Chapter 11 ZRYNOK
ELEVEN
ZRYNOK
The Abbot thinks he can use my desire against me.
The thought sits in my chest, burning hotter than the infection. He’s been watching. Seeing what I feel for Arwen, cataloguing it, planning how to turn it into a leash.
He doesn’t know me. Doesn’t understand what centuries of killing has made. I’ve been used before—by warlords who wanted enemies eliminated, by nobles who needed inconvenient people to disappear. I know what it feels like to be a weapon in someone else’s hand.
I also know that weapons can turn.
She applies the treatment. I hold still and let myself feel it—the burn of medicine against infection, her hands on my skin, the particular discipline of wanting something and not taking it.
“He thinks it’s a weakness,” I say, while her hands work. “The wanting. He’s been watching it through the Bloom and he sees a leash.”
“The Abbot has never felt something he couldn’t control.” Her fingers press the paste along my forearm with careful precision. “He doesn’t understand the difference.”
“What difference?”
She is quiet for a moment. Working.
“Between desire that owns you and desire you’ve claimed as yours.”
I hold that. The Bloom pulses in my blood—steadier now than an hour ago, the treatment doing its work. And beneath the infection’s demand, something else. Something that doesn’t ask permission.
“The infection should stabilize by morning.” She withdraws her hands. Steps back. “But it won’t disappear. You carry it now.”
“I know.” I’ve had time to sit with it. “How do you live with it? Day to day.”