Chapter 20 #3
I snort, then take the first bite. One of the charred red things. An acidic flavor bursts in my mouth, sour and strong and a little bit sweet. I nearly spit it out.
“What the hell?”
“That’s a tomato,” Roiven says. He looks like he’s fighting not to laugh. More patiently he loads his own bowl with food.
“Tell me the truth about the bonds. Who do you kill? How do you do it?”
Roiven raises an eyebrow.
“You didn’t believe me the first time? I can’t lie.”
“When I asked about the child sacrifices, you said it was a lie, and when I asked about sacrifices again, you just said it was nothing like enchantment. So there’s still some kind of sacrifice involved,” I tell him. I’d feel smug at catching him if it didn’t make me sick to my stomach.
Roiven’s nostrils flare slightly.
“I’m not talking in circles. I thought my meaning was obvious. We don’t sacrifice anybody.”
“Bloodletting, then.”
“By the gods, knight,” he snaps. “There is nothing unholy or cruel about it. There’s no death, no bloodletting, none of it.
We just bond. It’s what witches do. The only time death gets involved is when someone without magic wants to find a way to use it, like your enchantment marks and your warships.
Tyrants don’t want anyone to have power they can’t control themselves. ”
I glare at him, fork squeezed tightly in one hand, and try to find a loophole in what he said. Some other terrible method for binding familiars to a witches’ soul.
“Torture not involving blood,” I say.
“Enough,” Roiven growls. “There is nothing unsavory involved.”
Part of me still isn’t convinced. But I try another bite, eating slowly, testing the flavors and textures on my tongue.
The greens nearly make me cry. I don’t even want to think how long it’s been since I had something like it. I’m so sick of eating fish and algae that I’d be happy never to see it again.
For some reason that makes my throat tighten. The other exiles, the ones the Hellion sank. They’ll never taste food like this again, if they ever even had. I should have let Malkin eat all the apples we found.
“You're bound to the kraken. How could you not already know how we bond?” Roiven says suddenly, glaring at me like he’s been arguing in his head the whole time.
I stiffen, but I can avoid the pain if I don’t think about what the bond means.
“Did you kill people to try and make it happen?” he growls.
“Of course not. I was a child,” I tell him, as memories I don’t want to think about wash like waves around my feet. “But there was a lot of blood, and bodies. It would make sense if it summoned something like that.”
“What happened?” his voice sounds hollow and his brow furrows.
“It’s personal.”
There’s a long, awkward silence. Roiven keeps staring at me like I might talk, but I clench my jaw and refuse.
“Whatever it was, he didn’t choose you because of it,” Roiven tells me. “I promise you, that isn’t how it works.”
I nod, but in my mind I’m still seeing the blood and the fire. We eat in silence for all of five minutes before I can’t bear it anymore.
“Have you decided yet, about Barivum?”
Roiven doesn’t look up from his plate.
“I’m not your personal transport, knight.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll think about it?’” I set down my fork and fold my arms. Roiven glares at me.
“I thought about it,” he says flatly. “You promised to remove the enchantment. That’s more important right now than a gamble.”
“Don’t you want to save your Tower?”
“In all likelihood, they wouldn’t listen to you anyways,” he says, so smoothly he leaves no room for questioning.
My blood boils. I want to tell him that he’s wrong, but they already decided in Barivum that I was a witch.
Why would they listen to me now, when I miraculously survived another attack, and watched the ship go down from a dragon’s back?
“I’ll give you two options,” Roiven says. He holds up his index finger. The enchantment lines cover his palm and one dark ink ray runs all the way up the tip of his finger, accentuating its length.
“You can stay here, confined to this courtyard and your room, while you remove the rest of the enchantments on me.” He holds up a second finger. “Or you can form a bond with me, and gain the freedom to move about however you please, whenever you please.”
I clench my teeth. So he wasn't joking, even though the idea is insane. I’m not going to submit to one of their spells. Even if Roiven promises nothing unsavory is involved.
“But you won’t take me back to Barivum.”
“No.”
“What about the Bluff?”
“You aren’t leaving my side until I’m done with you, knight.”
His orange eyes burn straight into me. I lean on one elbow and frown down at my plate, then take another slow bite. Flavor bursts over my tongue.
I glance to my side, at the cheerful yellow flowers, the young potted trees, the mass of greenery surrounding us.
The courtyard is so beautiful it makes my heart ache.
And it’s so different from the Bluff, or the island Sava took us both to at first, which were nothing but barren black rock and pools of rainwater, and miles of empty, treacherous sea.
If Roiven is to be believed, none of it used to look that way.
“I’ll think about it,” I mutter.