Chapter 10 #2
I retrieved my favorite sparring staff, realizing belatedly that it was the one I’d used to beat Brigid to the ground. Someone had cleaned it. Maybe Cira. The thought twisted my stomach, but I couldn’t back down now.
A rustle of fabric made me turn to see Gareth stripping off first his professor’s robe, then the collared shirt underneath.
He tossed both garments aside, ran his hands through his tousled blond hair, then seemed to remember he was still wearing his glasses and set them carefully on top of his discarded clothes.
I tried, unsuccessfully, not to stare at his leanly muscled arms, the broad plane of his chest, his slim waist. My fingers itched to glide over the muscles of his back, which were certainly not the most impressive ones I’d ever seen but nevertheless hinted at a strength I would never have supposed he possessed.
This was the man I’d danced with in Fairhaven?
My cheeks burning, I tore my gaze from his body and blurted out, “Why did you take off your shirt?”
I shouldn’t have said a word. I shouldn’t have rewarded him with a reaction. But it was too late now.
He shrugged, grinning at me. “I’m warm.”
And so am I, now. I wanted to slap myself. “It’s cold out.”
Gareth grabbed a staff that someone had left leaning against the stone colonnade. Distracted, feeling a little wild, I made a mental note to remind my squadron of the importance of proper weapons care.
“What can I say?” Gareth said, still with that godsdamned grin on his face. “My blood runs hot.”
Then he raised his staff and lunged at me.
My training kicked in, my earlier desperate anger roaring back to life.
I met his staff with mine and shoved him hard, trying to knock him off his feet.
But he was faster than I thought he would be and a smarter fighter.
He stepped back right as I shoved at him, and the lack of resistance surprised me, making me stumble.
I recovered quickly, spun around, and struck just as he did.
Our staffs crashed together, and our eyes locked, and for a moment I hesitated—shaken by his nearness, spooked by the memory of the last time I’d fought in this yard, not even an hour ago.
Brigid’s bloody, broken face and Cira’s horrified one flashed through my mind.
And suddenly all I could think was, Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him. Just a moment of hesitation, but it was enough. With a quick step back and a sharp thrust of his staff, he knocked mine from my hands. It went clattering across the yard and rolled into the shadows.
I raised my eyebrows, pretending cold approval. But my heart was pounding, and I felt short of breath, even though two minutes of sparring should not have come close to winding me.
“A son of soldiers indeed,” I managed to say.
Gareth was panting, his skin flushed and already glistening with sweat, but his expression was eager, fierce. “A captain and a lieutenant general.”
“Your mother is a sage, like you?”
“A stone elemental,” he replied, following me with his eyes as I retrieved my staff. “Father was a sage. A strategist with a brilliant mind. Much like my own.”
A meanness reared up in me. I regarded him coolly. “Do they know about what happened in Mhorghast?”
Gareth looked surprised. Then his expression hardened. “Mother does. My father died when I was a boy.”
“Farrin never told me that.”
“Well, now you know,” he said, the biting tone of his voice bringing me a strange comfort. At least I’d finally managed to get to him.
“And what does she think of it?” I asked, unable to stop myself. I raised my staff to a horizontal position and circled him.
He mimicked my movements, matching my pace. “Who? And of what?”
“Your mother. What does she think of what happened to you in Mhorghast?”
A look of hurt passed quickly over his face. “She told me,” he replied, his voice hard, “that I’d embarrassed her.”
Straightening, I stopped where I was. “Why would she say that?” I asked.
“You don’t believe me.”
“She’s your mother.”
“And she has long wished that my father were alive and that I’d died instead. Father,” he added darkly, “would have fought back. Father wouldn’t have let himself be used in such a way.”
His words evoked images I didn’t want to see, questions I didn’t want answered.
On his face was that same awful flat emptiness that I’d seen come over him in Fairhaven, when General Haldrin had pointed to his time in Mhorghast as a reason not to trust him.
His expression had looked familiar to me then, and now I realized why.
I’d seen it on myself in the mirror, and on the faces of Cira, Brigid, Caralind, even defiant Danesh.
It was the look of someone who lived under the weight of horrors—horrors inflicted upon them, and horrors they had inflicted upon others.
But I didn’t want to feel sorry for him or for myself. I didn’t want to feel anything unless it was pain being dealt either by me or to me.
“Was she right?” I said quietly, hating myself as I said it. “Did you let yourself be used?”
He came at me without a word, and I let him. The air around him snapped with anger, and I reveled in it. I didn’t even raise my staff to defend myself, and when his clipped my shoulder, white-hot pain burst down my arm. I fell hard to my knees and waited for the next blow.
But it didn’t come. Instead Gareth tossed his staff aside. It clattered across the stone. In quiet desperation, I watched it roll away.
“What is this?” he said, breathing hard. “What are you doing?”
“Keep going.” The words shot out of me like arrows. “Why did you stop?”
“You’re goading me. You let me strike you. You didn’t even try to block me. Why?”
I shook my head, feeling a bit like I was going mad. “Why did you stop?” I whispered.
There was an awful silence, and then he knelt before me. He cupped my face in his hands and tilted it up to his. His palms were so lovely and warm against my skin that I couldn’t help but lean into his touch.
His breath hitched. He stroked my cheek with his thumb, and then, without lowering his soft gaze from mine, found one of my hands and brought my fingers to his lips.
The sensation was like a bolt of lightning—sudden, bright, breathtaking.
Perhaps I should have scolded him for his presumptuousness, but I couldn’t find the words. I could only burn.
“You are being unkind to me,” he said quietly, “and you are not an unkind person. What are you trying to do?”
I’d never wanted anything in my life more than I wanted him to kiss me again—my fingers, my mouth, anywhere, everywhere. But I didn’t deserve the gift of his touch. I didn’t deserve the worry I saw in his eyes.
When I didn’t answer him, he made a frustrated sound in his throat. “Mara. If you don’t answer me, I’ll start shouting for the whole priory to hear about how you’ve just confessed an all-consuming love for me.”
My choked laughter surprised me. “I hurt Brigid,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to. After what happened in Sablemire, I felt crazed. We fought, and I lost myself, and I can’t allow that to happen. I’m so much stronger than her. I’m stronger than all of them.”
“What happened in Sablemire?”
I shook my head miserably. “I can’t tell you, or I’m going to be sick.”
“Well, if ever there was someone who I wouldn’t mind getting sick on me, it would be you.”
“Don’t.” I shoved at him, pushing myself away and to my feet. It was agony to separate from him. Blinking back tears, I found my discarded staff. “Let’s go again.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, still kneeling.
“But I need you to hit me.”
He looked at me in astonishment. “What?”
“Gods, Gareth, get your staff and let’s fight.”
“I’m not moving until you explain to me what’s happening.”
Then he froze. Without even looking at him, I felt his understanding arrive.
“Farley said he found you by a greenway,” Gareth said quietly. “An angry-looking one, he said.”
Farley. The young page. I waited, hardly breathing.
“You wanted me to hurt you just now,” he went on. “You’re a hundred times more skilled as a fighter than I am, and yet you let me strike you. Where was that greenway going to take you, Mara? Where were you going? To the Old Country?
“I was on a mission,” I said flatly. “The Warden sent me. I was to go alone so as not to endanger anyone else. It was a plan. An acceptable risk.”
“An extreme risk, I’d say.”
I laughed. “Welcome to life at Rosewarren.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“And what if I am?”
“The Warden sent you to the Old Country alone, and then you decided to disobey her and come to my laboratory instead?”
I was rapidly losing control of this situation. Fumbling for words, I could manage only a shrug.
Gareth rose to his feet and came to me. Resisting the urge to meet his eyes left me feeling like I was going to split in two.
“Whatever you had planned,” he said, “whatever you were going to do, please don’t ever do it again. Too many people love you.”
“People like you?” I finally managed to look at him, bristling. “You don’t even know me.”
“And you don’t know me,” he replied, just as sharply. “But I’d very much like to know you, and I won’t get the chance to if you’re dead.”
I couldn’t bear the rough sound of his voice. “You’re just like all the others,” I muttered, turning away.
“Oh? I’ve always thought myself terribly unique.”
“You’re far from the first moony-eyed southerner to obsess over a Rose. Most of them leave as fast as they can once they’ve gotten one of us into bed.” I turned back to glare at him, making my voice as cold as I could. “Is that what I’ll have to do to get rid of you?”
For a moment he watched me in silence. Then he retrieved his clothes and glasses and said evenly, “If you want to talk to me about what’s troubling you, I’m happy to listen. If not, we’re finished here.”
My skin crawled with shame. A hundred muddled thoughts roiled in my mind. But I couldn’t give voice to any of them. It would be like tearing open my chest and showing him my bare beating heart. I wouldn’t survive that.
My silence spoke volumes. Gareth nodded, his expression unreadable. “Good evening, then, Lady Mara,” he said quietly.
Then he turned and left, and I was alone. I let out a long, slow breath and tidied the weapons rack as the snow continued to fall.
It was better this way, I told myself. For both our sakes. Whatever this was between us, there could be no end to it but sadness.
Let him hate me. Let him think what he will.
But my fingers shook as I worked, and though I tried with all my might to forget the warmth of his touch, I couldn’t do it. With those gentle hands, he had branded me. My cheeks felt as if they’d been kissed by the sun.