my knives however I see fit.
Is that a compromise you can live with?’
He closed his eye for a brief but all-telling moment. ‘Promise me.’
‘What?’
‘Please.’ That thin edge snuck into his voice again. ‘Whatever happens, whatever danger we’re in – no runes. Promise me, Thraga.’
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
Should I not be doing this after all? Retreat as he’d suggested, find a new strategy, come back later?
But he did need help. The harder he denied it, the more help he needed …
and surely he would have told me more about whatever nightmares were stirring in his mind if he’d thought they would be necessary for my survival?
He wanted me to live. He wanted to keep me safe, and he was not an idiot, and surely I could trust him on those two points?
‘I promise,’ I whispered. ‘No runes. Whatever happens.’
His long, slow exhale held little relief, but his shoulders sagged at last. ‘Alright. Thank you.’
It was downright unsettling to see him like this – the black-hearted monster I knew, the man who’d always grown colder and sharper and crueller under pressure, looking like I might shatter him with a tap of a finger.
I was still wearing nothing but his silk gown.
I’d been starved and hurt and kept on the brink of death for an endless night and day, and all the same, it felt like I was the pillar of strength between us now.
‘I’d say you’re welcome,’ I said with all the firmness I could muster, ‘but I’m afraid it would be a grievous lie.
So let’s just say you owe me a barrel of mead and some mulled wine in return for all this trouble, and I’ll mercifully let things be while we work on our plans. What can you tell me about the palace?’