CHAPTER 66
The jump was short, and he released her as soon as her feet touched the floor.
They were in a dark parlor she could barely see, but with a sweep of his hand, Tyghan roused a small flame in a stone hearth and it crackled to life, illuminating the aged log walls around them.
The interior was nothing like the rest of the palace.
It looked more like a one-room cabin in the mountains.
“A little notice would have been nice before you grabbed me,” she said, rubbing her chilled arms. “Where are we?”
“The deepest heart of Winterwood. The first queen’s quarters. It’s rarely used anymore. I knew we could be alone.”
“Someone could be here. There was a fire burning.”
“The fire was started by the daughter of winter thousands of years ago. It never goes out.”
A fire that burns forever? Through every storm?
The thought intrigued her. She looked around at the small rustic room.
It appeared to be lovingly tended, even if rarely used.
The roughly hewn timbers surrounding them glowed in the flickering firelight, and multiple furs graced a simple bed on the other side of the room.
She felt the room’s safety and magic—at least until Tyghan spoke again and scattered her thoughts.
“We need to talk,” he repeated, and folded his arms across his chest. It sounded more like an order than an offer.
Like the small flame in the fireplace that burst to life, resentment flared in her again. “So you said. You didn’t want to talk last night. You ignored my questions and then walked out on me. And now I guess I’m just forced to listen to whatever you have to say.”
His arms dropped awkwardly back to his sides. His eyes were fully focused on her. “I’m sorry. I should have asked you first. I didn’t want to talk back there in front of others and—” He shook his head. “We don’t have to talk. I can take you back if that’s what you prefer.”
Bristol remembered her parents’ arguments. They were loud and passionate, usually ending with her mother storming out and going for a long walk. Bristol didn’t want to drag this out for another day, or even another hour. However it played out, she wanted it settled.
“Go on,” she said, determined to listen this time before she opened her mouth—because she still had plenty to say.
He motioned to two chairs in front of the fire.
They walked stiffly to them and sat down, like they were facing a challenger in a game.
A game that had no winners. Bristol waited—the same way Julia would.
Tyghan leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs, glancing at her, then away.
He stared at his hands, clasping and unclasping them. She still waited.
“I couldn’t talk last night, and I want to explain now.
” He looked up, his jaw tight, his eyes sharp glass, like he was trying to hold the entire world together.
“I’m hurting, Bristol. I always try to pretend I’m not, that I’m fine.
I have to be fine for everyone. But the other day, you told me I had to share my feelings.
” He bit his lower lip. “That’s what I’m trying to do now, and I know I’m not doing it well, but I’m doing it the best way that I know how.
” He raked his fingers through his hair, searching for all the ways to avoid speaking, any distraction, but there were no hazelnuts to pluck from a tree and throw, no grove to swallow him up.
He had initiated this talk, and he had nowhere to run.
Against her will, she ached for him, and the struggle she saw in his face.
“I want you to understand,” he finally continued, “six months ago I almost lost my life—at the hands of someone I loved. I’m not sure I ever told you that, but it’s impossible to explain what that does to a person.
I still don’t have the words. In that same exact moment, I lost my closest friend.
As crazy as it sounds, I’ve mourned that loss for months, that lifelong friendship.
Kierus was like a brother to me. And then, seeing him again once he was in custody—” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
“Hearing his voice. It gutted me all over again. It was like a day hadn’t passed.
It dredged up all the betrayal, anger, and pain still inside me.
And all the loss. I didn’t tell you about your father, because I’m still trying to figure this out myself.
I just know it hurts. Maybe it always will. ”
The ache in her reached deeper. She wasn’t sure if he was finished, but she remained silent, because he pursed his lips like he was still trying to get out more words. She waited, and they came.
“And then last night—” He gripped the arms of the chair.
“I didn’t expect an apology from you for the blackmail, but maybe .
. .” His eyes shot up, fixed on her. “Dammit, maybe I did expect one for not telling me about Kasta in the first place. It was like you didn’t grasp what it meant and how that day had changed me forever.
Like you didn’t think that I even had a right to know.
For weeks you kept it a secret. What she did mattered to me.
I lost my sense of trust that day and I’ve been trying to reclaim it ever since. ”
Bristol swallowed, seeing his pain—and her silence—in a new light.
He shook his head, his jaw rigid. “And just a few minutes ago in the ballroom—” He rose, pulling her to her feet, and turned her to face the small mirror on the wall.
“When you were dancing, I saw this.” He drew back her hair.
She saw the bruising on the side of her neck, and the distinct dark impressions of three fingers.
“Someone tried to kill you? Another thing you didn’t think to tell me?
That it wouldn’t matter either? If not to me personally, then at least to all of Elphame? ”
Bristol stared, shocked by the bruises too.
Kasta’s deadly grip left evidence. Yes, it mattered.
And yes, she could have died and ruined everything if she hadn’t been able to talk Kasta into letting her go.
She would have told him, but her mind had been bursting with other things, things that mattered to her too. She whirled back to face him.
“How am I supposed to know all the things you do and don’t want to hear, Tyghan?
I can’t read your mind! Every time I try to say anything about my parents, you shut down.
So I keep those things bottled up inside me to spare you, things you’ve never heard and never wanted to hear, but they matter to me too. ”
He studied her, as if sifting through all the times he had changed and avoided the subject of her mother and father. “Then tell me now. I’m listening.”
He returned to his chair, but Bristol didn’t sit.
Instead, she paced in front of the fireplace.
“The pain you’ve suffered these past months is unimaginable—I know that—but so was my lifetime of running from monsters I couldn’t see.
I don’t think any of you have truly understood that.
I always felt like I was being hunted. Every single day of my life.
There were no breaks. The duffle bags always ready to go.
The disturbed glances between my parents.
The rushed departures just as we were settling in.
“My sisters endured the same. No one should have to grow up that way—distanced from everyone. Even in the mortal world I always felt like I was an outcast, that I didn’t belong.
Unlike you, I never had a best friend at all—I had no friends—only my sisters.
We’ve both suffered, Tyghan, in different and unjust ways.
“But when it comes to my mother and the things she’s done, I—” She drew a shaky breath.
“I always hold the losing cards, and that weighs on me every hour of every day. How can I convince you of anything concerning her? Even around everyone else, I hear the silences when her name is brought up in my presence. I feel it like a burn on my skin. What do they say when I’m not there?
Kill the bitch, like Cael shouted at the portico?
I’m trying to make amends, to make things right, but who wants to make things right for her?
No one. But I know things about my mother no one else wants to know, including you. You only see the monster.”
She stopped pacing and faced him, swallowing back tears.
“I know a woman whose parents were murdered in a raid when she was just a girl, a woman who was terrified and wanted a different life, who struggled to figure out how to live in a completely new world, a woman who played string games in laundromats, and cried at sunsets, a woman who loved teaching her daughters about the stars in the sky and who fiercely wanted another life, but she couldn’t make it happen, because others wouldn’t let her.
A woman who had a gift, and Kormick twisted it into something ugly.
And she had no one, no one else to turn to, only him—until my father came along.
And maybe, maybe she is a monster now. Maybe that’s all she is.
But at one time, she wanted to be something else. ”
She took a step closer, her gaze fixed on his, her cheeks wet.
“I don’t want to just save Elphame. I want to save her. There, I’ve said it. I want to give her something no one else will. Maybe something she doesn’t even deserve. And maybe that’s how my father and I are alike.
“I’ve held on to your promise to rescind the kill order for my mother, but last night after finding my father, I wondered if that was a lie too, and that terrified me.” She reached up and swiped at her nose. “So yes, those are the things I never told you.”