32. Chapter 32
Kalli
I wake up in the chair with my neck locked and a blanket around my knees, and I know before I open my eyes.
Somebody has been in here.
Him.
I’m out of the chair and into the passage in my socks with my hair still down. The first person I see is Serenity, coming up the stairs with two mugs.
“He got in at two,” she says. “He stood in your doorway for a while, and then he went to bed. He made us promise not to wake you.”
“Where?”
“Third door.” She steps out of my way. “Give him a minute to be awake.”
I don’t knock.
He’s sitting on the end of the bed with his boots still on, fully dressed, and I can tell he hasn’t slept at all.
He looks up when the door opens.
His hair is pushed back off his forehead like he did it with wet hands and never checked a mirror. There’s road dirt along his jaw. His eyes are the same as the first time I saw them, dark brown with something moving under the color, and they come straight to my face and stay there.
Somewhere in the last four days I stopped being sure I’d see him again. I never said that to anybody. I’m not sure I let myself think it until right now, standing in a doorway looking at him.
Neither of us says anything.
Then I cross the room at a run, grab the front of his coat and pull. He stands and gets his arms around me hard enough that my feet leave the floor.
“Oh, God,” I choke. I put my face into his throat and breathe him in.
I’m shaking. It isn’t the cold, and I don’t care that he can feel it.
Neither of us talks for a while. One of his hands is in my hair. Mine stays fisted in his coat, because letting go is more than I can manage yet.
“You’re freezing,” I say eventually, into his collar.
“I’m always cold, princess,” he says.
“It’s more than that. I know your cold, and this isn’t it.”
I feel him smile against the top of my head. “I’ve been in a truck for days. I would have been faster if I could have driven in daylight.” He says it the way he reports anything. “I can’t.”
I pull back far enough to look at him. There’s dried mud along the hem of his coat and a tear in one sleeve. His face is thinner than it was on the mountain, and it shows most around his eyes. He hasn’t fed properly in days.
“I have to say something first.”
“Say it.”
“I waited for you.” He isn’t looking at me now. “That last night.”
“I know.”
“I heard the toasts come through the floor. I heard you laughing.”
There’s nothing I can say to that.
“I tried to leave twice,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“That’s not an excuse. It’s just true.”
“I know it’s true.” He looks up. “I sat in that room and decided you weren’t coming.”
“I should have come.” I swallow. “I told you I would.”
His eyes meet mine. “There are other things you should have told me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Yes. I should have.” I take a breath.
“Kaevor.” When I open my eyes, he’s still looking at me.
“That wasn’t my choice. The betrothal. It was arranged between our families before either of us had even taken to the sky.
” I reach out and cup his cheek. It’s as cool as I remember. “But I still should have told you.”
“Yes. You should have.” He lifts his hand to press my palm to his face.
“I’m so sorry, Gideon.” My voice is husky.
“I know.”
It isn’t enough for either of us, and neither of us says so.
“There’s something else.” I let go of his coat and step back, because I want to be standing on my own for this part.
“I’m not the Heir anymore. I gave it up.
The name, the succession, all of it, and I did it with my eyes open, because I couldn’t stay in a house where my mother would rather leave a murder buried than answer for it. ”
His jaw sets. “You gave up your whole family.”
“Yes.”
“For this?”
I don’t think that’s what he wants to hear.
“For the truth,” I say. “Because of a mother who figured all this out for herself months ago and decided to leave it.” I don’t look away from him. “I didn’t do it for you, Gideon. I’d have walked away for the same reason if you’d never existed.”
It’s true. It isn’t the whole truth, and I think he knows it.
He doesn’t call me a liar. He looks at me, and the fight goes out of both of us at once. His thumb moves against my sleeve and stops. His eyes drop to my mouth and come back up. My whole body leans toward him before I catch it. I watch him do the same thing.
Neither of us closes the last foot.
He drove for five days and stood outside my door at two in the morning without opening it.
He still hasn’t told me why he came.
“Tell me what you found,” I say.
He does.
“I found the person who made the body they found on the mountain.”
“You did?”
“I sat in her front room for an hour, and she told me all of it.” He drags the heel of his hand across his eyes. “You already know most of it. The measurements. The ring. I’m not making you go through that twice.”
“Then tell me the part I don’t know.”
“The client,” he says. “She got a good look at him. She said he was tall. Had dark red hair, cut short. An easy laugh. Polite.”
I don’t say anything.
“A few days ago, he went back to her to find out how to stage a real accident.”
I sit down on the bed.
The room goes very quiet. Or I stop hearing anything except him.
“Tell me what it means.” I don’t need him to; I already know what it means. I want someone else to say it.
“He’s planning to do it properly this time, Kalli.” He crouches down in front of me so I don’t have to look up at him. “When you got back, he decided he couldn’t let you live.”
I look at my hands. They’re steady.
He knows. He already knows, but he’s easing me into it.
“While I was down in that room, a man came to see me,” he goes on.
“He brought me a blanket I didn’t need and framed it as a kind gesture.
He sat down and asked me what you remembered about the day you were taken, and who you’d told, and how much you knew.
I told myself he was just a worried relative.
I’ve had a lot of time since then to stop believing that. ”
I hear him.
And while he’s still talking, I’m putting it against what I already know, and it fits.
“Kaevor has the same hair,” I say, because I have to say it. “The same build.”
“He does.”
“But he was four days of road away when it happened. He didn’t come up that pass until the sixth day.”
Dark red hair, cut short. Tall. An easy laugh. Polite.
He found the body. He told me about the ring without being asked. He asked me questions that the others hadn’t.
And he went four levels down in the dark to ask a stranger what I remembered, when I was upstairs the whole time.
“Kalli.” Gideon hasn’t moved. “Say it, or don’t. Either one is all right.”
I say it.
“Sereth.”