5. 4
Davian pushed the door closed behind us with a muted click.
I wiped my damp palms against my dress before he turned around. This was nothing new, I told myself. It’s just you and a man. A short time; a gift of my hands, or my mouth. I had done it so many times. But I couldn’t stop my heart skittering in my chest.
It felt different to how it had as an Ekrissian. This wasn’t worship of my God anymore, this was a service rendered. Would Robar forgive it? If he gave me the chance, I would fall at his feet and beg him for his understanding.
Davian turned from the door, but did not move towards me. “Can they hear us?”
I swallowed. “If we yell.”
His eyebrow flicked and then he nodded. “Good.”
He strode towards me and I held my ground, even though a large part of me wanted to move to the other side of the room.
I kept my chin up as he approached and then swept past me, gliding to the curtain behind my back.
There was a tiny sliver of light from the streetlamps, and he peered outside before pulling it closed.
“Your mistress told me you’re still a virgin.” He stared at me from the window. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
He dragged his eyes down my form, lingering on my curves and the skin exposed at my thigh. “She also charged me double, because you’re an Ekrissian. Is that true?”
I focused on keeping my breathing steady. “I used to be.”
His eyes darkened with something different than desire, though from the way he shifted himself as he took a step towards me, I was certain desire was not far from his mind.
I clasped my hands in front of me to keep them from shaking. It wasn’t fear now, it was pure anticipation. The poison of guilt clouded me. I hadn’t been excited about a patron since the night I’d met Robar. I was still his, even if he didn’t know he was mine. I cursed myself.
Davian’s voice sank lower, like it had when he’d spoken to Francine. “Will you show me?”
I held his eye contact for a second longer, and then turned. This part of the dance felt more natural. This, I could understand. I unfastened the series of small buttons along my left rib and let the dress fall down. I could tell from his inhale that he’d seen the mark immediately.
I myself looked to the left to find the mirror, and caught the edges of it in the reflection.
It started at the base of my spine, plant-like, moving in undulating swirls for two-thirds of my back.
A flick of its tail wrapped around my right rib, and budding lilies buried against the curling lines.
Ekris had placed the mark on me before I was of age, and I remembered the delicious burn as he spoke into my mind and called me his winter bud.
“Not yet in bloom, but brighter than them all.”
Where it had once been golden, the gold had faded with my fall from his side. Now the lines were as any ink on the flesh. Dull and lifeless black, like the bawdy images the sailors would get. They would never fade, and I would never escape the shame.
In the mirror, I saw his approach. The dark boot stepped into the reflection, the warped mask the only side of his face I could see. I stared at the floor as Davian approached.
Once more, I shuddered as the movement caused air to hit the skin of my back. Then I flinched, my spine arching, as a ghost of a touch brushed the small of my back. I gasped in a breath, and I knew a part of me wanted that touch.
Davian leaned over me, his breath warm against my shoulder. He pressed a single kiss to a freckle at the junction between my shoulder and neck.
“Beautiful,” he said. Then he was gone, the loss of his breath leaving me cold. “You can cover yourself.”
I inhaled. “Sir?”
He made no reply, and my cheeks warmed as I quickly pulled the dress up. Was I not to his liking? Had he changed his mind? My fingers shook as I tried to fasten the buttons, and I left the top one undone in my frustration.
I spun around, my dark hair falling over one shoulder and over my covered breast.
Davian sat in the armchair in the corner opposite the mirror, with one leg crossed over the other and an indiscernible expression.
He had lit his pipe again, and seemed in no hurry to leave.
He nodded to me as if nothing had happened.
“You can call me Davian. If the other girls haven't already told you my name, you’ll find it out soon enough.”
“Davian,” I said out loud, repeating the name back absently.
His eyes darkened further, or maybe it was just the flickering of the amber light in the holder on the rich wood table beside him.
He had paid me, and I had a job to do. He might prefer me clothed, but that didn’t have to mean he wasn’t interested.
I tried to smile. “You paid for an evening. How would you like to spend it?”
He looked at my mouth long enough for my smile to waver. “I have… a business proposal for you.”
“What?”
He nodded his head towards the bed. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I followed his directive, moving back and sitting on the edge of the bed. I struggled not to fidget with my hands, and instead I mirrored his posture, folding the leg with the slit over the other, leaving the leg bare to my upper thigh.
He didn’t look at it, instead studying my face as if trying to decipher something. “Where did you get that ring?”
“This is about the ring?” I replied. He had come all this way to ask questions about the damned ring? He could have found a less expensive way to question me. “I told you. My betrothed.”
“It must be uncommon for a betrothed woman to still work.”
“Ours is an uncommon situation,” I hedged, as the guilt ate me up. It didn’t fail to register that he had been the one to put a stop to this, and not me. I should have given the damned signal.
Davian’s eyes narrowed. “His name. What was his name?”
The name caught in my throat. Every one of his smiles ran through my mind, committed to my memory like the mark on my back.
I narrowed my own eyes. “Tell me the terms of this deal first.”
This made the corner of his lip lift. A fraction of a smile. But the mirth quickly fell away. “You help me solve a mystery,” he answered, his deep voice rumbling through the smoke of his pipe. “I pay you in whatever currency you value most.”
“What mystery?”
He took a long drag, and I watched his mouth on that pipe like water in a desert. His mouth was undeniably perfect, his lips full and soft. He exhaled, and the cloud of smoke obscured his face long enough for me to blink and refocus my eyes more safely on the curtains behind him.
Eventually, he sighed. “My wife disappeared.”
His wife. Gods, I was even more of a fool than I thought. I hated the dust of disappointment that settled over my mind. This was better, after all. We were both attached.
Davian’s gaze hadn’t left me. “I suspect she’s dead.”
My blood ran cold. “Dead?”
He nodded.
My hands moved to the bed cover either side of me, and I held on. “Could she not have run away?”
“She had no reason to do so,” he replied, his lips pursing in displeasure. “She was happy.”
I stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. He wanted me to help solve what had happened to his probably dead wife? Find her hiding place, or her body? Why? Why me? Then I remembered his other question. Somehow, this had to do with Robar.
The hair on my arms prickled with foreboding. “How is this connected to the ring?”
“Good question.” He lifted his hand to his chest and took the ring from the pocket of his tunic. The purple gem flashed in the amber glow, sending spots of light onto the rug below. “This ring,” he said, his voice sombre. “The one this unnamed man gifted to you for your engagement.”
I watched him twirl it.
He swallowed hard and tucked it back into his tunic. “It belonged to my dead wife.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes.” He watched me like a hawk. “So I need to know who you got it from, when you got it, and anything you can tell me about him. Maybe he told you something about the ring.”
My mind whirled, words spilling out in the surprise and guilt before I could think. “No, nothing like that. He told me…”
Davian leaned forwards. “What did he tell you, Annie?”
I blinked, and balled my hands into fists in my lap. Gods, what did it mean? I hated that I instantly believed him, but I did. If Robar had truly given me a ring that belonged to a woman who was now presumed dead… How could that have happened?
The implication was terrible.
“I need to think about this,” I said shakily.
Davian sat back against the chair, ignoring his smouldering pipe as he stared at me.
I dropped my gaze back to the rug.
He sighed. “Just because he gave you the ring, doesn’t mean he killed her. But he might know the person that did. I need to find that person.”
I nodded, still not raising my eyes. I could tell he thought Robar was involved in his wife’s death. Sensing subterfuge was a gift from my god, one that hadn’t fully disappeared when Ekris deserted me.
Our ability to detect dishonesty seemed an odd gift to those new to our order, and we coveted the knowledge of it as keenly as Wisdom might.
It was our protection, after all. Hundreds of years ago, several Ekrissians in the city of Erateini were paid for and then killed by a single patron.
Ekris made a plea to the King of the Gods, Akaur, and asked that both himself and his devotees be able to discern a deceit.
The Gods pushed back: Ekris’ chosen already had beauty, why should they be given another boon?
And then another devotee died, and ascended to their eternal Garden, and wept so many tears that the salt killed the flowers until only the great mourning asphodel would grow.
The Gods took pity, and said that the beauty of the Ekrissians should be matched with a heightened sense of mistruths, so they could not be drawn so easily into death.
“What if I don’t want to help?” I asked.
“Then I understand,” he replied. I looked up.
His jaw was clenched, and he watched me with an air of disappointment that I wished I couldn’t see.
“The House of Pain has a lot of allies, and a lot of money. If you helped me find the culprit, I am certain a donation could be made to you. A roof of your own, a stipend.”
“You would buy me a house?” I echoed.
He glanced down at his pipe. “The House of Pain would offer accommodation to someone who had helped discover an enemy of one of their members.”
I nodded at his careful wording.
This was entirely overwhelming. And yet, I couldn’t let him know without knowing the truth, without knowing how far he was going to take this.
“Have you gone to the House of the Sun?” I asked.
The devotees of the Sun God, Akaur, were the main form of law enforcement in Dytho.
It had been that way since the very foundation of Craetos, when Akaur blessed them with the perfect skills to be our justiciars.
We had city guards, of course, but any bigger crime ended up with the sunners.
Davian glared at me, his silver eyes blazing. “Of course.”
The way he said it, the way he tensed, it was clear that whatever resolution they had offered wasn’t sufficient. I tried not to be cowed by the fire in his eyes. “And what if it was—What if my betrothed had something to do with it?”
He held my gaze. “I would kill him.”
That was the truth; clear as water, hard as tungsten.
I swallowed. “How long ago did she… go missing?”
The fire dropped from his eyes, and his jaw loosened. “Three months.”
“I’m sorry.”
The silence sat between us; the summer air trapped in the room made me suddenly feel stifled. Where once I had been shivering, I now was far too warm as Davian assessed me.
“Will you help?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Again, that flash of disappointment. Again, I wanted to do anything to stop it. It had always been my worst flaw, and my greatest strength under Ekris. I lived to please. I bit my lip. “I want to, but I can’t endanger him.”
“Maybe he’s not who you think he is.”
“And why would I trust you?” I responded, a small fire of my own kindling despite myself. “I don’t know you, and your House is hardly the kindest.”
“Really?” he replied with a scoff. “You are Ekrissian. You do not know what it is to be of Samiscus. Don’t forget he is the God of Death, as well as pain. We can remove suffering, and we only bestow it when asked.”
My cheeks heated with his tone.
I had forgotten that. When people spoke of the House of Pain, they only mentioned the rumours.
The parties, the services they offered to those willing to pay.
The pain they called pleasure. Their other service, the payment to end a lifetime of suffering or an escape from an incurable disease, was far less fun to gossip about.
“I may not understand your House, but you misunderstand mine, too,” I said, trying to straighten my shoulders. “You offer me an escape from this work. I enjoy this work. I enjoy everything Love offers.”
Davian stared at me as I said it, and I could see the disbelief there. Then his eyes roamed slowly down to my mouth, to my neck and chest that lifted and fell with every quickened breath, down to my hips. He flicked his eyes back up to mine, and something changed in his expression.
I swallowed and stood. “If this was the purpose of your visit, I would ask you to leave now.”
“As you wish.” Davian stood without a second’s hesitation.
I had forgotten how tall he was, and even a distance away from me he was an intimidating figure. His eyes caught on my side as I raised my hand towards the door. I glanced down, and realised his gaze was trained on the one loose button near my rib.
The heat flared again as I walked to the door and opened it, remembering the ghost of his touch against my back.
He halted beside the door, beside me, his cold mask belying the intensity of the other half of his face. He stooped close to my neck, and I inhaled sharply. “But there is something you want, Annabelle. Think on it. Why are you protecting a man who has forgotten you? Who no longer wants you?”
I stood frozen, making no reply, as every word sank into my ear with his hot breath.
Why was I protecting him? The very night I ruined everything, I had planned to vow to love and obey him forever.
Those feelings didn’t just disappear because my groom had been cursed.
His wanting of me had no bearing on the loyalty that still chained my heart.
It was my fault he didn’t remember me; it was up to me to fix it.
He retreated. “There is much I know, much I can help you with. Discover what it is you need, and come to me when you’re ready to talk.”
Then he was gone, and I closed the door behind him with a shudder. I took no other patrons that night, and sleep did not come quickly.