Chapter 26.5 The Victor
"Thank you," I tell her quietly, honestly. "For what you've done for my friends. What you did tonight—with Besana—"
"I didn't do it for you."
I nod, accepting that. I know she had her own reasons, so I don't know why I would feel the smallest bit of hurt, hearing that...
Araine's face softens. "Or I didn't do it just for you. I did it for the Trove, for dragons and wyverns everywhere, so we can have a chance at being something better. But some of it—some of it was for you."
There is a distant, contemplative look in her eyes that makes me ask, in a hoarse voice, "What was our father like?"
Araine's lips turn up in the smallest, closed-mouth smile. Her voice, too, is hushed, "He was a very gentle man. For the earliest parts of my childhood, he was the happiest man I ever saw. Always smiling, always laughing, eager to participate in any joy or contribute to any good.
"But then my mother died, of some damnable pox, and his.
..his hope died too. It was almost like the rest of the world didn't exist for him anymore.
My mother had been the backbone of who he was.
She was a reformist in the Trove, way back when.
She wanted many of the things I want for us now.
And her views shaped the man my father—our father—was.
Without her...he was lost." Araine's voice drops off for a time, and she studies the steaming cauldron and the fire burning next to us.
"I told you before, how he went out on his own for a time, and never told where he went.
I think that was when he...sired you, though what else he may have done and where else he may have gone, I don't know.
But when he came back, he wasn't really back.
He would leave again, all the time, any time something upset him or reminded him of my mother too much.
And everything that was good about the Trove reminded him of my mother.
I reminded him of her. So what he was like, in the last few years of his life, I can't really tell you.
To me, he was just...lost. To me, he was just gone. "
"I'm sorry," I whisper. Why I thought hearing more about the man who begot me and abandoned me would do me any good, I don't know.
I suppose I just wanted to feel closer to Araine, to feel that the thing linking us was real.
But maybe it is real, just in a different way than I imagined.
"He—he was always gone for me, too. That was the only thing he ever was, for me.
He was an absence, more than he was a man. "
"Well then we have that in common," Araine says.
I look at her, and I'm surprised to find that she is smiling.
She seems to see that surprise in my face, with that uncanny ability for reading me that she has, "The future is ours, Tarah.
We don't have to dwell on the past. Not even the parts that shaped us, if we don't want. "
"I don't know how not to dwell," I admit.
"Drink some more of that hotwine," Araine laughs, tapping the bottom of my cup. "That should help you figure it out."
This sounds like solid advice, so I take it.
I'm another cup of hotwine in, seated in an armchair next to a heavily flirting Perilya and Jeksu, when Sartok surprises me by wandering over. He stands at the foot of my chair, staring up into my face with unabashed interest.
"Hello...?"
Sartok frowns, like my greeting skills are unimpressive. But what he says is, "Mom says you're my auntie."
"I...suppose I am," I nearly choke. "My name is Tarah." Do I offer to shake his hand? Even in my slightly fuzzy state, that doesn't seem like the correct way to greet one's smallish nephew.
Sartok's eyes brighten into a grin. "Uncle Raku says you fought a challenge with Inobar."
Now I do choke, and Sartok's smile only gets more cunning.
"Dad says I'm too little to know about that kind of stuff, but Uncle Raku always tells me anything I ask.
He told me that's what everyone was doing tonight.
That you all rescued the princess and the manticore from the tower, and Mom fought a challenge with Besana, and killed her, and you challenged Inobar, and killed him, and now Mom is in charge of the whole Trove, and that's why we're celebrating.
" The boy seems bursting with pride at this host of accomplishments, but I can only gape at him in response. He isn't deterred.
"You don't think I'm too little, do you Auntie Tarah? Mom won't tell me anything about what it's like to fight a challenge, but you fought one, too, right? You'll tell me, won't you?"
I gulp a mouthful of fortifying wine, but the initial buzz seems to have worn off at the grim prospect of the conversation before me. I shake my head at Sartok. "I'm not telling you about that. Not if your mother won't."
"But challenging is part of Trove tradition—" Sartok complains.
"I didn't challenge anyone!" I snap, sharper than I mean for my tone to come out.
Sartok's eyes widen. "But Uncle Raku said you killed—"
"Killed," I wheeze. "Not challenged. Inobar tried to hurt—tried to hurt...someone who's very important to me. And I killed him."
"Was it very exciting?" asks Sartok with eager attention, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Did you battle him? Was there—"
"No," I choke, sick to my stomach and my head and my heart. "No, and no, and no. It wasn't exciting and it wasn't glorious. Killing someone—" Bile rises in my throat at the memory. At all of the memories. "Killing someone isn't like that. It's awful."
Sartok visibly deflates. But he's confused.
"Challenging is part of Trove tradition," he repeats, like this is something he's heard before.
"Dragons and wyverns fight in the arena to win things, and everyone celebrates afterward.
" His eyes go to the revelry around us, as if this proves the glories of battle to him.
"Challenging might be tradition, and it might settle conflicts that would be a lot worse otherwise. But killing...killing is the worst thing there is."
Sartok's forehead crumples in concentration, trying to make sense of this. "Why is it the worst thing there is?"
"Because," I gasp. How to explain this in a way that isn't gruesome and horrifying for the boy? "There are—there are rules to the world." Sartok's eyes light with understanding at this. Rules, he is familiar with, I realize. "Rules like the ones your parents give you," I confirm, "but bigger."
Seizing on a bit of inspiration, I point to a table holding a decorative vase in the corner.
"You see that vase over there? If you smashed it, there would be consequences, right?
" A sage nod from Sartok. "But if you smashed the vase, it would just be your parents who were angry at you, because you broke one of their rules.
"Killing someone is like that, because you break something that can't ever be put back together.
But it's so much worse, so much bigger, because when you kill someone, you break one of the laws of nature.
" I can see that I've lost him a little bit here, so I elaborate.
"Life comes from nature, from the world around us.
Nature is life, and gives it. So when you kill someone, you.
..tear through the fabric of the world. You take life, which goes against nature.
And you can feel it...inside you." I touch my chest, feeling it, dull and sick and horrible, even as I say it.
"You can feel what you've done, and how wrong it is.
No one has to tell you that you've broken a rule, or punish you for it.
Because you feel it for yourself, and your very soul punishes you. "
Sartok's deep blue face has gone powdery with horror by the end of my explanation, and I realize I've probably said far too much. I wince to myself. I don't know whether to blame the wine or my complete lack of experience coddling children.
It was easier with Cherry, in the tower, because at least then I was a child myself. I didn't have to soften the horrors of the world for her because I didn't know them, not until we were both much older. And I wasn't half-drunk then.
Sartok takes a shuddering inhale. "I don't—I don't want to kill anyone ever."
"Good," I say weakly, leaning back in my seat. "You shouldn't."
But Sartok shakes his head, eyes troubled. "But Mom. Mom killed Besana tonight, didn't she?"
"She did," I'm forced to admit.
Sartok gulps, and his eyes track beyond me into the room. Searching for his mother, I assume. "Is her soul punishing her, too?" he whispers, and his lower lip quivers.
Dammit. "I don't—"
Sartok spots his mother then, chatting in the corner with a wyvern woman, and he straightens up as if an electric current has run through his body.
"Wait—" I say, but it's too late. He's halfway across the room in a blink, trotting on quick child feet. I grimace at the prospect of what he might repeat to Araine.
But as I watch, he runs up to her and wraps his arms around her legs, burying his face in her stomach. Araine blinks in surprise, one hand gently stroking his hair. She crouches down to pick him up, and hugs him in her arms.
He must say something to her then, because her eyes find me over Sartok's shoulder. I'm braced for disapproval, but Araine just gives me a gentle smile, rocking her son in her arms and rubbing his back.
I sink down in my chair, deciding I've done enough emotional damage for tonight. I find Jeksu and Perilya watching me with amusement.
"Don't—"
"Who tells a child something like that?" Jeksu barks, and it comes out on the wings of a booming laugh. Perilya gives me a sympathetic look.
I sink further into my chair, eyeing my half full wine cup. My plan to get drunk and leave my troubles behind hasn't panned out so far. If people would just stop interrupting—
Bouncing to my feet, I turn my cup up and gulp the last of the contents. The burn is pleasantly spicy to me now, and I want more.
After finishing my next cup, and then another after that, I find that I still want more.
The taste gets better and better, till I couldn't imagine anything else tasting so good.
And the more I drink, the happier and pleasanter I feel.
If I could feel like this all the time, I imagine I'd never want to kill anyone again, and none of my friends would have to be afraid of me.
And I'd have lots of friends, because the more I drink the more I laugh, and the more everyone seems to want to talk to me.
I befriend a dozen strangers, dragons and wyverns both, and I promptly forget their names as they tell them to me, but I like them all so much that it doesn't matter.
As the night wears on and the children are put to bed, someone breaks out a fiddle and begins making a lively music, drawing the bow across the stringers faster and faster until everyone is clapping along to the beat.
Then they start dancing. Not the kind of dancing that was once done in my human village during celebrations, with rows of partners and choreography timed perfectly to the music.
No, this dancing is wild and messy, quick and dazzling.
Couples and singles and bigger groups twirl and writhe, flashing together and apart in no pattern, or a pattern that's timed only to the heart.
It's mesmerizing to watch, and I'm feeling so floaty and good that I'm surprised when there is suddenly a tall shadow in front of me, grabbing me by the hands.
I make a noise of protest at the same time as I look up and realize it is Raku.
He gives me a feral grin, face flushed and eyes vibrant with wine and revelry.
"Don't—" I barely have time to say, before he's whisking me out onto the dance floor.
I'm extremely clumsy, hilarious with wine and ineptitude. I've never danced before, and it's quite obvious. But Raku laughs at my stumbling almost as loudly as I do, and we blunder across the floor together, timing our jostling and laughter to the music.
We spin and twirl and gasp through the never ending song, and then switch partners so that I'm dancing with a wyvern woman who giggles down at me and Raku is twirling away with another.
It's almost sweatingly hot in the room now with all the motion and the bodies packed together, but we're Dragomira, and the heat only makes us move faster.
When the song ends, my partner spins me away in one last big twirl and I go laughingly until I fetch up against a warm, solid chest.
"Oof," I giggle. "Sorry about—" I break off as I pull back far enough to see that the figure before me is a human male with golden hair and skin. His face seems a little blurred for some reason, and for a second there are two or three of him wavering in front of me. I'm sure that I'm just dizzy.
I squeeze one eye shut to get his multiple forms to resolve into a single one, and there Marton is, clear as day, a wrinkle of concern between his brows but his hazel eyes warm on me. His scent surrounds me like a favorite blanket.
Oh, no.
"Tarah," he says, holding onto my shoulders as I sway unsteadily on my feet. I think my body is trying to get away from him, but it's not doing a very good job, and now he has me trapped.
"Marton," I say, trying to match the tone with which he said my name, although it comes out a little breathless from dancing. I'm sure that it's just from the dancing.
"I wanted to talk to you..." he says. His voice is dreadful.
Everything in me sinks. He wants to do this now? When I'm dizzy and laughing and light as a feather, when I finally forgot to think about him for a moment. Now he wants to tell me that he's leaving.
"Not now," I say desperately. Bile burns in my throat, and I press a hand over my mouth to contain it. A moment later, my shoulders heave, my breath catching, and I realize that it's not the contents of my stomach I'm choking down. It's a sob.
The wine makes me feel blurry and soft at the edges, and there's no hard spiky border between me and my emotions. They're right there, like Marton's perfect face. And I realize that I was wrong before. I'm not going to stand aside and let him go. I'm going to beg him not to leave me.
"Please—" The word comes out on a whimper, and my knees nearly give out underneath me.
Marton catches me with his considerable human strength. With the arms that were already holding me up. "Tarah." His voice is laced with distress.
"M'alright," I try to assure him, but my vision goes dark, my voice muffled, and I note distantly that I've tipped forward into Marton's chest so that he's the only thing holding me up.
His arms are around me, his tunic smelling of unfamiliar dragon and his skin smelling of chemicals.
His own parchment and leather scent is barely detectable, and in my emotional state this strikes me as the greatest tragedy of all. He's already slipping away from me.
Don't, I think desperately. Don't leave me.
"It's alright, Tarah." Marton's hands rub my back reassuringly through the fabric of my borrowed tunic. "I think you've just had a little bit too much tonight."
I feel him leading me away somewhere, and I don't try to fight or find out where we're going. Too much, he said. I have had too much. Too much blood and too much death and too much too much.
There's a cool draft as we pass from the crowded rooms of the party into a darker outer passage, and the noise and activity slowly fade behind us.
Marton keeps tugging me onward, and I stumble along with him as best I can.
Every footstep feels like it might be the one that finds me crashing face down on the ground, but Marton's hands bracing me up won't let me stumble.
Even though I'd really like to lie down.
I hear the sound of a door opening, and then smell fresh linen and cool water, metal and old blood. Manticore and human girl. We're in the infirmary.
Things get fuzzy then. I hear someone speak, the voice feminine and familiar. "Is she okay? What happened?"
That sounds like Cherry, only Cherry's not supposed to be worrying about me.
It's the other way around. I want to speak, to reassure her.
To ask her if she's alright, because I still haven't had the chance to check in with her about everything that's happened recently. But I can't quite find my voice.
Marton does it for me, saying something in a comforting tone, and then I feel something soft and plush against my knees, and I sag forward, grateful when Marton slowly eases me down onto a downy coverlet of one of the infirmary beds.
He goes to pull back, but I cling to him fearfully, certain that if I let him out of my grip even for an instant he'll disappear forever.
Stay with me, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave.
I may say some of that out loud, or I may just cry incoherently.
I don't know, because my vision goes black at the edges and then darkness sweeps in and swallows me.