Chapter 25
Elegy opens her eyes to Tor’s hands sliding out of Theren’s hair. Theren collapses forward, catching himself with his elbows on his knees. He gasps. The room is silent except for the sound of his breaths. Behind him, Tor braces himself against the back of the chair, his head bowed.
Julia Martin—-and Elegy can see the resemblance between her and Maeve, now, both gray--eyed and clever--looking—-sits with her hands in fists on her thighs, breathing just as hard through a tight O. Silent, her eyes glittering with tears. Ivy has her arm across Julia’s back, supporting her.
Julia stands, her body quaking—-with anger, with grief, Elegy can’t tell. Theren doesn’t lift his head, but he slides out of his chair, coming to his knees in front of her.
He waits. Elegy waits.
Julia’s tears spill over. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but no words come out. So she bends over him, takes his head in her hands, and presses a kiss to his crown.
Then she hurries out of the room, her hand covering her mouth.
Elegy walks Theren back to his quarters, after—-
After the others leave the room in a hush. After he seems steady enough to stand.
She leads him by the elbow, gentle fingertips pressed to gentle skin, until he yanks his arm away. The next time she looks at him, his eyes look clear, the sovallan worn off.
She’s surprised by how badly the memories ache in her body, like they belong to her.
She leads them around the building to the orchard behind the barracks, the one just outside his window, and pushes through the back door. He follows her into his room.
“You can go,” he says coldly.
She goes to the pitcher in the corner of the room, fills a glass of water, and offers it to him.
“Drink,” she says.
He takes it, and sips.
“Are you going to pretend you didn’t see it?” he says. “That you don’t know?”
“I saw a lot. You referring to anything specific?”
He carries the water glass to his bedside table, then runs a finger along the headboard of the simple bed. She remembers, suddenly, the vines carved into the headboard of that bed he was sitting on, right before he saw Kesia. She wondered what a prisoner of House Vidar was doing in such a fine bed.
Why were you there? she wonders again, and then she thinks of Rava’s thumb against Theren’s lip, right before she told him Fenn was dead; she thinks of the vines etched on Rava’s knife handle, on her boots, on Theren’s hand—-
“I’m referring to the memory of me in Rava’s bed,” he says, his back to her.
She feels cold. She can still feel him in that memory. His back ached from sitting there too long. His head hurt. He tensed so hard when the door in the next room opened . . .
“If you want me to pretend I didn’t see it,” she says slowly, “I will.”
“What?” That gets his attention. He turns back to her and scowls. “After all you’ve seen—-”
“What I saw is no more than I already suspected, based on what I saw in House Vidar.”
“You already suspected.” His hands are shaking. He nods, once, twice. “I see. You’ve already made some assumptions of your own.” He moves toward her, slow, his voice lowering. “You think, what? Rava drugged me? Threatened me?”
“Is that what she did?”
“No.” His voice stays low, his mouth curling into a smile. “I made the first move.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me!” he snaps. “I knew that she wanted me, and I decided to take advantage of that. You don’t have to care about someone to fuck them, you know.”
She suspects he uses that word, harsh as it is, to shock her. It works. She presses her hands to her abdomen, an instinctive gesture to soothe herself, to steady herself.
“Okay,” she says. “What did you get in exchange, then?”
He stares at her.
“Did you get . . . a position of respect? No, I guess you didn’t. Even in the interrogation room, you spoke to her like a servant,” she says. “Did you get untold riches?” She tilts her head. “Doubtful. I think it was much simpler than that—-more food, maybe?”
She steps closer.
“More sleep?” she says, and then, carefully: “Less pain?”
His jaw tightens.
“If you tortured me, and I seduced you to make the pain stop,” she says, “would you call me your lover?”
“Look at me!” he says, his voice loud, grating. He opens his arms. She does as he says, taking him in, all six feet and a handful of inches. And beyond that, broad and muscled and God, didn’t she just see, firsthand, how deadly he could be?
He says, “How could anyone do something to me that I didn’t want?”
The question makes her feel sick. She may not like him, may not forgive him for what he cost her, but she hates to hear him ask that question—-as if his physical strength makes it so that no one can ever take his choices away.
“I’ll call it—-you in Rava’s bed—-whatever you’d like,” she says. “It’s not up to me to name the act for you. But you can’t force me to condemn you for it, either.”
It seems to deflate him. He was ready to fight her, maybe. Shock her some more. Or maybe he was just ready, so ready, to be guilty. He’s probably been waiting for it since they got back. Holding this secret so close, and knowing that when people discovered it, they would hate him.
Hate him, for surviving Rava Vidar in every way possible.
“Is there anything else, or is that the worst you’ve got?” she says.
He sits on the edge of his bed.
“No,” he says, after a few seconds. “There’s nothing else.”
She lingers in the doorway, unsure that she should leave him alone after an ordeal like that. His mind laid bare, his worst memories exposed to near--strangers. But she doesn’t think her presence is much of a comfort, either.
She closes the door softly behind her, leaving him alone, in the dark.