Chapter 63
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
ISOLDE
Rotten fruit can grow strong trees.
—La’Angi saying
26th Day of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, year 272
La’Angi Keep
I could ignore a certain amount of conversation, but you didn’t survive as long as me in La’Angi and not become attuned to mentions of the Butcher’s name.
Audrey got what privacy I could muster. When I heard the pirate finally leave, I let myself out to find Audrey seated before the looking glass, working a broken comb through her hair.
“I haven’t killed him yet,” she said to me. “I think he’s fled La’Angi.”
It stung that her first words to me were of retribution.
I took a second comb and set to work on her other side.
I didn’t feign ignorance. Kaelson would’ve talked to her.
But it wasn’t all about the lordling. Her father was three days away.
She had to finalize the tourney. She was in survival mode.
It was better than her asking after me. Less uncomfortable.
“I could go after him. Catch him, and throw him in the dungeons and let my father deal with him,” she said, the words cold. “He’d be slower about it than I would. All of the benefit, and none of the effort.”
That coldness, it didn’t suit her. My bones ached with it. “How are you?” I asked her.
Her movements paused as she realized what she’d done. Her eyes went large and liquid. “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, a lump in my throat. “That’s not an answer,” I told her, and tugged a lock of hair gently.
“Were you well, yesterday?” I hadn’t been there.
I’d dragged myself out of bed to eat and bathe and wash the reek of stress and toxins off my skin.
The pirate happened by when I’d been positioned close enough to the door that I’d taken pity on them.
“I didn’t want to leave you alone,” I offered her, the words fragile as a butterfly’s wing. “After that.”
“I was fine,” she told me, with too much force. “Ashamed of myself, and furious with Luca, but fine.”
I kept my attention on her hair, but I saw her expression in the mirror.
I didn’t ask why she’d done it. It didn’t matter to me.
“Shame after a mistake is fine. It helps us learn. Just remember, you don’t get clean by wallowing in muck.
” I reached for her ribbons, but my arms ached.
I’d do half her hair, today. Enough to keep her comfortable.
“Kaelson told me he poisoned you,” she said.
“He did.” And her father was returning in mere days. “I suspect he poisoned Steward Daniel, too. I take it he’ll not be part of your inner circle anymore.”
Her mirthless laugh eased some of my discomfort.
“Daniel?” She shook her head a little. “Did he expect me to be more malleable than my father’s man?
” I didn’t answer. He wanted the city. He wanted the army.
He wanted the country. The steward hampered her power, which hampered his.
I couldn’t be sure of his motivations, but it made a certain sort of sense.
“I didn’t order him arrested on sight yesterday simply because I don’t want a scene. ”
She was about to have plenty of scenes. I braided the ribbon carefully into her hair.
The chestnut strands drank in the sun and reflected it back, making it look more red than brown.
I’d been set to have the conversation with her.
Luca was a rebel. Luca had sent the plague.
Luca was as guilty as the day was long. Mayhap Luca shouldn’t die.
Mayhap Luca should become a tool, instead, in her hands.
“You don’t look well,” she offered, quietly.
“I’m not.” It was easy to agree with that. “The poison was a combination that should’ve been impossible. He’s spending real coin and significant resources on it.” I knew Audrey. She’d figure out all the ramifications of that. “I was breaking into his pack.”
“He’s history’s worst rebel,” she said, matter-of-factly. “If he’d killed you, it’d’ve been luck, not skill.”
But it wouldn’t have been. Not with those layers of poison. By the time the victim could be confident the antivenom for Green Serpent was working and Fen Breath symptoms became apparent, it’d be almost too late.
I didn’t need to convince her Luca was a rebel. That was lovely. But I held back the information about his pack and the plague.
Three days.
There was nothing more she could do between now and then about the spineless worm, particularly given he’d been cunning enough to flee.
She needed to focus on her goal now. It would give me time to search for concrete evidence of the plague, too.
I’d go through his pack carefully and reveal its secrets.
Until then…it was enough that she knew he’d killed the steward, and almost killed me.
“There’s more to it,” I told her, because I had to. If something happened to me, she’d go digging now. That comment would roll around in her mind for moons. “We can discuss it further later. Do not underestimate him.”
“The man tried to make himself a Duke between my legs,” she said in disgust. “Mine. The flaws in that plan are so many and so deep I struggle to imagine how I could underestimate him, given he only even got there through a whim, a well-timed gift of a belt, and by waiting until I was disinclined to exist in my own reality.”
Her hair was warm under my hands. I couldn’t help but go back to yesterday morning. To the stink of sex and the words. “King,” I corrected, only.
She paused again. Her eyes were on me. I could tell from the compassion in her expression I wasn’t the only one thinking about what had transpired yesterday after Luca had left.
“I don’t want to discuss it,” I told her, feeling those questions brewing.
“How can I avoid it happening again?” she asked me, the words trying to be brisk and not quite managing it.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was as bruised as apple blossoms after a spring storm.
“My wounds are my responsibility,” I told her, the words grinding against one another.
I thought I’d cleaned them out. I didn’t know they’d continued to fester, all these years later. “But…thanking you, Audrey.”
She put her hand over mine, stilling my fingers on her braid. There were tears in her eyes. “I won’t take them away,” she offered. “But I can be with you while you bind them.”
The sweetness of her offer got tangled up with the memory of how I’d startled her.
How she’d come back, and come back, and held on, and held on.
It was a blur, how they’d got rid of Luca, how I’d got to bed.
But in that blur, Audrey had been there, though I’d needed her to leave and needed her to stay.
Though I’d needed her to rage and I’d needed her to break.
Our hands lay over the half-finished braid.
My skin was creased, my joints larger than I remembered them.
There were callouses on my skin, and scars.
Hers were smooth and strong. Work was hardening her too fast. Soon, her hands would look like mine.
Scarred and calloused from use. Her work was extensive.
She couldn’t do it with hard hands.
I wished I could go back in time and climb this tower. I’d find the child she’d been, so soft and full of hope. I’d whisk her away from this place, full of seductive dreams that came with chains attached.
I wished I could go back in time and find myself. I’d find the child I’d been, so soft and full of hope. I’d whisk her away, too.
Those were skills I’d learned. How to fight. How to flee. How to protect myself. No one else had done those things for me, so what choice had there been?
I’d taught Audrey those things. I’d protected her, best I could, and defended her choices. I’d given her the best I’d been able. I’d given her the care I’d never got.
“Audrey,” I said, struggling to speak around the tears in my throat. “I don’t think I know how to bind my wounds.”
Her hand tightened on mine. “We can figure it out.”
But she had three days, and I’d spent a lifetime trying to bleed off that poison already. “I do know how to keep going,” I promised, and if the words were shaky, then she deserved that truth. “I want more for you than just survival. But I can’t teach you how.”
“It’s fortunate you’re not my only mentor, then, isn’t it?
” she asked, and there was just the right amount of reproach in her words to shock me into a self-deprecating laugh.
She was right, and the knowledge lightened the heaviness on my chest. It wasn’t only me who she relied upon.
She had resources far beyond what I could ever have imagined.
Hope swelled agonizingly behind my ribs.
“Mayhap it’ll be I who teaches you,” she offered, squeezing my hand and dashing away her tears.
I breathed deep into the discomfort and blinked my own tears away, pressing a kiss to her head as I’d never got to do when she was a child.
It was a sweet dream, and came without chains, so I let it live.