Chapter Ninety-One. My Heart Breaks Further.
Ninety-One
My Heart Breaks Further.
As Merc faces me, he does not duck his eyes. He knows exactly what I’ve seen. Maybe he planned this exhibition of something he’s undoubtedly kept hidden in ways that did not get my attention. I wonder if he’s aware of what answers I have just received.
I think he is, and it’s why he’s had to come clean.
When he starts walking forward, his body is revealed in all its power and raw beauty—without any wound at all on his chest. The bandage that was there when we made love last night, the wound that I assumed was beneath it, are gone as if they had never been.
My mind instantly fractures at this, splitting into a denial of what I’m seeing and a terror at all that it reveals.
I back away from him—and angle the retreat so that I get to his weapons. I grab the first thing I find that isn’t his broadsword because I can’t wield it with any reliability—
A dirk. I have his dirk in both my hands and I stick it straight out in front of me.
“Stop,” I command. “Or I will—”
“I’m just getting dressed.”
His voice is flat, and as I continue to back away, he does indeed merely go over to the pile of clothes.
As he pulls on his britches, he’s efficient about their fastening, and after that, he’s the one retreating from his weapons and our horses: He goes over and stands in the footsteps that he made as he walked into the water.
“What are you,” I say in a cracked voice. Even though I know. So I answer myself: “You were sent to kill me. I’m your target.”
In devastating succession, I recast everything, all the way back to when this started.
“It was you … who killed the cows outside our wall. You fed on them as you cased my village, knowing I was there, planning your attack. And that night I sensed something coming after me as I went along the lane … it was you.”
He doesn’t deny any of it. Because he can’t.
“When we were at the Outpost.” I cover my face with my hands, in an attempt to block the thoughts, the conclusions, that are as inescapable as fate.
“What they found the morning after you left … the dead sheeplings by the body of the cook? That was you, too, the whole of it. You killed the man and then made it look like it was all done by a demon … except that wasn’t a staging.
” My voice catches in horror. “That’s what actually happened … oh, fates, what are you…”
I bend over and retch, my eyes flooding with tears. And then I straighten. “Who sent you.” Even though it’s obvious, I want to hear him say it. “What sent you!”
There is a long pause. “The Dark King. Your father. And not to kill you, but to bring you home to him.”
The ringing in my ears reminds me of when I’ve ridden Lavante and he’s been at a gallop, and I’ve turned my head to look for Merc, and the wind was so loud.
“You are a demon,” I hear myself say.
His voice grows bitter. “Not by choice—”
Abruptly, I remember something else. “Oh, crescent moon, you took my body—”
My stomach revolts again and I jack over to vomit properly.
As I haven’t eaten all day, I throw up bile and some of the water I drank in a stream, an hour ago.
The world spins and jerks and I put out a hand to steady myself.
Except there’s nothing to grab on to but air, no trunk to catch my balance, no branch …
no strong arm that will keep me upright.
Merc doesn’t come to help me now.
What a wise man—
Demon, I mean.
Yet even as my body struggles, my mind remains painfully sharp. “Oh, fates … there was no horse. You didn’t have a horse to stable when you walked into the Gauntlet because you didn’t need one. You came out … of the Fulcrum.”
I try to stand up fully, but the dry heaving won’t relent. My throat is on fire, and I struggle to breathe through the spasms of my entire body.
When there’s finally a pause, I look over at him and attempt to focus my straining, watery eyes. “And that’s why I can meet your stare. You’re already dead.”
As with the symbols, I had everything all wrong. The blindness to his mortal destiny was not that I was willing to die for him. It’s that his death has already occurred …
“And all of the things … about me.” I shook my head. “What I can see about death. The compass. The skills I possessed that I didn’t know I had—you were never really surprised, you never asked any questions … because you already knew, didn’t you. You probably know more than I do about who I am—”
“Listen to me now, Sorrel.” He starts to talk quickly, urgently. “However this all started, you need to know that nothing has changed about how I’ve come to feel for you. I want to protect you, and keep you safe from him—”
“You’ve lied to me this whole time, about everything! This was all a performance—” I curse and want to slap myself. “You faked crying at that field of dead crops, so I’d be fooled—”
“I did no such thing—”
“I can’t believe a word you say!”
“I didn’t lie about my past!” he yells back.
“I was a farmer when my village up north was invaded. I submitted myself to the Dark King because I thought my sacrifice would save my family. It did not. First, he slaughtered the sisters I was supposed to protect, and then he violated my betrothed in front of me and killed her, too!” He clears his throat roughly.
“When I stood over those spoiled crops, I was reminded of everything I lost, everything I had willingly given up in the hope that—”
“What did the Dark King promise you.” My voice is cold and dead. “What is he going to give you when you present me to him.”
As Merc looks away to the fields on the far side of the pond, I’m struck by the suffering on his face. But then I harden myself.
“He said he would give it all back to you, didn’t he. The life you had lost.”
I think about what Merc himself said, about how the evil gets into people and knows their deepest desires.
“Deliver me, and you get your past.” I shake my head. “And now, we’re here. Just a couple hundred lengths from the altar of the Fulcrum. You were never going to take me to the north to protect me, you were trying to get me to the altar to be sacrificed—his altar.”
I think of the stupid arrangement I made with Merc in the beginning, my body in exchange for his help getting to the Outpost. He’d have followed me there anyway—damn him, why did he not just force me?
“How it started…” He shakes his head. “Is not how it is now.”
“Ended, you mean. We are over—”
“Please, Sorrel, I can protect you. I can take you up north where he has not yet come. We can live—”
“Shut. Up.”
Merc falls silent, and I try not to notice the way the sunlight clings to his body, creating an aura as if he’s not what he is. Then again, he is probably willing the effect, just to seduce me.
Something he has proven to be very good at.
“So we fight now,” I hear myself say. “You and me. You’re the enemy I’m supposed to meet at the start of the War for All Souls.”
And then I answer my own question: “You couldn’t force me to do anything because you can’t risk me killing myself or getting hurt. That’s why you were upset every time I took a risk.”
“I’m not lying to you, Sorrel.”
“You’ve always lied to me—”
“If I’m so beholden to the Dark King,” he says, “ask yourself why I would take you to the Queen who might be able to defeat him?”
I shake my head again. “Because you always knew she’d say no and I’d fail.
You gave me the speech yourself when you were talking about how the King of Prosperitus would only ever take care of his own citizens.
You knew eventually we’d come back here to my village, and I’d be determined to go to Prosperitus—and the route we’d have to go on would take us right by the altar at the Fulcrum.
This is all perfectly falling into place for you. ”
“Is that what you think this is? Falling into place?”
“Don’t play games with me. We’re well past that, you and me.”
The two of us stare across the beach at each other, and I find it poetic that it’s sand that separates us. Like what I wake up to in my mouth. Like that which makes up the Fulcrum … which apparently my mother created to imprison my father.
When Merc moves, I jump back. But he isn’t coming for me. He just gives me his back, where that symbol is burned into his skin, the scars running from his shoulders all the way down to his buttocks … what I felt when I ran my hands up his spine and was so horrified for him.
He pulls on his shirt and takes his time buttoning up. Then comes the tucking and the holstering, and lastly, the mesh and the leather surcoat. When he picks up his broadsword, I can’t hide my flinch.
“I’m not going to fight you.” Merc glances to the sun, which is getting lower by the moment. “And I’m surely not going to kill you.”
You already have, I think with despair.
He goes over and unwraps his horse’s reins from the sapling. As he mounts up, he shifts his eyes back over to me.
“I’ll give you as much time as I can, but he’s going to call me home. Go and join with Julion. That army is well-weaponized and coordinated. It will be Anathos’s best chance. As for you, if you enter the Fulcrum, remember that not all is what it seems.”
“Oh, you mean you haven’t found things trustworthy inside there? What a crying shame.”
He closes his lids briefly, as if I have struck him. “I’m sorry—”
“Spare me the apologies. You are the cruelest thing I have ever known—how could you lie to me like that. How could you pretend all this time when you were really just waiting for—”
“Why am I letting you go now?” He cocks a brow. “If I truly am evil, why am I not dragging you to your father this very moment. How about you answer that before you judge me.”
For a heartbeat, the logic stuns me into silence.
But then I narrow my eyes. “Because Julion is already bringing an army to the altar and that’s a wrinkle you didn’t anticipate.
You have to go warn my father. Without the Dark King, you don’t get the bounty you need for the demon defenses to be prepared.
It’s not about my safety. It’s about your security—”
Merc curses at me in a rush of words I don’t understand. “I have risked my soul for you!”
“You don’t have one anymore!” I yell back. “And you are my enemy!”
“I am not, and I didn’t plan any of this—”
“You engineered all of it! Up until right now, when things are falling apart! You didn’t think I’d go to the Sooths, but you couldn’t stop me—and then you had to come clean.”
“It’s because I can’t live with myself any longer, and I didn’t know how to tell you!”
“Lies! You were banking on me being in love with you, and you’re manipulating me with some heartbreaking tale that came with an I’ll-protect-you-up-north ending. But it didn’t work, did it!”
Merc just shakes his head slowly. “You have this all wrong.”
“No, I had it all wrong. I see the truth now—”
“I didn’t think I would fall in love with you!” He wheels his horse around. “And if I’m so evil, why am I leaving you now. Huh? Why am I giving you a chance? I meant what I said. The world is better with you in it and I’ll protect you for as long as I’m able—”
“No. Your cover is up and you have to run back to your master and tell him that I mean to go to Julion and his army.” I jab his dirk at the air, as if I’m stabbing something. “That’s why you’re leaving. Your loyalties are not to me and you will say anything right now because you’ve been caught!”
Merc stares at me for the longest time, holding the reins to his steed in a brutal grip.
Then he says, “I’m not the only one without a soul, Sorrel.
You just don’t remember when you lost yours yet, but it’s coming.
Your truth is stalking you and about to jump out of the shadows at you—and hate me all you like, just remember …
I loved you even though I knew your whole story because who you are is so much more than the curse you carry. ”
“Curse…?” I breathe.
Merc shakes his head again, and it’s as if he’s staring at an animal that is so wounded, it has to be put down. “Have you never wondered why you can’t see your own death, Sorrel? Before you condemn me, take a good look into your own eyes.”
With that he gallops off, disappearing into the tree line, leaving in his wake a kind of destruction that cannot be described, much less borne.
My own eyes?
My own … eyes.
On a strangled cry, I stumble over to the shoreline and fall to my knees into the water. Bending over, I stare at my reflection. The disruption in the surface prevents me from seeing anything at first, and surely there’s a compassion in that.
Soon enough, though, the pond’s surface stills and I stare into my own gaze, seeing only my reflection … of a freckled, white-haired young woman whose face is haunted with terror.
Covering my mouth with both hands, I hold in my scream.
So that is why I cannot see my own death.
I am … already dead.