24. Torgan
TORGAN
Lissy leaves at first light.
I watch from the study window because I don't trust myself in the courtyard.
Harek loads Brynna’s chest of ledgers onto the cart. Brynna hands up her satchel of summary tables and gives the driver strict instructions about damp. Lissy climbs onto the bench with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, looking small. Alone.
I feel like I should be there, in some way, to help her with this next part.
But she doesn't look up at the window.
She said she thinks she loves me.
She said it with her whole face coming apart. Then she blamed the curse for tearing us apart and walked away before I could give her a reason to doubt it.
I let her go.
Every word she threw at me was true, and I won’t argue with the truth because it's cutting me open, allowing me to examine every horrid part of me. I don’t like what I see, and I know that Lissy doesn’t, either.
So I watch the woman I love leave. I watch until I can no longer make the shape of Lissy’s cart. Until she’s well and truly gone. Hopefully not for forever from my life.
Someone knocks.
Harek puts his head through the study door. He looks a little stricken, which is completely unlike Harek. "My lord. The Voss boy is at the gate."
"Princeton?" I'm on my feet before I make the decision to stand.
Harek shakes his head. "The younger one. Caden." He lets out a breath. "Your lady mother sent word that he's welcome inside. She says whatever his family's done, the boy's grief is honest."
That sounds like Ma. Furious enough to skin a duke, but unwilling to leave his son in the cold for something he didn't do.
"He asked to see Lady Mirelle instead of coming in," Harek continues. "She sent back that she has nothing to discuss with him. He asked again. Same answer."
Dammit, Mirelle. I wish I could just shake her and have the fog clear from her mind. "Where is he now?"
"Still at the gate. He won't come in, and he won't leave. He's standing in the road."
I take my coat from its hook.
Without the vial, it feels light, but knowing the pain that my decisions have caused, I feel the weight more than anything I’ve ever felt before.
I’ll feel it for the rest of my life.
"I'll go to him."
Caden looks like a man who walked all the way to Oakenshade Hall.
One look at him, I can tell that he did, indeed, walk here.
His boots are ruined with mud past the ankles.
He looks haunted and tired. His coat hangs open despite the cold, and one bare hand grips a folded letter.
Even at this distance, I catch glimpses of the writing.
Mirelle’s letter to him. The one where she ended everything for them.
I caused this.
Even if I didn’t tip the vial into Mirelle’s goblet, I caused this. The guilt threatens to eat me alive.
"Lord Torgan." His voice is both wrecked and level at the same time. “You didn’t need to come here. I’m waiting for Mirelle."
Fuck, this is awful. I steady myself with a breath. "Did she come when you called?"
He averts his eyes. "No."
"Then that’s why I’m here."
His eyes flash. Good. There's something alive in him, then.
"I walked here," he says. “When I received the letter. My father wouldn’t give me a horse or a cart. My brother didn’t help. They said that they never approved of our union. That we were a blasphemy to humankind everywhere. That I deserve this heartbreak. I came here, hoping it wasn’t true, and she won’t even come down to see me. ”
He laughs once. There's no humor in it.
"So I'm standing in the road like a madman. I know how it looks. But…. But…" He holds up the letter. His hand shakes. Cold, anger, grief. Probably all three. "I've read this forty times. It isn't her."
"Caden—"
"I don't mean I dislike what it says. If she genuinely wanted to break off our engagement, I would respect that." His voice sharpens. "I mean a stranger wrote it. Three sentences. ‘The families won’t approve?’ ‘I return the ring with my thanks?’ That’s not her."
He crushes the page tighter.
"She cried when I gave her the box to announce my pursuit of her. She kept the thing in her belt pouch at all times and always made sure to remind me about it."
I know.
"And now she ends what was between us in just three sentences. With her thanks." He steps closer. "So either I never knew her, or something has been done to her. I've walked eleven miles to find out which."
He deserves the truth.
So I tell him, standing in the road outside my own gate, baring my ugly truths to him.
I tell him about the spell shop. The vial. The outrageous twenty gold piece price tag that I paid without question, because I was afraid of talking myself out of my half-laid plan. And then carrying it for months in my coat pocket. The wedding. The coat rack.
The theft.
And now, this with Mirelle ruining her life.
I tell it in order and leave nothing out. Caden doesn’t move the entire time. He takes my words in silence. The letter slowly disappears inside his fist. It is the only indication that he’s upset.
When I finish, the silence stretches until I can hear the creek behind the east wall.
"You bought it to use on her," he says softly.
"Yes."
"Against me."
"Yes."
He looks at me sharply, anger flashing in his eyes. "Stop saying yes like honesty makes it better."
"It doesn't."
His face twists. "You decided she was too foolish to choose for herself. You didn't know me. Or her. Or trust that she knew what she was doing."
I shake my head.
His free hand closes.
I don't take my eyes off it.
"Did you mean to use it?" he asks. “The potion?”
My jaw tightens. He deserves the answer.
"I don't know." And that’s the gods’ honest truth, that I don’t even know whether I would have used it.
He stares at me.
The disgust in his face lands harder than a fist.
"And if I had disappointed her?" he asks. "If I had said the wrong thing at dinner? If my father had pushed hard enough? Would you have poured it into her cup and watched her forget me?"
"I don't know." My words come out brokenly.
"Why?"
Because I was a coward is too clean. Too easy.
"Because getting rid of it would have meant admitting I had been wrong about you. Keeping it let me pretend I still had control."
Caden turns away from me. He walks three steps into the road, then back before looking at the letter in his hand.
“If not you,” he asks softly. “Then who?”
Here. Here’s where I say out loud who I really think did it. And with everything that I’ve done wrong, I don’t know if there’s any going back from this.
“Your brother.” The two words are like sand in my throat.
"My brother," he says after a moment, in disbelief. "You're certain?"
"As certain as I can be,” I admit. “He came to the wedding. He stood by the coats. Your father told me he wanted the courtship dead months ago. I can’t think of anyone else."
"That's everything?"
Shit, I think I’ve lost him.
"That's everything,” I admit.
He gives me a sharp, bitter laugh. "No ledgers. No witness. No potion bottle. And you've already decided it was Princeton."
"So have you."
That gets him, because he blinks, almost like I caught him off-guard on that. "He's my brother."
"And Mirelle is my sister." The words come out harder than I mean them to.
Caden steps toward me.
For the first time, I see the Voss in him, the temper underneath all that quiet. It’s not the Duke's calculation or Princeton's polish. It’s the fury of a man who got most of what he wanted in life.
"You don't get to say that to me," he says.
"Why not?" I challenge. Not to necessarily contradict him, but tto point out that we’re two sides of the same coin.
"Because you bought the first weapon used against her."
That shuts my mouth. His chest rises and falls. So does mine.
"I loved her," he says softly.
"Loved?" I raise an eyebrow.
His eyes go murderous. "Love her. Love her," he repeats.
"Then don't speak of her like she's dead."
"And don't speak to me like you care.” He comes another step closer, and I don't move back. "You watched me court her. You watched me sit at your table. You watched her choose me. All that time, you had a way to erase me in your pocket."
"I know."
"No. I don't think you do."
His fist hits my jaw.
There is no warning. No grand wind-up. Just a swing from the hip from someone I can tell doesn’t go around punching people.
My head snaps sideways, the copper taste of blood flooding my mouth. Orcs half his weight have hit me with less commitment. For half a breath, we stand there staring at each other.
Then Caden makes a strangled sound and folds over his hand. "Fuck! Gods!"
He cradles his fist against his chest, breathing through his teeth. The anger goes out of him all at once.
"You've never hit anyone before," I say, rubbing my jaw.
"I’ve trained with swords and worked with accounting books." His eyes are watering. "Those don't have jaws."
I test my own jaw. It aches, and I know that it will leave a bruise.
Good. Finally, I feel something other than this aching emptiness.
"I think I broke my hand," he groans.
I smile despite myself. "You didn't."
He whips his head back at me, shocked. "You don't know that!"
"I've broken enough hands,” I say. I nod to his hand. “That is not broken.”
He sneers. "Comforting." He examines his reddening knuckles like they belong to someone else. "I’ve grown up with Princeton, and I never hit him once," he says. "I hit you after meeting you a couple of times.”
"It happens,” I say with a shrug.
"It happens?" he repeats, disgusted. “You get punched in the face often?”
“Too much,” I agree, and he chuffs a laugh. "It was a good punch."
"Don't compliment it."
"Just don’t tuck your thumb next time." I show him on my own hand.
"There won't be a next time.” He flexes his fingers, winces, and glares at me. “I need this hand. I have things to build."
"What things?"
"Whatever gets Mirelle’s attention for a second time."
He loves her. He loves her and he’s willing to punch me in the face to defend both him and her. I liked him before. I respect him now, and I hope there’s enough time between us where we can repair what happened.
"You said a month." His chin comes up, and he looks at me with clear eyes. "She fell in love with me once when I was nothing, Torgan. A second son with no title coming. She picked me out from my brother’s shadow and decided I was worth something before I believed it."
His voice drops.
"She can do it again. Or she won't. But I'll be at the gate when the door opens in a month, ready to take her back."
I stare at him.
And he's standing outside a Hall that holds a woman who has refused him twice today, planning to court a locked door for a month with no promise anything waits behind it. No leverage. No grand strategy.
Only himself offering himself for when she can feel her heart again.
They love each other like the stories tell. They don’t need big promises or a castle or grandiose plans.
They only needed each other.
It never occurred to me that could be enough.
"Stay with us, for that month,” I say softly. “So that you’ll be there for when Mirelle is… herself again. She’ll need you when the fog lifts.”
Caden looks at me without the same disgust.
It’s not forgiveness. Not yet. But it’s a start.
Caden looks down at his hand. "Why would you do this?"
"Because I guarded her from the wrong brother. Helping you is the only piece of this I can put back where it belongs."
I hold out my hand.
He looks at it, then at me.
"Take the month, Caden. I'll take care of your brother and father. There's proof somewhere in your family's books, and I intend to drag out and deal with them the way they deserve."
He takes my hand.
"Then you'll want the warehouse on Tanner's Row," he says.
I tighten my grip once before letting go. "What warehouse?"
"The one that isn't in the ledgers the clerks keep. My father calls it the archive. Princeton has the only key, and he checks it every week like a man visiting a sick relative."
There it is.
A door.
A key.
Proof.
"When you move on him,” Caden says softly, “you'll need me. I know where everything is kept."
"You'll be there?"
"I wasn't asking."
"I know."
Another twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"Then we have terms," he says.
He looks up at the Hall one more time. At the kitchen window where Mirelle is probably sitting with her sisters, feeling nothing and politely thanking them for the soup.
His hand presses against the letter beneath his coat.
He smiles for the first time all night. "Where do I sleep?
" he asks. “So that I don’t bump into her every day?”
Later, when I’m by myself in my chambers, I write a letter, putting everything together:
Lissy,
You asked me who you're dealing with. Now you know all of it, including me.
I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm not asking you for an answer.
I'm going to be here when you're ready to talk, however long that takes. Until then, I'll keep sending the truth for as long as you'll take delivery of it.
Caden taught me that tonight.
You'd like him.
Torgan
Then I sit back in Pa's chair. My jaw aches. Outside the window, the sky is beginning to gray toward morning.
For the first time in three days, I know what I'm doing.