36. Zarek
Zarek
FALLING APART
Icouldn’t protect her.
My chest feels tight and hot, like there’s a live coal lodged beneath my rib cage. I try to breathe, but my throat won’t open. My lungs feel like they’ve been packed full of wet sand.
Images flash through my mind. The prince of Lisal with blood leaking from his lips, my dagger in his chest. The general from Aning laughing at my jokes as he drank his poisoned wine.
You learn to carry it, Petrys told me. And maybe that’s true.
Maybe Petrys is strong enough to carry it.
But I have never been strong. Malrik’s voice echoes through my skull.
Weak.
I gasp for breath, trying to fill my screaming lungs. Gerrart’s face rises in the darkness on the other side of the window, his mouth open, flies gathering in the corners of his eyes.
I didn’t protect Gerrart. Just like I didn’t protect my wife.
“You have to be brave,” the king of Dungal told me, and I knew it was important, because the king had never spoken to me before. He’d never even looked at me before. “And you have to be strong,” he said. “Lives will depend on this.”
But I wasn’t brave, was I? I wasn’t strong.
And all those lives? They ended in ash and dust. I didn’t protect my kingdom. Or my parents. Or even my brothers.
I pant frantically as my lungs scream. The room spins; my body feels like it’s made of lead. Not this, some small part of me screams. Not again. Not in front of her, gods, please, not in front of her.
But my body doesn’t respond. I reach forward, bracing myself against the cold glass of the window. Lilias says something behind me, but I can’t hear her over the roar of my own blood, the screaming ache of my empty lungs.
My knees hit the floor. My chest feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise, and maybe this is what dying is like. Maybe this time I’m actually dying.
I lean forward and wrap my arms tight around my chest, as if I can hold myself together. I don’t realize how violently I’m shaking until Lilias touches me.
Weak, my mind hisses. She’ll hate this. She’ll hate me.
I open my mouth to tell her to stop, to leave, that she should never have to see me like this, but I can’t find the breath.
And so, instead of protecting my wife, I collapse in front of her. The room spins as she wraps her arms around my shoulders.
I am not a brave man.
And I’m not a strong man either.
I close my eyes and gasp frantically for breath, even as my mind howls that the best possible thing would be for death to finally take me. I wonder who waits for me in the Howling Fields to dole out their punishment. Who will be first? The prince? The general? One of the other men I’ve murdered?
Or perhaps it will be Gerrart?
I hear something, soft and low, like a woman singing prayers. As if anyone would pray over me. I try to shake my head, but the sound doesn’t go away.
It is a woman’s voice. And she’s singing.
My breathing slows, finally. My lungs fill with air, a little at a time, and my entire body shakes. The song threads through the darkness, light and soft, almost like she’s trying to sing in a whisper.
I breathe.
This room still holds a faint ghost of red wine from the bottle I dropped last night, and somehow, despite everything, that makes my lips curve into a smile.
The voice wavers, then begins again. Prayers. The melody is vaguely familiar, but I can’t make out all the words. I take another breath, pulling in the scent of her dress, the vague smell of horse, the subtle, irresistible pull of the woman beneath the fabric.
Gods, I love this woman.
I don’t deserve her. I deserve the Howling Fields, and punishments for every one of my crimes. But I love her all the same, weak, broken thing that I am.
Slowly, painfully, I pull away from the soft warmth of my wife’s body. She stops singing. And, when I can finally bring myself to look at her, she turns away, her cheeks flushed. I watch her as the room slowly fills with the thin, gray light that heralds the day.
“Prayers,” I finally say. My voice is a jagged whisper.
Her chin bobs as she swallows. “I— I thought you prayed for me,” she says. Her words come out in a rush, like she wants to get this over with. “In the mountains.” She shakes her head. “Silly, I know. I— I think it was a dream.”
My hand creeps forward to rest on the soft fabric covering her thigh.
“I did,” I say.
Her eyes widen. I swallow; my throat feels like it’s been packed with hot sand.
“I thought you were dying,” I whisper. “The—the potion, you’d lost so much blood. I didn’t know what else to do. So I prayed.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. My chest still aches. I turn toward the window and watch as gold and scarlet paint the sky.
We need to get divorced. I have nothing to offer the beautiful princess of Marion.
Hells, I couldn’t even help her escape this place.
Now she knows exactly how worthless I am.
I need to set her free, even if it kills me.
And then I need to come up with another plan to get her out of here.
A plan that will actually fucking work this time.
I turn back to her, the words bubbling inside my broken heart. She deserves more. She needs to get away from here, and away from me. And if it kills me, well, no great fucking loss there.
She meets my gaze in the soft light before the dawn. My hand tightens in the fabric of her dress as I open my mouth.
“I— I love you,” I whisper.
Shit.
A heavy boom shakes the room. Lilias jumps. The boom comes again, a fist against wood.
And then the door flies open. The huge guard who took me to the reception hall earlier tonight in my failed attempt to get my wife out of this poisonous trap steps into the room. If he’s surprised to find the two of us huddled on the floor next to the window, he doesn’t show it.
“Come on,” he growls. “The kings are ready to see you.”