22. Zarek
Zarek
NIGHTMARES
Something is wrong.
My eyes snap open, bringing the dull shadows of the branches above me into focus.
I sit up, sliding my dagger from its sheath as my mind struggles to remember where in the nine hells I am now.
The night air is cold, and it’s as dark as the inside of a tomb.
I’m outside, clearly. The small, strangled cry that woke me rises again through the dark. I come to my feet.
I’m in the mountains. On the road to Ethiria.
And my wife is crying.
It’s so dark that I almost have to crawl toward her, feeling for rocks and branches with my free hand. Lilias whimpers in the dark. Fabric rustles heavily as she tosses in her sleep. I fall to my knees next to the soft bundle of her sleeping roll.
Another nightmare. She doesn’t want to talk about them, but she’s been sleeping fitfully ever since we escaped from Prince Syvan in the Dragon Mine.
Syvan. That slimy piece of dog shit in a crown. He’s torturing her even now, in her dreams.
I should have killed that son of a bitch years ago. But Lilias did it instead, to save my worthless life. And now she’s suffering because of my inaction.
I rub my wife’s shoulder, then lean down and whisper in her ear.
“You’re safe,” I tell her. “I’m here. It’s a dream.”
She moans, then cries out. I shake her shoulder, gently at first, then less gently. Finally, Lilias turns toward me, her eyes blinking open, dark pools of reflected light in the gloom beneath the trees.
“Oh!” she gasps.
“What in the hells is going on?” a man’s voice yells.
There’s a scrape, then a flash of light as someone brings a match to a lantern. And then the harsh glare of the lamp blinds me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the guard who woke me up in the barn yells. Gerard, I think his name is.
“He’s got a dagger!” another voice yelps.
Shit. I grind my teeth and glance down. My dagger gleams in my fist like a signal fire.
I set the dagger on the ground beside me and raise both my hands in the air as the entire Marion delegation stumbles out of their sleeping rolls to scowl at me. The lamp dances wildly in Gerard’s hand, casting crazy shadows over the uneven ground.
“Get your sorry ass away from her,” Gerard yells, waving his own dagger at my throat.
I stumble to my feet, then step away from the pool of light.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll see if I can go find a thornbush to sleep in. Would that be acceptable?”
Gerard grunts. “You do that, dickhead.”
Prince Elrick puts his hand on Gerard’s shoulder, then rubs his eyes.
“What’s going on?” Elrick asks.
Gerard turns to me with a snarl. “That bastard was holding a knife to your sister,” he says.
Elrick frowns at me. I don’t say anything. Lilias doesn’t want to talk about her nightmares, at least not to me. And I’m not about to share her secrets for her.
“Stop it!” Lilias snaps, pushing down her sleeping roll as she sits up.
Her shirt presses against her chest in a way I really shouldn’t notice. She glares at Gerard, her eyes fierce beneath her tousled hair.
“Nothing happened!” Lilias says. “I’m fine.”
“There’s a fucking knife on the ground behind you,” Gerard replies.
Lilias glances down at my dagger on the pine duff beside her, then sniffs.
“So?” she asks.
Gerard growls in frustration. Elrick walks over to his sister, picks up my dagger, and then holds it like he’s examining a stolen necklace to determine if the gems are real. Finally he sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and turns to face me. He doesn’t offer me my dagger.
“What happened?” he asks.
He sounds exhausted. I smile at him, even though he’s a spoiled, worthless asshole.
“I heard something,” I say. “I decided to investigate.”
That’s true enough, and it’s all these fuckers are going to get out of me. None of the men standing in the lamplight holding blades look convinced.
“You investigated the princess’s godsdamned neck,” Gerard snarls. “With your blade.”
I grind my teeth together, then take a slow breath.
“Your Highness,” I begin, still smiling at the prince, “if I was going to murder my wife, I would not do so surrounded by a group of armed men traveling through the wilderness.”
Elrick shakes his head.
“That’s fucking bullshit,” Gerard growls. “You’re the snake. Why should we trust a word that comes out of your filthy fucking mouth?”
The night feels very cold. Somewhere in the distance, an owl cries.
“I had a bad dream,” Lilias says.
Everyone turns to look at her. Lilias’s cheeks burn in the harsh light.
“I have a lot of them,” Lilias continues, her voice thick. “Dreams, I mean. Bad ones. I must have…made some noise. Zarek came over to wake me up, so I wouldn’t cause a scene.”
She looks like she’s about to cry. I want to drop to my knees, take her in my arms, and promise that I’ll protect her no matter what.
But I doubt that would bring her much comfort.
Anura appears from the darkness, and she kneels next to my wife. Something in my chest tightens as I watch my wife’s friend doing what I just imagined, wrapping her arm around Lilias’s shoulders and whispering to her. Lilias hides her face in her hands.
See. She doesn’t need me after all.
“Fine,” Elrick sighs.
He holds my dagger out to me, hilt first. I step into the light to take it back. Our eyes meet as I grab the hilt.
“No more sneaking around in the dark with a blade,” Elrick says as I take my dagger from his hand. “You creepy fucker,” he adds, under his breath.
“Creepy snake,” I whisper.
And then I smile at him as I step back into the shadows.