Chapter 14 #2
My eyes stayed on the table between us. His hands weren’t fisted by his side… but the muscles in his forearms were corded, and his fingers were ridged.
“Don’t just sit there, Audrey,” he said, fury in the words. His finger pointed toward me. Inaccurately. A little like his bowmanship. He was getting better at archery, though it was very slow progress. “Don’t—don’t do that.”
He didn’t want me sitting, but… he also didn’t want to explain, so what could I do?
Options flickered through my mind without any individual thought playing all the way through.
The scroll from Luca had ended up on that table, somehow.
I moved my gaze to the side, not wanting to think I was staring at it.
“My apologies,” I offered again. “But if there’s something you’d like from me…”
“Get up.” His hand on my arm was harsh. I was hauled to my feet. “Don’t fucking collapse on me, Embers.” He swallowed audibly, holding me too hard as I scrambled to get my balance back. “We can’t do this. We can’t be together.”
I got my feet. I stood.
His hand dropped me like I was burning him and the sudden release made me stagger. “You can’t come into my room or climb into my lap or—anything.”
The pulse at his throat was pounding. I watched it leap there, the jump, jump, jump of the blood in his veins.
“As you will,” I agreed, my lips moving independent of my mind.
“Don’t just as you will me,” he said, the words low and dark. “You need to be stronger than that, Embers.”
I couldn’t breathe. That would be a problem, soon. I watched from far away as I lifted my eyes to his. I noted the signs of anger, the drawn in brows, the tight jaw, the way he’d seemed to swell beneath his shirt.
I softened. “I am,” I promised. “But I swore to you I’d ask nothing from you, once.”
His fist clenched. The knot in his throat bobbed. The fire popped.
“I’d like you to tell me what happened,” I offered, softly.
“So I may respect your wishes as best I can, and as sensitively as possible.” The words were just right.
Like a soft, cool breeze in the middle of a summer’s night.
But my shoulders were too hunched. I straightened a little.
I met his eyes. That’s what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?
I knew it was the right response. His hand relaxed, just fractionally. His chin dropped a hair’s breadth. His blue eyes kept on blazing at me. There was still warmth, there. Mayhap now it was scorching, but he was still here with me.
“Whatever it is, you know I’ll resist.” My words were still soft, still gentle. “You’ve seen what I can do. You’ve put your trust in me. Have I ever been a coward?”
He shook his head, a bitter laugh coming from his mouth as he stepped back. My heart lurched. I’d judged wrong. Not the resistance, but the trust. The coward comment. Too far.
“It isn’t something we resist,” he said.
The kindness in the words made me feel sick.
From the ceiling I watched him shove his hair out of his face.
“You can’t, Audrey.” The words now were pitying, but the anger was deflating from him.
“It’s my choice, much as it’s yours. You said you’d respect that? Let it be.”
I nodded.
“We both know you can’t.” The quiet acceptance, the grief, was what I heard. Not the words.
“I haven’t in the past.” Sensible. Guilty. That’s how I sounded. That’s how I felt. “I’ll get better. I’m sorry, Chay.”
“I’m not your father, Audrey,” he said, softly. “We can disagree without violence.”
But we couldn’t. My arm hurt, though it only felt like heat for now, and from far away. “I know,” I agreed. “Apologies, Chay, I’m just tired.” It was the wrong response. He tensed again. “I’m not even sure what we’re disagreeing about,” I offered, with a little bit of a laugh, beautifully sad.
“You’re nothing to me except my charge,” he told me. “I’m nothing to you except your guard.”
He didn’t want me to agree. “We’ll ride, still. We’ll train. You swore that. But I understand the difference.”
“You need Isolde.”
“Of course I need Isolde.” The laugh I let out had an edge I didn’t recognize.
“Don’t of course me when you’re not even here,” he snarled. “You’ve got so many chinks in your amour I could have you crawling on the ground in moments, Audrey! How did I never see?”
“Mayhap you didn’t look.”
He fell back a step. It was the right thing to say. I didn’t question how I knew that, but I did. It was true.
“Go, then,” I told him, waving a hand. His jaw tightened, but his weight shifted in the direction I indicated. “Go, and fetch Isolde.”
His shoulders dropped a little. No. You need to leave. Upset enough to leave, calm enough to leave. The balance. His pulse was too slow in his neck.
“Pretend she’ll put me back together, Chay, if you’re so terrified of me being broken.” He looked at me as if I was naked. I wasn’t. I was watching the both of us like a puppet master. “We both know who is broken, Chay,” I offered up, with infinite care.
He grabbed the table between us and hurled it at the fireplace as part of his body’s movement toward the door. His sword and sheath chimed against the frog of his belt. The pottery cup shattered against stone. The table bounced harmlessly. The door slammed.
Quickly I moved the table away from the fire.
It’d survived plenty of my father’s rages.
Chay hadn’t even dented it. A corner of one of the legs dug into my toe, which wasn’t where it should’ve been.
Another leg dug into the rug. I was shaking.
The note from Luca smouldered guiltily on the stone before the hearth, its corner glowing red.
I picked up the pieces of broken cup and saucer.
My hands were too quick. Too inaccurate.
I sliced my palm, just shallowly. I pushed the traitorous note further into the fire.
The pain was immense, of course. I couldn’t quite feel it properly, but it was there in my gut, shredding my insides like I’d consumed fistfuls of metal shards and shavings.
I discarded the cup and moved toward my room.
Every step I took was agony but inaction was impossible.
I needed to get there. I needed to get to my bed and curl up beneath the covers before I could feel the anguish of it properly.
If I could do that, the pain would pass. Eventually.
My life stretched out before me, moons full of endless tasks and cold nights, cycles of soothing people and then retreating to my own quiet. The stairs ahead of me felt like an abyss.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take the first step.
What had I done?
Why had he left?
I loved him.
The wail was trying to claw its way out of my throat. I couldn’t let it. Tears burned my eyes and all I could see were the tears in his. Pressing my hand to my chest to hold the grief in, I fumbled my way up the stairs.
The wail was writhing in my chest. I struck my hand against it, but some sound crept out between my clenched teeth. Pitiful, disgusting noises, the sound of guilt and manipulation both. My hands shook so badly I struggled to close the door behind myself. Noise could echo. I didn’t want it to echo.
I must be quiet. Small and quiet.
He hadn’t betrayed me. I felt like he had, but he hadn’t, not really. I’d told him I wouldn’t take and I’d stand by that. No matter how much it hurt right now.
Hurt faded. I knew how to farewell loved ones.
I’d loved him. I’d never told him, but I loved him. I still did. Mayhap I always would. Part of me ran screaming down the stairs, clawing at the door, begging. That part of me was terrifying.
That part of me wouldn’t have survived.
Falling down into my bed, I rolled myself into the blankets that smelled of him, buried my face in the covers to muffle the noise, and wept.