10. The Beauty in Begging #3
“Your brother is awake. He’s waiting in your office.
Says he needs to speak with you, and judging by his face, it isn’t the sort of thing that keeps until the afternoon.
” Aster’s tone shifted then, the humor bleeding out of it.
“And while we’re at it, there are things you and I need to discuss.
Everything that happened on the other side of that Rift, once through it, getting here.
All of it. You asked for the full account, and I’m ready to give it to you. ”
My stomach dropped straight through the enormous bed and kept going.
All of it.
The Labyrinth. The Badlands. The Gorgon King.
The bargain I had struck in a circle of stone with a god of oaths as witness, the one I still hadn’t found the courage to confess.
After everything that had passed between Atlas and me last night, after the things he had said about beings like Theron and what they took as payment…
the thought of him learning the truth from anyone but me sent ice flooding through my veins.
Not yet.
Please, not like this.
“Tell my brother I’ll come to him shortly,” Atlas said. “And we can both hear of it. All of it, Aster. I want to know everything.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Wait for me here. I won’t be long.” Atlas closed the door.
I held my breath as Atlas turned back into the room, schooling my features into something I hoped resembled drowsy contentment rather than rising panic.
He crossed to me, leaned down to brush a kiss against my temple, and murmured a promise that he would be quick.
Then, to my enormous relief, he turned and disappeared into the bathing room.
A moment later, I heard the water begin to run.
I moved.
Tossing the covers back, I snatched the nearest sheet and wrapped it tight around myself, quick to haul the trailing length up into my arms so I wouldn’t repeat my earlier disgrace and break my neck before I could commit this particular act of espionage.
Then I crept to the door, quiet but quick, my heart hammering, and eased it open just enough to slip my head into the corridor.
Aster hadn’t gone far.
He leaned against the wall a few feet away, arms folded across his broad chest, and when he saw me, his brow rose slowly towards his hairline.
“Well,” he drawled. “This looks dignified.”
“Aster,” I hissed, glancing frantically down the empty corridor before fixing him with the most desperate look I owned. “Please. When you tell him everything, I need you to leave out the deal. The bargain I made with Theron. Please don’t tell him about that.”
The amusement faded from his face.
“Alex…”
“You heard him last night, how angry he got, and trust me, he only got angrier when he heard his name. You don’t know what nearly happened, the things he said, how he reacted just from learning Theron helped us.
” The words tumbled out in a frantic whisper.
“If he finds out I made a vow to the Gorgon King, an actual binding vow, sealed before Horkos, after the night, we’ve just…
” I broke off, heat flooding my face. “He’ll be furious.
Worse than furious. Please, Aster. Just give me a little time. Let me be the one to tell him.”
For a long moment Aster just looked at me, and there was no teasing left in him now. Only that steady, unsettling perceptiveness he hid so well behind all the smirks and the swagger.
“I won’t lie to him,” he whispered. “Not to his face. He’s my king and my oldest friend, and I’ve already kept too much from him for one lifetime.” He pushed away from the wall, lowering his voice further. “But I won’t volunteer it either. So, I’ll give you that much.”
Relief nearly buckled my knees.
“Thank you, I appr…”
“I’m not finished.” His expression hardened, gentle but immovable.
“This is a kindness, little human, not a promise. A secret like that doesn’t keep, not in a place like this, and certainly not from a man like him.
He will find out. The only choice you get is whether it comes from your mouth or from someone else’s.
” He held my gaze. “Tell him and soon. Before he hears it some other way, and the wound is twice as deep. Because I won’t carry it for you. Not for long.”
His words settled heavily within me.
“I will,” I whispered. “I promise. I’ll tell him.”
“See that you do.”
From beyond the door, the rush of running water cut abruptly into silence.
I startled like a thief caught mid-burglary, threw Aster one last wide-eyed look of pure panic, and bolted back inside, dragging the sheet behind me.
I had just enough time to fling myself across the bed and arrange the covers into something resembling innocence.
Then I calmed my breathing into a passable imitation of someone who had absolutely not been conspiring in a hallway thirty seconds earlier, before the bathroom door opened.
And Atlas stepped out.
Then I forgot, for a moment, how to breathe entirely, and this time for a completely different reason.
He had cleaned away the last evidence of the night, his dark hair pushed back damp from his face, a few stray strands already falling loose across his brow.
Gone were the formal layers of before, the embroidered coat and the crest of his kingdom.
In their place, he wore a fitted tunic of charcoal so dark it bordered on black.
The laces at the throat were left carelessly undone, revealing a wedge of bronze skin and the edge of those red markings that traced his collarbone.
Dark fitted trousers. Soft black boots. The sleeves were shoved up to his forearms, revealing the corded muscle and the thin white battle scars I had mapped so thoroughly only hours before.
It was less armor and more man.
Less the distant king of the throne room and more the warrior who had hunted me across a dying world, and somehow, that made him infinitely more dangerous to my poor, hammering heart.
“You’re staring again,” he observed, the corner of his mouth tilting.
“You’re imposing,” I shot back, tugging the covers a little higher. “It’s not my fault. You did it on purpose.”
“I assure you, I dressed with no thought to you whatsoever,” he said gravely, crossing to the bed, the lie so transparent that I nearly laughed.
“Liar.”
“Always, where you’re concerned.” He braced a hand on either side of me, leaning down until his nose brushed mine. “I have to go. My brother waits, and apparently, a king’s duties do not pause because he has finally got everything he ever wanted back in his bed.”
This warmed my heart and made my belly flutter, though I used wit to hide it.
“Tragic,” I murmured. “How ever will the kingdom cope?”
His answering kiss was slow and unhurried, a contradiction to every line of urgency in his body, and when he finally drew back, his eyes had darkened all over again.
“Stay. Rest. I’ll return before you’ve had the chance to miss me.”
“I won’t miss you,” I lied.
“You will, little liar.” He pressed one last kiss to my forehead, that maddening, certain smile playing at his lips. “You always do.”
And then he was gone, the door closing quietly behind him, leaving me alone in the vast bed with the scent of him still clinging to the sheets and a knot of dread tightening slowly in my chest.
Because I lay there, staring up at the painted stars on his ceiling, and I knew, with the same bone-deep certainty that had carried me through visions and labyrinths and wars, that I had not told Atlas the half of it.
Not about the deal.
Not about the price still hanging unpaid over my head.
And the worst part, the part that coiled cold and sharp beneath my ribs no matter how I tried to reason it away, was the quiet, creeping conviction that whatever Theron wanted from me…
that vow he’d been so patient, so unbothered to leave uncollected, he had every intention of one day coming to claim it.
A king like that did not bargain for nothing.
He didn’t help out of kindness, just as Atlas had said.
Which meant somewhere out there, beyond the mountains and the ruins and the slowly healing land, the Gorgon King was waiting.
And I had absolutely no idea what he would ask of me when he finally came to call.
When he finally came to collect.