30. 29
The following morning, Lord Granville’s butler informed me he was not in, and suggested I leave a note. The look of bafflement when I gave my name as Lady Fopdoodle had me stifling a smile, but the moment of humour faded far too soon.
I had no idea how to pursue any threads. Could it be that some completely unknown actor was behind all of this? If it was the same person, did anything but their sex unite the victims?
The child from Merriment who had died was a boy. But that was Juven who killed him. Since then, all the known murders of devotees—Saskia, Jusia, Seera—had all been women. Why those women? If they needed devotees, why those devotees?
Seera seemed a particularly odd choice. She was a devotee of the Sun, but she was also the daughter of the Sun Leader.
Jusia and Saskia could be believed to have run away, at least. Seera would never have been forgotten, with two different Houses who cared for her.
If she was also one of these sacrifices, then she was the oddest one of the lot so far.
But if we could discover it, if we could find the thread that tied it all together, then in its unravelling we could find Ragnifort himself, in whatever body he was occupying. I needed to find him now more than ever.
I hadn’t got any further with any theories when I returned to the House of Pain hours later, my skin sunkissed from sitting outside with my lunch, and my body more at ease after the pleasant walk back from my trip into the centre of town.
I wandered straight through the front door, pausing only to untangle Carnage from my skirts. She had taken to me over the last few days, and now she meowed at me until I picked her up. I stepped into the main lounge with her purring in my arms, and froze.
Davian stood in the lounge, pouring himself water from the pitcher. He was dressed as he had been last night, and looked like he’d slept outdoors.
There was no way I could get past him without him seeing, and I didn’t feel much like retracing my path around the building to avoid him. I cradled the cat, bracing for the impending storm. “You’re back.”
Davian stiffened. He must not have heard me come in. He finished pouring the cup of water, and placed the ewer down carefully back on the table. He did not turn, nor did he reply.
I should have taken that as my answer, and continued up to my room. But I wanted to know where he’d been. “Did Camriel find you?”
“Camriel?” Davian echoed, and his voice was hoarse with disuse. He cleared his throat.
“Yes,” I said. “He went to search for you.”
Davian drained the cup of water. “He didn’t find me.”
I nodded, despite his turned back.
This appeared to be all the conversation I was to receive. I don’t know why I expected anything else. He had been clear enough, and I was prodding him for no good reason. I stroked my hand down Carnage’s back and walked towards the curtained door.
When I reached it, I turned to face him. He was still not looking at me, but at least from here, I could see part of his face. He didn’t look hurt.
“Well,” I said. “I am relieved you are returned.”
Carnage meowed, and I put her down, and reached for the door handle.
“You are?”
His voice. The tone of it. The battle it tempted. It nearly brought me to my knees.
I turned to face him again, leaning my back against the way up to my room. Davian had finally looked at me. I had gotten my ill-chosen wish, and regretted it. There was nothing warm in his appraisal of me.
I nodded, answering his question. I was relieved he was back, as much as it damned everything in me to admit it.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his eyes catching on the dried mud on my boots.
My hand tightened on the handle at my back. “I went to see Granville.”
His voice became icy. “You did what?”
“Do not fret. He was not in. I left a note.”
My voice was too high, too quick.
His hand was white-knuckled against the edge of the table. The look in his eyes was not compassionate. If I were a man, he might duel me. “You should not have gone alone.”
“I think he would be more likely to speak with me, than you.” Then I poked the bear. “Besides, you were not here.”
Davian drew in a deep breath, pulling air into his nose as he clamped both hands on the table. I waited.
Waited for the fire, for the lash of his tongue. I had my escape at the ready. I hadn’t used it, and I knew why. Because I wanted this, in some way. His ire.
Then Davian focused his eyes down on the ewer, and choked out a noise.
Then another. An agonised hiccupping sound, which turned from staccato huffs into a pealing and reverberating laugh. He laughed louder than I had ever heard, and with as much cruelty as he had ever shown me.
This wasn’t what I wanted. This didn’t ignite me, this horrified me. I blushed to my roots and forced myself to keep my head up even as he bent over with new peals of laughter. “Whatever right you think you have to laugh at me, I will not have it. I don’t deserve it.”
This only made him laugh more.
I turned to the door and turned the handle, pulling it open.
His laughter stopped dead, and the room was immediately silent. “You wish to know what amuses me?”
I hesitated, the door ajar and held before me. “I do not.”
He tasted my lie as if he were the Ekrissian.
I didn’t leave.
“You are so much more than an Ekrissian,” he said.
I sighed, and my shoulders lost their tension as my head fell against the door, pushing it back shut. “Davian. Do not—”
A floorboard creaked under his boot. One step closer. “You’re enjoying this. The hunt. The chase for the killer.”
I pushed myself back from the door, and whirled on him. Enjoying it? It wasn’t a game. It was the way back. Every step paved us closer to Ragnifort’s location, to my deliverance back to Ekris. “How dare you—”
Davian was him again. The version of him that stalked my nights and made my stomach clench. The fire was back in his eyes. He took another step, and stared at my mouth. “You’re enjoying this, too. Our dance, our battles. This chase.”
I could not deny that. “Davian.”
He stepped again, and paused. He was close now. Two more steps and I would taste his breath. “If I touched you now, your heartbeat would tell me the truth of it.”
I wanted him to touch me. I needed it.
But I would not allow us to do this again. Not when our wounds were so raw. Not when yesterday had hurt us both so much. Nothing had changed.
I put my hand out. “There is something to what you say.”
He did not advance, tilting his head. Waiting.
I inhaled, and let the breath fall from my chest. “There is a part of me that… wants more. A part that craves mystery, and uncertainty, and… you.”
His answering smirk was too brief. He could read my face, the reservations ready to spill. “And yet?”
My heart pounded furiously and my hands were shaky. There was a huge part of me that wanted Davian. That cared for him greater than I should, that would have sworn to him if he had come to me before Robar had. When I was innocent.
Now, I understood what I wanted. Fella had shown me that, somehow.
So I met his gaze, and I dropped the hand held up between us to my side. “And yet,” I said. “There is still nothing more that I wish for, than to be loved wholly.” I squeezed my hands together. “Without reservation.” I forced myself to look him in the eye. “Without condition.”
Whatever he expected me to say: it wasn’t that.
My shield was down. The truth was out. Ekris had my heart because he was the only one who had told me I could trust him with it, and hadn’t hurt me. I could love another, I could break from him. But only for true love in return. It was all I had ever wanted.
Davian deflated, taking a step back as if I’d pushed him.
Still, even now, I kept our eye contact.
The son of Wisdom, the devotee of Pain, looked haunted by my words. As if I had asked him to give me his firstborn, as if I had stripped him of his titles and held a knife to his heart.
Then, the expression was gone and I questioned if it was ever there.
“Then you were right,” he said, woodenly. “I am not the man for you.”
Men attributed bravery to battle. To valour. To the acts of heroism performed in killing, in taking lives and hefting the responsibility of a weapon, to hurtling towards a fellow man set on your death, just because of the flag you rode under.
I could not speak to that. But I could speak to this.
I could speak to the bravery of telling a man the key to your heart, and hearing it become a weapon.
I could attest to how much bravery it took to say something true to someone who had the power to destroy you, how much strength it took to stand by it.
I could write of how much pain it took to simply nod, and not reveal the pit gaping inside of me.
“As you say,” I responded. Three words that took more will than any I had ever uttered.
Davian spoke, but my ears rang and I barely heard him. “Let’s solve this mystery, and then we can be rid of one another, and go back to the lives our gods intended for us.”
“Yes.” I forced a smile, as I finally opened the door again. “Yes.”