17. Masks and the Man Beneath #2
He lifted his upper lip in a snarl. Couldn’t Rerdas see the insult in that? He wasn’t spared a fight because Umber had scuttled back to the capital. He was refusing one, and he didn’t give a fuck what the duke or the cousin or even Rerdas did.
He was done.
“Your cousin signs over my contract in the morning.”
Rerdas swallowed, paling. “Alright,” he said faintly.
Imalroc stared. He hadn’t expected Rerdas to just… agree.
The prospect of an end to battleboxing had always seemed a light somewhere far above, something he kicked and clawed toward as desperately as air. Maybe some part of him had always thought he would only float to the surface as a corpse.
He turned and pressed his forehead against the windowpane, needing the shock of cold. This wasn’t a dream. Terrifying as it was to admit it, he believed Rerdas.
In the morning, he would be free.
He waited for happiness to fill him.
Rerdas retreated to lean against the opposite wall. “Do you want me to leave you be?” he asked.
Imalroc turned. “Which of you is true?” he demanded. “I know about masks. I know you wear them. But which is true? The man who would stand between me and a whip, or the man who expects me to stay still and bear it?”
For a long moment, it seemed Rerdas had stopped breathing. His gaze stayed locked with Imalroc’s, the light glittering in his eyes.
Imalroc willed him to lie. Lie to me, lie so I don’t believe in you anymore. Tell me you are only ever good, so I’ll know you aren’t real.
He could walk away from a lie.
Rerdas swallowed audibly. “Both,” he said at last. “I have been both to you. I need you. And I want to protect you, and I’m not sure I can.”
Imalroc wanted to bury himself in Rerdas’s heart like a blade.
“Fuck you,” he snarled. He stalked toward the huntmaster. Hooked the collar of Rerdas’s tunic and pulled him forward. “Why did you do this to me?”
Rerdas flinched. “It was all I could think of when we had no—”
“Not that,” Imalroc snapped. “I know why you used me for onyx. I mean this.” He thrust Rerdas back against the wall and stepped in, trapped the huntmaster against his body, raked his gaze across those green eyes gone wide and parted lips. “This,” Imalroc repeated, and kissed him savagely.
If Rerdas had pushed him away, Imalroc could have shoved back and carried on fighting, and maybe the world would make sense again. But he didn’t. Rerdas accepted the bruising, biting kiss.
Uncertain hands fluttered at Imalroc’s waist, as if to pull him in, as if there was nothing to fear.
Imalroc jerked back. He’d meant for it to be a challenge, a strike, but he was the one retreating, stumbling away, dropping onto the mattress on the ground as if his legs had been knocked from under him.
Rerdas drifted after him, but stopped. Still out of arm’s reach, thank the gods.
“Do you want me to go?” the huntmaster whispered.
He felt… off-balance. In the morning he would be free, but that was just a word.
For years, he had imagined it. Hize furious that Imalroc had slipped his grasp, Wester incensed his champion was gone, all his handlers and owners outraged by the sight of him striding away from the boxes unchained and unbroken. He’d beaten them. He’d won.
He pushed his hands into his hair, pulling slightly from the roots. “I thought this would feel different,” he muttered.
“Perhaps… Do you want something to eat?”
He was too tired to give Rerdas a properly withering look. “Stop asking stupid questions.”
The huntmaster stayed quiet, watching him with a worried expression. Imalroc gazed dully at the window, but he heard the floorboards creak beneath cautiously approaching feet. He refused to look over as Rerdas settled on the mattress beside him.
They sat in silence. The lantern flickered a little.
“I don’t know,” Imalroc began haltingly, “what it looks like. Freedom.” A strange fog filled his skull.
“That’s… very understandable. You were keeping yourself alive, and looking so far ahead wouldn’t serve you the way it can now,” Rerdas said. “Is there anything particular you can see yourself doing, or… a place you might want, or a—”
“If I could think of any of that, I wouldn’t be sitting here staring at a wall,” he snapped.
“Right. Perhaps you just need to let yourself rest, Imalroc.” Rerdas sounded exhausted himself. “We can’t solve it all tonight.”
The huntmaster shifted, and Imalroc reached for him before he could consider it. He curled his hand just above Rerdas’s knee to keep him from standing. Groped for something to say. “Sorry I hit you,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“The bedpost. I shouldn’t have done that.” He glanced over, or he meant to glance, and found himself staring helplessly.
“Ah.” Rerdas scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think maybe you should’ve hit me harder with it, a long time ago. This never should’ve gone on so long.”
Imalroc’s stomach turned to stone at the words. But they were true. He stretched his legs restlessly and pried his feet out of his boots just to feel a tiny struggle won. He tossed them one after another across the room.
“There’re splinters all over your floor,” Rerdas said, toeing one of the wooden fragments from the broken bedframe.
Imalroc leaned back on his hands and looked at him, expressionless. “Earthbound gods. Save me from splinters.”
The huntmaster let out a huff that was nearly a laugh.
Looking at Rerdas made him want to touch Rerdas, and touching would lead to more. And that would leave him dizzy and satisfied and, at least for a night, content to pretend there was no world but his huntmaster. No room for planning or worrying when he was touching Rerdas.
Rerdas glanced around at him with a wistful smile. “I should go. We both need sleep.”
He did need the huntmaster to go. There were other things he had to find a way to say, but he needed time to consider them.
Time, and cold dark air to clear his mind, and an empty bed.
He’d be a fool to ask Rerdas to stay. But maybe, before they parted to face the night alone, he could allow himself just one kiss.