13. 12
When I got back to the House of Pain, I entered the temple to Samiscus through the back entrance.
A woman smoked a pipe on a bench in the back garden. I realised she was the same woman from the front desk the day that I first visited. She raised her head, and I noticed a pink port-wine stain by her hairline. She nodded to me as I approached.
“You look pale,” she said.
I shrugged. “I am pale.”
She smirked. “I’m Eliza.”
Her blouse was unbuttoned, and the golden edge of her mark broke into view as she leaned back. I didn’t realise she was a devotee. I was continually surprised how casual everything in this House seemed to be.
“Annie,” I said.
“I know.” She pointed to me with the hand holding the pipe. “Davian’s girl.”
I stiffened. “I’m not Davian’s anything.”
Eliza grinned and held her hands up. “My mistake.”
I tried to smile back and failed miserably, then let myself in before she asked any more questions.
I had returned here out of necessity and not desire.
A porter had already moved my stuff here from the Eclipse, after all. I needed to clean myself up and change out of this dusty gown. Then, I had to confront Davian.
I strode up the stairs to the upper corridor for devotees and staff, finding Whip waiting outside my room. The large black cat approached me as I moved down the corridor, and twirled himself around my skirts.
“How are you, boy?” I said softly, bending over to rub his head.
He nudged against my leg with the side of his face, purring.
I stepped on, a faint smile pulling at my mouth, until I realised my door was open. Not fully, just ajar. I swallowed the feeling of trepidation, deciding that I might have left it open when I departed, or someone had come to clean it.
But when I stepped inside, he was there.
Davian stood in my bedroom, next to the bed I had remade that morning, staring out of the window. His shoulders tensed as I pushed the door open and entered, but he didn’t turn.
“Davian,” I said, in simple acknowledgement.
His shoulders seemed to relax, but he did not turn yet. “Welcome back, Annabelle.”
He was in the same clothing as the other day, a clean white shirt tucked into black dress pants.
“Why are you in my room?” I asked, stopping in the open door.
Whip pushed past me and made a low noise as he trotted across the wooden floor and hopped up onto the bed. He stood there for a moment, and then curled up, as I waited for a reply.
Davian turned, and gave me an assessing look.
I had applied some rouge to my cheeks and lips before I left, but it must have gone by now. His gaze locked on my dusty boots. I had walked back, and it had taken close to two hours. I had needed the time to think, to decide how to proceed with all the new information Petros had thrown at me.
“Eliza told me you’d left in the carriage for the prison late this morning,” he said. “I figured you wouldn’t be there long.”
“You’ve been waiting?”
He dampened his lower lip. “I wanted to know what they said. Without delay.” He paused. “And I figured they might have told you something that warranted explanation.”
He waited for me to speak.
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. Then I folded my arms, my shoulders hunched defensively around me.
How dare he embarrass me like that? To send me there with so little information? To bring me here when he knew he was their lead suspect? I shouldn’t have trusted him before fully understanding his motives.
“The sunners think you killed her. Your wife.”
Davian didn’t even raise an eyebrow, only offering a curt nod. “I am well aware. They have already accused me of it. If they had even a thread of evidence, I’m sure I’d be languishing in that prison right now.”
I only stared at him. There wasn’t a single hint of remorse or apology on his face. He looked tense, as he had the first few times we met. Whatever friendliness had come from the balm of Samiscus’ relief, it appeared that had worn off.
“I did tell you I couldn’t go myself,” he continued, when I said nothing. “Now you know why. And I wanted your surprise to be convincing when they inevitably accused me.”
My anger shot redness into my cheeks, and my hands clenched. He saw this, and still made no apology. He was entirely aware that the sunners would place the blame at his doorstep, and said nothing. Just to make my reaction more convincing. He was heartless. I had been manipulated yet again.
He raked his hands through his hair and took a step towards me. “How did it go, then? Is anyone else missing?”
I seethed, glaring at him. “Yes. Someone from Agriculture.”
His eyes flickered with intrigue, and he frowned as if giving it some thought. “Interesting. What circumstances?”
I said nothing, beyond irritated by his total disregard for the position he had placed me in.
He sighed. “Look, I can tell you want to ask me. So just ask.”
I squeezed my hands tighter, glad for the gloves to prevent me from injuring myself with my own nails. I unfolded my arms, pushing them down to my sides.
He was bored by my suspicion; tired of my reservation. Fuck him. He had no right to treat me this way after I had agreed to help him.
“Did you kill her?” I asked, hoarsely. It was curt, and I didn’t coddle the question.
Davian might have invited the question, but he still had the nerve to look disappointed that I had asked.
“No. I was at the Folly. As I told you. And no, I didn’t organise to get her killed either.
As much as Aseem might hate me, I didn’t have anything to do with it.
If they had the confidence to take me in and put me to an Oath of Light, they would have that confirmed.
” He tutted to himself, staring at the wall near my head rather than at me directly.
“The sick thing is, I thought I’d saved her. ”
“Seera’s father is Aseem?” I confirmed.
“Yes,” he said. “Now, can we move on?”
So Petros had been telling the truth. More than Davian had, at least. I wondered whether he would have ever told me Seera’s parentage if he hadn't needed me to go to the sunners; whether he would have deemed me worthy of the information.
Yet again, I felt like a total idiot. I didn’t think he had killed Seera, but when he was holding so much back from me, what good reason did I have to trust him? Why had I left Yona for this dark place?
Jusia’s warning came back to me, and my cheeks flushed hot with shame.
I shook my head. “I was told not to trust you. To stay away.”
He rolled his eyes with that same boredom. “And yet here you are.”
I took a step back, reaching behind me for the door handle. “Maybe I should go.”
“Don’t be stupid, Annie.”
I hissed. “Don’t call me stupid.”
“Fine,” he said, as if the very request was dull and not worth his time. “But I find it rich that of all the men in your life, I’m the first one you’ve apparently questioned the motives of.”
My mouth fell open. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You fell into the House of Love as a child, without a second thought. You fell for Robar’s declarations of love in what, a few weeks? You’re hardly the best judge of character.”
His cruelty was profound. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, how I had allowed myself to dismiss it. My voice was full of defensive hurt. “Ekris is a God.”
Davian shrugged. “He is a man, too.”
“You don’t know anything.”
He smirked, and there was nothing warm about it.
“But I do. I know that you were born to Kastos and Linna on a farm north east of Dytho near Lefterin. I know you left when you were fourteen, and somehow managed to find your way into the House of Love. I know how desperate you were for any sort of affection, any kind word—”
My eyes filled with hot tears. How dare he bring up my parents? He knew nothing of why I had to leave. Nothing of how they planned to sell me off to some old man like cattle. “Stop it.”
He didn’t listen to me, carrying on with his snapping words. “And then under Ekris’ amazing guidance, you grew up,” he said with a fake whimsy. Then he snorted. “Except you didn’t. Because the next man to be nice to you, to pretend he loves you, you fall for it like a child—”
“I said stop!” I yelled.
He stopped, and the air hung with a pregnant silence as Whip snapped his eyes open to stare at me, irritated that I had disturbed his slumber. The black cat and the masked man, looking at me apathetically.
I blinked furiously. “How do you know all that?”
He took a step forward, crossing his arms. I did not take my hand from the door handle.
“Because I also asked myself if I could trust you, the moment I saw you with my wife’s ring,” Davian said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I followed you for two days until I decided you were innocent and clueless. I found out the backwater town you had come from. I questioned you until I could reliably reassure myself that you had no part in the plot against Seera, but you might know something.”
His eyes pinned me as his words fell on deaf ears. All I could hear were the insults, rallied at me like arrows. Hardly the best judge of character. Clueless. Stupid. Desperate. Like a child.
“Now, it’s your turn,” he said. “Do you trust me, Annie?”
He asked for trust, now? He had pushed me as far away as a man ever had, and asked me to heel.
How could I trust a man to protect my body from harm, when I could not trust him to protect my mind or my heart?
Whatever point he thought he was making, he had made the opposite.
In proving how much he had learned about my life, he had proven he only did so to wield it against me.
How was that trust?
He stood before me, offering his hand to me. Offering me to accept this as the treatment I deserved? For what? Being naive enough to love?
This, then, was the comfort of the House of Pain.
His silver eyes watched me with interest, perhaps misunderstanding my pause for consideration. Samiscus’ way: to care for something through breaking it down. That was not my way. The acceptance I sought was not so tough.
“Did this give you relief?” I asked him, my lip quivering as the first tear escaped. “To hurt me?”
Davian looked at the tear tracking down my cheek, and I roughly wiped it away.
“Annie,” he said, and for the first time, there was a shred of remorse there.
Far too little, though, and far too late. I turned around, and opened the door to the corridor.
Davian didn’t move to stop me, and whatever remorse I thought I had seen before disappeared. His face was impassive, a clouded mask underneath his metal one.
He had done his research, and chosen to target me because he determined I was no threat.
I had done no such digging into him. I’d been warned of his danger.
I'd had no reason to trust him, and yet I had, because I had decided he was telling me the truth. He had made me an offer because I couldn’t be a threat.
I had accepted it despite knowing he was one.
Maybe I was closer aligned to Samiscus than I thought. For who else would make such a masochistic decision?
I looked at the stranger standing before me, and cursed myself.
“They were right about you,” I whispered.
Then, I left.
Davian did not follow, and I couldn’t tell if that relieved me, or hurt me even more.
I never should have left Ekris. I forced myself to keep my sobs inside, breathing carefully and deliberately until I was out on the street again and out of the sight of the black-windowed temple to Pain.
I cried myself to sleep that night in The Curving Eclipse, and I determined that I would never let Davian hurt me again.