Chapter 28
Florian
Iopen my eyes with difficulty. There’s so much sleepy gunk there, it’s like wrestling with a door that’s been painted shut.
My throat feels parched, and my head is spinning.
I’m in bed. The blinds are closed. Only a tiny crack of light peeks through, but it’s already giving me a headache.
I have no idea what time it is, or even what day it is.
Stars, this is the worst hangover ever. Where am I?
I risk another peek at the light, my brain working at quarter speed.
It’s Grimes’ bedroom. The crappy faded wallpaper matches the paper in the hallway, and there are the bare floorboards I pried up when I snooped on him.
Someone is sitting on the end of the bed.
I pull up the sheets instinctively around me but it’s only Grimes, quiet but alert.
“Boss?” I croak, my throat scratchy.
He rushes to the head of the bed.
“You’re okay, Florian,” he whispers. “You’re okay, flower.”
I can’t remember anything. But I know there’s nothing to be afraid of, because I’ve never heard such tenderness in anyone’s voice before.
“I feel like shit,” I say. “What happened to me?”
His dark eyes burn with anger as he looks down at me. His hood is down and the tattoo’s sharp lines on his neck are just visible in the gloom.
“I’ll tell you when you feel better. But you’re okay, trust me.” He brushes a lock of hair off my face. I can’t take my eyes off him, that intense look in his gaze. “I need to get you something to eat,” he says, but he keeps staring at me as though he doesn’t want to leave me alone.
“I’ll come with you.” I try to sit up. The room lurches like it’s the one with the hangover.
“No, I’ll go.” Grimes takes two steps toward the door and then stops and looks back at me. The concern on his face makes me want to cry and I don’t even know why. “Stay right there, okay?” he says.
I salute and he laughs, uneasily. He’s worried about me. Am I really ill? I listen to him clomp downstairs. Even sitting down, it’s a struggle to stay upright. I feel terrible. When did I last eat? My mouth tastes like vomit. Stars, I hope Grimes didn’t see me throw up…
I concentrate, trying to remember. Disjointed thoughts slosh in and out of my battered mind, like bathwater being displaced and coming back into the tub.
Gradually they piece themselves together.
The fair. The archery demonstration. The hot air balloon.
Talking to Grimes at the food stall. His serious, guilty eyes.
His revenge scheme. He won me on purpose.
I ran off in disgust and then I met those people…
Hevra? And his friends. I remember drinking…
a lot. Being ill… somewhere. At the fair?
Here? I remember waking up dizzy, woozy.
Talking to Grimes. When was that? No idea.
But I talked and talked. I wouldn’t shut up.
I told him I forgave him for his scheme, which is true.
I told him I’m a needy slut… Why? It’s the truth, but why say it to him?
I told him I want to be with him. Stars, he’s going to think I’m so forward and desperate.
He comes back into the room but my head is in my hands with shame now. I listen, without looking, to his footsteps on the bare floorboards.
“Do you feel ill again?” he says. “Let me see you.”
I force myself to look up. “Boss, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown myself at you.”
He sets down a tray of food and sits beside me.
“We can talk about all that later,” he says. “But know this, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Eat something now.”
It’s so easy and comforting to fall into the pattern of his taking charge of me. Looking after me.
“Can I brush my teeth first?” I say. “My mouth tastes like death.”
He brings my toothbrush from my room and a glass of water.
I feel a little better once I’ve cleaned the gunk from my teeth and taken a drink.
Grimes pushes the plate toward me: a few slices of dry bread and a hard-boiled egg.
I take a small bite, still unsure even though it’s as plain fare as you can get.
“Tell me what happened?” I say. “I’m ready now.”
Grimes shifts his weight, like he’s wondering if that’s true.
“Well, the fair was three days ago,” he says. He hesitates, laying his hand over mine. “You’ve been ill ever since. Your drink was spiked with abask. It was Hevra. Don’t worry, he’s in custody now. He can’t hurt you.”
I feel weak again. When am I going to learn not to be so impulsive? I trusted him way too early, just because I was pissed at Grimes. Stupid.
“He wasn’t able to do anything to you,” Grimes say. “I got there in time.”
“I was so stupid,” I say.
“You trust easily, that’s all.”
“Yes. Stupidly easily.”
“Stop that. You’re never going to call yourself stupid again, you hear me?”
I blink at how stern he sounds. Then immediately fall into line, body humming at being commanded. “Yes, Boss.”
“Good. There’s one more thing you need to know,” he says, voice gentle again. “They made you gamble. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
He takes a piece of paper from his pocket.
It’s a contract for thirty years indentured labor, signed by Hevra.
And by me. My breath spirals in my chest. I have no memory of signing that.
Thirty years? So he was just using my vanity?
He was never attracted to me? Or maybe he was, which would’ve made the thirty years even more unbearable.
I’m such a fool.
“Hey, hey, relax.”
Grimes words come from far away, and his face blurs before my eyes, and he’s making me put my head between my knees and take deep breaths. His big palm rests in the middle of my back, radiating comforting heat, bringing me back to reality.
Look,” he says.
I look up. Grimes tears the contract into pieces before my eyes.
“You’re safe, all right?” he says. “I’ve got you.”
Tears spill from my eyes and I’m too exhausted to stop them or hide them. Grimes brushes them away with his fingertip, his eyes burning with emotion. He studies my face as though he’s looking for some answer there, but he hasn’t told me the question.
“There’s something else I need to do,” he says.
He takes another sheet of paper from his pocket. It’s the contract between the two of us that I signed all those weeks ago at the casino. The one giving him two years of my life. As I watch, he rips it into pieces.
“Boss, are you serious? I’m free?”
“Of course you’re free. And you can stop calling me Boss now.”
I cover my face with my hands. This is all too much.
I have my life back. I don’t have to stay with Grimes.
But fuck, I want to. His eyebrow is still covered with plaster.
His huge frame moves slowly, with barely concealed winces, as though his body has been battered as well as his broken nose.
He must have taken a serious beating saving me from Hevra and his friends, but he hasn’t complained once, totally focused on my illness.
He acts as though his own pain isn’t worth mentioning.
Of course, I’m still a little weirded out by his revenge plan.
But the fact is that he came through for me when it mattered.
He risked his life to save mine, even after I walked away from him and told him I wanted nothing to do with him.
His expression as he looks at me now shows how terrified he was when he feared I wouldn’t make it.
So yeah, it might make me needy and pathetic, but I want to stay with him. I want to stay with the person looking at me as though he would’ve been lost if he hadn’t been able to save me. But I’m too scared to say that. Would he even want me? He doesn’t know the truth about me.
“I need to tell you something,” I say through my fingers. “I’m… I’m half Callinthen.”
“I figured,” he says.
That it? I built myself up for my big confession, and that’s all he has to say? I just admitted to being his enemy. Most people believe my half-Vennan lie without question. But he’s looking at me indulgently, like I’m a little kid who thinks they can outsmart the adults.
“How’d you figure it out?” I ask.
“You were way too comfortable with hot air balloons,” he says, smug in his deduction.
“Compared to someone who’s scared, I guess,” I say, recovering my poise enough to tease.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Does that refer to me?”
“Maybe.”
“Careful. You’re getting above yourself since I tore up that contract.” He brushes his big boxer’s knuckles across my cheekbone, soft as a feather. His touch sends a flurry of warmth through my whole body.
“Don’t worry, you’re still the boss around here,” I say.
He laughs and gets all flustered at the same time. Worrying about me trying to seduce him again. Worrying more about his ability to resist. That feeds my ego. The flicker of desire in his eyes is enough for me; I know he wants me. I don’t need anything more right now.
“Did I ever tell you that my father hates me?” I say, settling back against the pillows. Now that I’m free, I feel so much lighter. I want to tell Grimes everything.
“You may have mentioned that he wasn’t father of the year,” Grimes says, with a dark, protective scowl that makes my heart skitter.
“Well, it’s a little worse than that. He really hates me. And that’s why, because my mother was Callinthen and she left him. Left him with me. He hated himself for being weak enough to fall for an enemy.”
I was his constant reminder. I don’t need to explain it any more to Grimes. He’s quiet and reserved, but his intuition runs deep.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“My father always says that my Callinthen side explains why I’m the way I am.
So flighty and irresponsible and easily tempted by glittery, pretty things.
Like a mahlark.” I name the birds that steal jewelry and coins from the unsuspecting back home in Rhennes.
The words spill out of me like a dam has burst. It’s easy now, with Grimes sitting quiet and protective, just waiting to hear what I have to say.
“I know most Rhennians think all Callinthens are like that,” I finish.
“And what do you think?” he says.
I shrug. “I think I don’t belong anywhere.”
“I disagree,” Grimes says.
I glance up, wondering, but he’s looking away now.
“Listen, Florian, I’m so sorry about everything,” he says. “The two years’ labor. It all feels so shabby now. I should’ve realized... I mean, I should’ve considered the fact that you didn’t mean for me to be incarcerated.”
“But you were incarcerated. I understand why you would hold that against me.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.” He looks at me now, and his gaze is direct, honest. Soft. “Do you forgive me for setting those Durovians on you?”
“Of course. I know you didn’t mean for things to go that far.”
I trace a finger over his cheek, over the plaster that’s over one of his eyebrows.
He went through that pain for me. And even before, even when he thought I’d ruined his life and sent him to prison on purpose, he only wanted to extract the same amount of time from me as he served.
Even embittered and angry, even when he hated me, he never gave in to cruelty.
“You’re too good for that casino where I found you,” he says. “What were you doing there, anyway?”
I shrug. “Looking for love in the arms of strangers. As usual.”
I want him to wrap me in his arms and tell me that I don’t need to seek out strangers anymore. That he’s here now. To my surprise he does open his arms and hug me, so gently, like I’m half broken. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t promise me anything. But his warmth is enough for me for now.
“You need to sleep,” he whispers.
“Stay with me?” I beg. Stars, so needy. “I won’t try to seduce you again, promise. I just don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ll stay, flower.”