CHAPTER 2
C HAPTER 2
W HEN RAIDER RETURNED to Seth thirty minutes later, he found the Curator sitting where he’d left him. It almost looked like Seth’s knees had given out, dropping him on the spot, like he hadn’t moved the whole time.
Seth made a sound somewhere between surprise and pain when Raider slipped from the shadows into the moonlight. He didn’t get up, only stared uncomprehendingly at the jute sack that Raider set before him. Then he looked up at Raider, still uncomprehendingly. Raider dropped his gear and scimitar.
“You …” Seth breathed.
Raider’s throat tightened as he suddenly understood the kiss. That kiss had shattered him. He hadn’t expected it, not after everything that had come to light. Not after what Seth had said to him in Aqarat.
I wish I’d never met you, you lying piece of shit.
Raider didn’t blame him for that, not really. He had lied. A lot.
But Seth had lied too, hadn’t he?
Seth had always claimed to know nothing of the book’s contents, but too many things suggested otherwise. The timing of Seth hiring him, which he’d done only after seeing Raider’s quicksilver. The way things had played out in Rahim’s dungeon.
Seth must have known. He must have been intending, all along, to see Raider in a cell, to see him punished.
And yet …
Seth had gotten him out of a cell. And though Raider had thought that it meant Seth intended to deliver him to another cell, one in Kastari, that kiss had been one of parting.
Seth had expected Raider to vanish.
Raider had considered it. Breaking into the house of the town’s wealthy vineyard owner, with food and coin at his fingertips, the thought had flashed. It had been Raider’s chance to escape before whatever softness had overcome Seth could vanish. Raider could have put miles between himself and Seth’s arcane shackles, between himself and the fate awaiting him in Kastari.
But Raider could have done that hours ago by breaking out of Prince Rahim’s dungeon himself. With his quicksilver, few bars could hold him.
Raider had not escaped then because there had been no point. Raider couldn’t go back to his life without Seth. He knew, now, how hollow it had been, how empty. That life had always been a lie.
When Seth had sprung him from Rahim’s dungeon, Raider had followed him because Seth was his path, even if that path led to another cell. Raider had accepted that. It had always been inevitable that he would end up in one. His freedom had always been temporary.
Why, then, had Seth kissed him like that and let him go? And why was Seth staring at him now, shocked by his return, maybe even unhappy about it?
Seth didn’t explain. He only asked, “You were careful?”
“I’m a thief, remember? I have been since I was ten years old.”
Seth winced at Raider’s sharp tone. Or maybe at the reminder that Raider had lied about his past, about not remembering it. Was Seth trying to forget that fact? There was no point in pretending, not anymore.
“Why are you angry?” Seth asked.
“Why did you kiss me?”
“You know why.”
“You thought I wouldn’t come back. You would let me go that easily?”
Raider had meant in the sense of, Let me go free , but it didn’t sound that way when it came out. It didn’t feel that way.
And it hurt. It fucking hurt.
It shouldn’t. Things with Seth had never been real, not with Seth having known the truth about him, not with Seth intending to see him punished. Because Seth, with his unshakable principles? Oh, he would have intended it. Someone like Raider? A liar, a thief—and worse? He could mean nothing to someone as black and white as Seth.
So why had that kiss felt like Seth … loved him? Why had so many moments with Seth felt like that?
Seth climbed to his feet. They were standing now nearly as they had half an hour ago, when Seth had kissed him.
With his arcane eye, Raider could see Seth with painful clarity. His broad, handsome face, that jaw so strong and firm. His eyes so intense, their green subdued by the night but still clear enough to him. And that powerful body, sheathed as Raider had so often seen it in the Curator’s black arcane clothing, the pants molding his thighs, the buckled vest shaping his torso, the utility belt and thigh sheath bearing his weapons and tools, plus that sword strapped to his back. Raider could picture every inch of Seth without that clothing and gear. He knew that body perfectly, its power and need, the way it could make him come.
“I don’t want to let you go,” Seth said in a low, heavy voice. “But I have no power to keep you with me.”
Yes, you do , Raider thought. So much power. But what he said was, “You have your shackles. You know very well I can’t fight them.”
A long silence fell between them at that reminder of the night when Seth had bound Raider with those shackles and fucked him, when Raider been so fully at Seth’s mercy. When Seth had taken such exquisite care of Raider’s body and his pleasure.
“You really think I would do that?” Seth asked almost breathlessly, like that hurt him. Then his voice sharpened. “After making myself a fugitive to get you out of that cell?”
“Then why did you get me out?”
Raider’s ruthless arcane eye refused him the luxury of darkness and forced him to see how Seth’s eyes hardened. He was used to Seth’s scowl, his intensity, his anger, but it would take him a hell of a lot longer to get used to Seth looking at him like he hated him.
“Why should I tell you, if you can’t figure it out?” Seth demanded. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, not from someone capable of doing what you did. Murdering a lover? Fuck.” Seth shook his head. His scorn froze Raider, stole any response he might have made. “None of this meant anything to you, did it? And the fact that you’re here now? It can only be because you know I’m after Julian—”
Anger jolted Raider from his silence, making his brain skip right past the question of, Wait, wasn’t Julian still in Aqarat? “Fuck, Seth, is that all you ever think about? Julian and your fucking mission?”
Seth’s fists clenched at his sides, so near his weapons. Would he use them? Was he longing to?
“What should I think about, Raider? How you lied to me?”
“What was I supposed to say, Seth? Oh, just so you know, you’ve been putting your cock inside a murderer?”
“I’m not talking about that!”
“What else could you possibly be talking about?”
“When did you figure out what I was after? When I described the book to you? Or was it before that, all the way back in Shalaa? When I came to Shalaa hunting for Julian and talked to the merchant Jamil, I described Julian to him. He’s distinctive with that birthmark. Did you talk to Jamil and learn I was after Julian? Did you know even then and use me? To get the book? Because it incriminates you? Is that what you’ve wanted all along? Is that”—Seth’s voice broke—“why you’re with me?”
Raider’s head spun. Seth’s version of events was so unexpected, so wrong , that it staggered him back a step. “Seth, I didn’t … I didn’t know about the book until I saw it in Malik’s workroom.”
Seth jerked back. “Wait, what? You didn’t tell me that! What do you mean you saw it in Malik’s workroom? When? ”
Raider closed his eyes briefly at the memory of that discovery, of how it had torn his reality apart. He had spent years trying to erase his memories of what Kahzir had done to him—and what he himself had then done to Hassan.
But Raider couldn’t pretend anymore that it hadn’t happened. He couldn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was. A weapon. A thing . A murderer.
“It was right before the sand serpent fight. But I didn’t know, until I saw it there, with the cover as you’d described, that the book you were after was Kahzir’s. I didn’t even know he wrote a book. And I don’t know what Julian has to do with any of it. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. I thought he was young, from what you said? He would have been too young for all this. It was ten years ago.”
Seth looked confused. “But …”
“But you must have known. All along. About the book. About me .”
Anger flashed through Seth’s eyes, displacing his confusion. “I told you from the beginning that I didn’t know anything about the goddamn book except what the cover looked like! That’s still all I know about it, except that I now know it’s about you . It’s not like Rahim and Malik let me read it. They had me tied to a chair! All they did was flash its cover at me.”
Raider shook his head. That didn’t fit with what he’d imagined. “But you were with them. You came into the dungeon with them to interrogate me.”
“Because that was the only way I could see you! Are you forgetting that they had drugged me at dinner, just like they’d drugged you? They’d forced their compulsive shit on me, just like they wanted me to do to you.”
Raider’s throat tightened at the memory of Seth pretending to inject him with the arcanist’s compulsive drug. It had meant a lot to him that Seth hadn’t done that, but at the same time …
Raider shook his head again. This wasn’t making sense. “I thought you did that because you already knew the truth about me. So I could lie.”
“Raider, I didn’t know anything about you until they told me—because you never did! But regardless of what you’d done, or whether any of what they’d said was true, I wasn’t going to drug you against your will. I would never do something like that. And, yes, of course I wanted you to be able to lie if you were guilty! But I didn’t know you were, not for certain, until you confessed.”
Raider sat with a thump. He put his face in his hands. He needed a minute to sort through this. He needed a month .
Seth demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me about the book yourself after you found it? You said nothing .”
Raider struggled to circle around to that point. “There was the sand serpent—”
“ After that, Raider, after . You could have said something before dinner, before everything went to hell. We could’ve made a plan!”
“When I saw the book, I thought … I thought you’d known all along. About me. I didn’t know your intentions.”
“My intentions ? I’m not a fucking liar! But you —”
“Okay, Seth, fuck! Just let me think!”
Seth made a sound of disgust and stalked off. Raider could practically feel him vibrating with anger out there in the darkness, but he didn’t look, even though his arcane eye could have peered through that darkness. He drew up his knees and rested his forehead on them.
Reality—or his perception of it—had changed too many times over the past twenty-four hours. He couldn’t sort through it all, couldn’t see the whole picture clearly.
But …
Seth had not betrayed him. Seth had never intended to. He didn’t intend to now. Which meant that Seth’s rescue of him from Rahim’s dungeon had been real. It meant that everything with Seth had been real.
That fact simultaneously healed a wound in Raider’s heart and dealt him a new one. Because if everything with Seth had been real? Then it was Raider, and Raider alone, who had destroyed it. With his lies. No—with the truth. It was the truth that had ripped them apart.
Raider, already knowing the truth of himself, had known from the beginning that he didn’t deserve Seth. It was Seth who hadn’t known that. Now he did.
And yet, Seth walked back to him through the moonlight-dappled grove. He crouched before the sack of food that Raider had brought and rummaged inside it.
“You stole wine?” Seth asked incredulously.
“It was a vineyard.”
“You went all the way to the vineyard? There were closer houses.”
“They were poor.”
Seth stilled. Then he tore a loaf of bread and held out half of it to Raider. “Here. Eat.”
“I can’t. I don’t feel well.”
Seth stilled again. “Then rest. You’ll eat before we move on.”
Raider swallowed hard and lay down with his back to Seth and his face to the darkness.