Chapter Four #2
He looked around the cabin, as though he might have missed an entire person in the small space, but it was just as empty as it had been twenty seconds ago when he'd sat up. Euclid had healed him and left. That shouldn't hurt so much, but he'd thought maybe…
It was fine. Whatever. Keep moving.
He'd just made it to the table, where a pot of peppermint tea sat cooling, when the door flew open.
Dipak's breath caught in his throat, his heart trip-trapping, as he stared at Euclid. "You didn't leave."
"I was cleaning up the dead, figured I would check on you one last time," Euclid said gruffly, not quite looking at him. "You're on your feet, so—"
"Stay," Dipak said. "Please. I'm sorry. I was stupid and wrong. I didn't even really want to do it, or think I'd actually succeed anyway. It was just the only hope I had at getting my stuff back. But I— I— I'd rather have a friend."
Even if the friends he'd had before had only let him down, and his lover…
Apparently, he was just never going to fucking learn his lesson. But the past many days without Euclid popping in with one his stupid bubbly smiles had been unbearable. He just had to accept that he was a fool and wanted his new friend back.
Euclid, frozen and wide-eyed in the doorway, seemed to melt slightly before he stepped inside and closed the door. "You shouldn't move around too much, not until the healer burn fades off. It's been some time since I had to heal wounds like that."
Stomach unknotting slightly, Dipak sat down and poured them both tea. "You make healing look so easy, when it's one of the hardest magics to master."
Euclid shrugged. "Dragons don't have types of magic. Just magic. Thank you for helping with those hunters. I found the first group you killed."
"I didn't want to kill them, especially without tailing them longer, but…" He shrugged his good shoulder and explained all that had happened while he'd been hunting pheasants. "So was I right? They were after you? How many were there total?"
"Thirty total, and yes, hunting me specifically, but also seemed to be willing to take whatever they could kill. Thankfully I was alerted early. I think the leader was here, though, with the spectral shifter."
"Always called them Fiendish Hounds. Never seen any other kind, though to be fair, I've only seen three in my entire life, and the first two were from a distance."
"They used to be more common, but also those people were forced to do it.
Criminals, impoverished, other people with little to no control of their lives.
Thankfully that practice seems to have fallen by the wayside.
I am glad they only had the one, though I should have realized sooner they had it at all.
Thank you for all that you did; your assistance saved many lives in this forest."
"As I said, I do not enjoy killing. I was raised a hunter, and then I was a scout in the military, and then I was a private courier to the late king. Until I killed him." He hesitated, staring at his tea, then added, "He was also my lover."
"You murdered your own lover?" Euclid asked. "Why would you do that?"
"To save lives," Dipak said, the words coming out harsh and ragged. "It doesn't matter anymore. The deed is done, and I was exiled here, even though I should have been executed. It was the only 'kindness' anyone granted me."
Euclid said nothing, but Dipak hadn't expected him to.
Frankly, he'd thought Euclid would get up and leave, dislike him more than ever.
It had been the most difficult decision of Dipak's life, and he would hate himself for it until his dying day, but he didn't regret it, only that it had been necessary.
He'd been right, and no one had listened to him until after the deed was done, and so out of guilt, Lochan's son had sentenced him to exile here.
The silence stretched on and on, and suddenly, he just couldn't fucking take it anymore. He'd told himself he wouldn't dwell, wouldn't let it all get the better of him, but he was done. "You should go. I'll be fine now, and I apologize for keeping you when you have more important things to do."
Euclid frowned. "But—"
"Just go," Dipak said.
"As you wish," Euclid said quietly.
The door had barely closed behind him when Dipak finally lost it, months and months of anger, fear, pain, and grief finally getting ahold of him in rough, broken sobbing that he'd told himself he wouldn't succumb to.
Because despite what everyone now said about him, he had loved Lochan deeply.
Many had looked askance at their relationship, some of his friends had worried about the power imbalance, but Lochan had been loving and kind, strong and smart.
Until cynicism and bitterness ate too much of him away, and resentment built up, turned into madness, and his lover became more of a stranger with every passing day.
No one had listened, not even Lochan's son, Madhav.
Not his bodyguards, not his friends. Not Dipak's own so-called friends.
He'd tried everything to warn them that a tragedy would happen, that Lochan was going to kill people.
He'd seen it happen before. Back home, when a man decided the whole village was to blame for his personal failures and went on a killing spree.
When it happened again in his unit. He hadn't known the signs the first time, everyone had brushed off his concerns the second.
He wasn't going to let it happen a third time, not when it was a king with plenty of killers at his command.
Then of course had been six months of hell.
Starvation. Beatings. Being left too close to a burning fire, his burns still healing when they'd switched to locking him in cold boxes instead.
Abuse from other prisoners. Not a single visit from the people he'd called friends, despite the years they'd known each other.
No one to ask if he was all right, which was fair, he had murdered his lover and king, but someone could have cared, just a little bit.
Someone could have remembered the warnings he'd given them, why he had been driven to his own desperate act, and asked if he was all right.
Instead all he'd gotten was silence when he'd most needed a friend.
Now here he was crying alone in a cabin in the woods, precisely as he had the night his parents and so many others had been murdered by a man who hadn't been able to handle his wife leaving him.
Eventually, he exhausted himself and drank down the long-cold tea before stumbling over to his bed and falling back asleep.