40. 39
Ispent two days away from the House of Pain.
It was the most I could manage, and all I could afford.
If I asked for money, Davian would give me it without a blink.
But truthfully, I didn’t want to stay away.
After everything that had happened between us, I couldn’t sleep without hearing him breathe beside me.
I had spent both nights tossing and turning.
I was in the Flight of Fancy. I had stumbled here almost without thinking. The same taverna I had once followed Robar into; the bar where I first met Vasile. Ragnifort. I still couldn’t fully believe it was him.
I knew that Davian knew I was here. I wasn’t entirely sure how, though I imagined it involved him sending someone to find me and follow me, or a lucky guess as to my whereabouts.
But he hadn’t knocked my door down or demanded to see me.
Instead, on the second morning, a letter was slid under the door.
I was already long awake, staring at the ceiling as I waited for it to be late enough to rise.
The letter held his seal.
It said only:
My Annie,
Please come home.
It was enough to make it impossible to stay away. Enough to make everything feel less important than being with the man I loved, as he prepared to die.
I dressed with a numb purpose. I gathered my things methodically, not that I had left with much. I paused, my hands holding the top of the bag as the dawn light made gauzy patterns over my arms.
If this was his choice, I had to come to terms with it before it was too late.
I had lain awake these past two nights and come to two horrible conclusions.
The first: I didn’t think it was possible to change his mind.
The second: I didn’t want him to go through it without me holding his hand.
Even if I wasn’t sure I could hold the blade.
When I returned to the House, Eliza opened the door. She had become a welcome comfort over the last weeks, quietly keeping the House running and supporting the staff.
“Annie,” she said, and relief sagged her expression. “I’m glad you are back. Who’s the friend?”
I glanced back. The guest behind me stood still, cloak pulled down over their head.
“A guest of mine and Davian’s,” I said. “Where is he?”
Her expression clouded. “I think he’s in Camriel’s office.”
My heart scattered. “What?”
We both knew what was in Camriel’s office, and whilst she looked more concerned than scared, she also had no idea what he intended to do.
What he might have already done. I strode past her, and my guest slipped in behind me.
I paid them no mind as I started running down the corridor, not allowing myself to contemplate it but berating myself all the same for leaving at all.
What was I thinking? I was thinking I couldn’t watch him kill himself. How would I find him now?
I burst through the door to Camriel’s office, imagining horrifying scenes I couldn’t escape.
Davian’s head snapped up.
All my energy fell away. “Davian.”
He looked entirely himself. Or at least, the alive and troubled self I had left two days prior. There was a new darkness under his eyes, and a frown that froze on his face as I burst in, his hands paused as he rifled through papers in a drawer. But he was alive.
He didn’t wear his mask, though it sat beside him on the desk, a shiny reminder of how much he had changed.
His blackened Wisdom mark looked less stark in the candlelight than it did in the sunlight of the lounge.
Here it suited him, a swirling statement of his intellect and drive; his hair scraped back and the papers still in his grasp.
Then he sighed, and the frown dropped away. “Annie,” he said. Our strange ritual. We had said the other’s name with every feeling under the hot Dytho sun and there was always this same pull beneath it. Circling one another, calling one another.
I swallowed, the exertion reddening my cheeks. “Eliza said you were here, I thought—”
His eyes widened. “No, I was just looking around,” he said quickly. I nodded. He took a step towards me, and then he paused as a shadow came behind me. His hand moved for his mask. “Who is—”
“Good morning, Ravi.” Our guest chimed up, stepping past me into the room.
My teeth grated together at his choice of name.
Davian’s voice went cold and his hand stopped. “Granville.”
“Close,” Ragnifort replied good-naturedly.
The former God of Fire and the Forge moved around Camriel’s office with an obvious interest. If he had dealt with Camriel before, working as the middleman for both their interests, the business had clearly not been conducted here.
He looked at the various books and trinkets adorning the space, running his finger along a shelf and examining the dust on his skin.
I had considered before, the idea of trapping Ragnifort as I had trapped Camriel.
Of getting him to admit his follies with the watchful eye of Wisdom, and a representative of the Sun, to view it.
But I knew Ragnifort could change his form.
It would reduce his power to do it, if the fable of his purgatory here was true, but it was too risky to force his hand when I had no idea who he would jump into next.
He would just be reborn elsewhere, in some form I would likely never find again.
We could not trap him. We could only speak with him, and come to a deal.
Davian addressed me. “Why is he here?”
“If you’re considering this, he needs to be here,” I said. Ragnifort stared up at the ceiling, and then down at the rug. I cleared my throat. “We have questions.”
“Yes.” He wafted his hand in the direction of the false bookcase. “Can I see the site?”
He already knew, then.
Davian ignored the god in our midst and focused only on me. “Are you sure about this?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sure that we can’t be sure without a conversation.”
Davian’s eyes stayed on me, and then he nodded.
Ragnifort held his hands behind his back but peered forwards as Davian pulled out the book and pressed the button to unlock the cellar.
Davian finally looked at the god. A faint disgust wrinkled his nostrils. “This way.”
Ragnifort took the lead, opening the panel and darting down into the darkness with no acknowledgement of the Pain devotee’s sour expression.
Davian waited for me, holding the door open.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I couldn’t let you finish something we didn’t both understand, but I should have spoken to you first.”
Davian wrapped his arms around me and I clutched him tight, breathing in his floral and woody scent with more relief than any air had ever brought me. “I was only worried you wouldn’t return to me, my love.”
“I’ll always return,” I said. My mental addition, as long as there’s something to return to, went unspoken.
Davian pulled back, and pressed a hard kiss to my forehead. “And I will return, too.”
We were talking about different things.
Davian followed me into the darkness, where we found Ragnifort pacing around the outside of the circle.
He crouched down and surveyed it. His stance was casual, his piercing blue eyes hungry. “It is finer artistry than I expected from a Pain servant.”
Davian stood rigidly beside the now-cleared table. “It will work?”
Ragnifort’s eyes flicked up. “When it is complete, it will suffice.”
Gods weren’t liars. That was a huge part of Davian’s reasoning for considering this. I had to find the flaw in it. Enough to make Davian reconsider, or at least some promise of success.
I studied the god. I couldn’t imagine him as one of the true gods, a being who had once looked after us all from the Mountain atop the Garden.
This person who crouched in this basement was ancient.
His time down here, some seventy years—had he felt that like a mortal would? Or did it feel like a blur, a blip?
“What will happen?” I asked.
“A portal will open to the other world. I will step through, and guide all the sacrificed souls to the haven of the Garden.”
He said it as if it was incredibly obvious.
A few more lines painted in the blood of a dying or dead person, and a portal would appear.
In the literature of the gods, these were shimmering pools like sunlight ponds, but as thin as a fingernail and vertical.
A door to the other side of death. How could it be so?
“Why didn’t you do it yourself?” I asked. I didn’t say it crudely, despite the crude evidence of death painted all around us. But he understood. Why didn’t you kill them? Why manipulate us?
“One of their rules. I can’t forge the path back directly.
” Ragnifort smiled, then. At least, the corner of his mouth moved.
Our lives were nothing more than an ancient joke to him.
“It’s silly, really. I only told you because I thought the work was complete.
I could feel the final lines being painted.
But then the fool let you in. He let you ruin it all.
I underestimated his guilt. But all is well, now. ”
The rage that bubbled in me was something I wasn’t familiar with, and struggled to contain.
Careful, Annie.
I shuddered as Ekris’ voice whispered into my mind.
Ragnifort’s gaze shot to me, and he studied my movement and expression like a hawk. Almost like he had heard it. I steadied myself and forced myself to breathe normally.
“You asked me to come here,” the god said. “I assume you have a final sacrifice in mind.”
Davian cleared his throat, and glanced down at himself.
Ragnifort stood and dusted his knees, even though he hadn’t touched the floor. “Ah.” His tongue clicked. “How noble.”
Davian rolled his eyes. “Would I work?”
If only his disdain for this god would extend to any unwillingness to work with him.
But if this god could promise to bring him back two of the women he loved most in the world, and the son of a man who he used to respect more than anyone, I supposed it didn’t matter how much he personally disliked him.