Chapter nineteen
I’m prepared for an interrogation. By now, I know how it works with him: one question leads to ten more. But Aris surprises me. I promised to give him everything he wants, but he doesn’t move to take advantage of it. Instead, he adjusts me so my back is against his stomach and he is effectively spooning me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Am I not allowed to touch you, still?”
I hesitate, thinking of my conversation with Jaegen. The memory of his heat threatens another nosebleed, so I toss it aside, too weak to stick to my morals at the moment.
“It’s not that. I just…” I pause as he rests his chin on the top of my head, then rubs his cheek on my hair like a cat spreading its scent. Marking its territory. The thought doesn’t trouble me as much as it should.
“Just what?” he prompts.
“Why aren’t you asking me anything?”
Come on, Aris. Show me you're the monster I know you are. Be demanding. Be harsh and mean and cruel. Show me that I can't trust you, even a little.
The dust in the air suspends. My breath catches, lungs halfway inflated. Time stops, as it does before a person dies, when one moment is stretched into a thousand.
This is it. This is where he snaps.
“There’s no need to harass. You’re tired.” Aris completes another rub of my hair before adding smugly, “I know the signs.”
I say nothing for a moment, then murmur, “Yeah, he has the tendency to wear me out.”
“He called you fragile.” Some hardness enters his tone.
“He’s right. To the two of you, I am.”
“He said it as if he were calling you weak!” Aris says, frustrated. “ He is weak. Such little control!”
“Hm…” I murmur sleepily, wondering how much Aris’ anger is speaking for him. It must have hurt his ego to be confronted with Jaegen’s power, unable to combat it. Though, Aris did bring a chill to the air. He summoned something …
“You are not weak,” he says, kissing the top of my head.
“I’m about to pass out because of a nosebleed,” I point out.
Aris scoffs, his hold tightening. “I don’t like it when you speak lowly of yourself.”
I don’t respond. It wasn’t so long ago that he was pressing me against a wall, leaning over me and saying, You don’t have the slightest idea how fragile you are. Pinning me against the floor. I was only making a point.
Who is the real Aris—that bully, or this soft, nuzzling creature?
“It’s just the truth,” I finally say, “which I promised to tell you: I’m fragile.”
“Fragility is not weakness. Fragility shows what is precious.”
He can’t mean that, can he?
“Sleep, Mary,” he replies, hand rising from my hip to brush hair behind my ear. As strands falls out, he brushes my hair back again and again, until he is just stroking me.
It’s how I touched him the night that I took his memory. The realization is almost enough to jolt me upright, but my panic subsides as quickly as it came. His touch is so gentle. If he knew, if he were on the cusp of even suspecting, Aris could not fake this plain adoration.
“Sleep,” he murmurs in my ear.
“So I’m a god,” says Aris.
I watch him carefully. His face is smooth, unmarred by scowl or snarl. His nose hasn’t curled, his brow hasn’t wrinkled, and his petting of my arm hasn’t changed in rhythm. He isn’t angry. He’s just… considering.
We’ve moved positions several times throughout our conversation, and I’m sprawled now with my head in his lap. His legs are hard like stone, the firmness offering security as my throat is bared.
After I woke, we moved to the couch for what I knew would be a lengthy discussion. Before we started, before we even sat down, the sight of the couch made the two of us stiffen. It felt as if Jaegen’s presence had infected the space. Wordlessly, we flipped the cushions and rearranged the room. Now, the television is against the front window, the couch replacing where the TV was against the wall. To cement the change, the bookshelf has also moved, as well as the rug.
Once our space felt like ours again, we settled and began talking. As I suspected, his questions were endless and relentlessly well thought out and intelligent. There was no way around them, nothing but the truth to be given.
And I gave it all… save for one tiny bit: My involvement in his memory loss. I conveniently didn’t mention the rune on my back. That is a story for another day, if I ever get around to telling it.
“Jaegen is my brother,” he continues. The frown I’ve been waiting for has finally manifested. “And he put us here because my followers will search for me…. followers who want me to continue destroying.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand why I would want to end the world.” He looks at me. “You said something about balance, and I was angry with Jaegen?”
I nod.
“But… you live in this world.”
Again, I nod, not sure where he’s going with this.
“Why would I destroy your world? Did you want me to?”
I almost laugh. “No. No, I didn’t.”
His brows push together, forehead scrunching. “I did it against your will? You said that we were close.” Aris shakes his head again. “For years, I lived in your head. How could I not have gotten attached?”
“I think you did,” I say carefully, “but that some things mattered more.”
He lets out an unsatisfied grunt, then continues his summary, “The only way to stop me was to remove my memory, through one of Jaegen’s spells.”
I study his expression, waiting for the ball to drop. Waiting for his anger to rise, his hold to become restrictive, emotion displacing control. Waiting for his fingers to begin a new stroke of my hair, only to dig into my skull and pull out brains.
But though Aris’ lips are downturned, his voice stays gentle. “Why did you not tell me before?” he asks.
“I thought it might make you remember, or that you’d want to continue your conquest,” I say, and he rolls his eyes, as though this sentiment is ridiculous and warrants no response. I almost smile.
"I shouldn't have kept the truth from you,” I admit. “I was a bad friend."
He looks at me, then quickly away. "You said that we weren't friends, before."
"We were…" I take a breath, shaky from uncertainty.
Oh, God, what were we? What are we?
Aris watches me closely. “Jaegen came because he thought that I might attempt to leave,” he says.
Once again, I nod, the movement jerky, relieved that he’s changed the subject.
He is quiet, fingers moving from my hair to the small of my ear, rubbing it. His legs are intertwined with my own, the bases of our ankles rubbing against the others’; now that I’ve given him permission to touch me, he seems unable to stop.
“A god of chaos,” he murmurs, “subdued by the human he wanted to rule. What an intriguing finale to our story, wouldn’t you say?”
I go to sit up, though Aris resists for a moment before relenting. Our knees touch in this new position, which keeps his breathing slow and expression soft. “Aren’t you angry?” I ask.
His brows raise. “Are you serious? I was cruel to you. Do you not hate me?”
The admission that he was horrible does something; I can’t tell if my heart is fracturing or healing. I feel vindicated. Heard .
Without thinking, I take his cold hands in my own, both of us watching our fingers lace together. When I look back up, he’s still staring at our hands, brows pushed together.
“The truth is dangerous,” I warn him again.
Aris meets my gaze. “Tell me. ”
“That form of you, who you were before… I hate him. He enjoyed hurting people, and he enjoyed toying with me.” I nod at my necklace, and Aris follows my gaze. “This was like a collar, proof of ownership.”
He lets go of one of my hands, reaching for the hexagonal pendant, stroking a finger over the black stone. “I hate him, too,” Aris murmurs before letting it drop and returning to hold my hand again.
Relief washes over me. I hadn’t known I was waiting for those words until he said them—not just said them, but meant them.
His grip on me is careful, but his eyes are searing when he asks, “And the boy, the one you told me about. Would you go back to him, if you could?”
“Henry?” I am surprised by the mention.
Aris nods jerkily.
“He was a pawn, just like me,” I say after a moment, realizing with delight that I haven’t thought about him for some time now. “He never loved me.”
“But I made you think that he did.”
“I never knew what was real. Some things, I still wonder about.” I look at our interlocked hands. “Like this. This is exactly the type of game you would play. Maybe you haven’t lost your memory at all and this is some long con.”
His eyes narrow. “No.”
“No?”
“ No , this is real,” says Aris, and suddenly untangles our limbs to dig his fingers in my hair and pull me close.
And, for the first time that he can remember, our lips connect.
He breaks apart to bring a kiss to my neck. “Real,” he says, then kisses my collarbone. “Real,” Aris tells me again, trailing marks of love down my arm. He stops by my hand, placing a kiss on the knuckle he wiped the blood off of before repeating, softly, “Real.”
I watch him, witless. I just told him he’s a god. I told him his powers are limitless, that he has devoted followers and a plan larger than the world I live in, but, instead of rushing to the forest to escape, he is kissing me .
As his mouth returns to my neck, heat flashes through me. I know, more than I know anything, that I need him.
More of him.
Now that the truth is out, now that he has accepted it, learned it, and wants me regardless, it’s like a veil has lifted and everything holding me back from touching him has disappeared.
Like he senses this, Aris pulls back to get a good look at my face, black eyes glinting as his lips upturn. I need not voice my need; he need not voice his. We are nothing if not attuned to one another.
For the second time today, he carries me into the bedroom. Not to sleep, this time.