65. Zarek
Zarek
WHAT ARE YOU FEELING GUILTY ABOUT NOW?
Someone clears his throat behind me.
It must be Petrys, then. From the weight of the footsteps, I thought it was either Petrys or Gerard coming up behind me as I watched the valley. But only Petrys would be polite enough to warn me he was coming.
I turn away from the sunlit meadow that slopes down toward the road to see my brother walking up the hill behind me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” I ask him.
He sinks onto the grass beside me. “You should have woken me up hours ago. We’re supposed to be taking turns keeping watch, remember?”
I shrug, then turn back to the meadow. Wind ruffles the flowers, making the butterflies dance and the aspen tree tremble against my back.
We traveled all night, riding slow but riding hard, then collapsed in the thickest grove of pine trees we could find when dawn began to stretch her rosy fingers across the slate-gray sky.
And, yes. There was some talk about taking turns keeping watch. Which I ignored.
“I got enough sleep back in the palace,” I tell my brother.
“Bullshit,” he replies.
I shrug again, then pick another blade of grass to twirl between my fingers.
I’ve spent the whole day leaning against this aspen tree, staring at that meadow, and trying to understand what in the nine hells I did to Malrik’s ballroom last night.
I don’t particularly want to talk about it, but knowing Petrys, I doubt he’ll just let that go.
Petrys clears his throat again; I brace myself for what’s coming.
“Here,” he says.
There’s a low rustle as he pulls something from his vest. I turn and see a dagger in the palm of his hand. I open my mouth, but the words don’t come.
“Take it,” he says. “It looks weird to see you without one.”
“Where—” I manage to stammer.
“It’s one of mine,” he says. “What? You think I stole it from that asshole from Marion?”
He glances over his shoulder like he’s expecting to see Gerard walking up the hill to join us. I take the dagger, tuck it into my belt, and let my hand rest on the hilt. Gods, it feels good to have a blade again.
“I’m sorry about Gerard,” I say. “We should have left him in Vsenrog.”
A strange expression flickers across my brother’s face as a gust of wind tugs at his hair.
“Not your fault,” he says. “Men like that think they can get away with anything.”
I frown. Men like that? What in the gods’ many names does he mean? I stare at him for long enough to realize he’s not going to offer any further information.
“Men in the royal guard?” I finally ask.
Petrys huffs, then glances up at the sky, as if the late afternoon sun holds the answer. For a moment he looks almost like he’s blushing.
“Men that attractive,” he finally answers, almost under his breath.
My mouth falls open again. “What?”
“Oh, shut up,” Petrys snaps.
“Gerard?” I stammer. I’ve always known Petrys prefers men, but still. “You find him—”
“I didn’t say I find him attractive,” Petrys huffs. “I said he is attractive. It’s an objective fact.”
“Sure,” I say, grinning as I sink back against the aspen tree. “Sure, it is.”
Petrys huffs again. I wait for him to dig that hole even deeper, but he doesn’t reply. Two white butterflies dance in the air between us, circling and twirling. Petrys finally meets my gaze.
“She knows your name,” he says in a soft voice.
I swallow.
“She said it in the palace,” he continues. “To wake you up.”
Well, shit. I can’t deny that. I spin the blade of grass between my fingers as Petrys runs his hand through his hair.
“I wasn’t even sure you remembered it,” he says.
“Gods,” I snort. “I’m not going to forget my own name. I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were,” he replies. “I just— You never said it again. Not after we left home.”
“Of course not,” I say. “I didn’t want to get anyone killed.”
He grins at me. “You really do love her.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Turn back to face the meadow, with its paradise of flowers and kingdom of butterflies.
“Yes,” I finally admit. “I do.”
“Well, that’s—nice,” he says, with just enough of a pause before nice to make me wonder what he really meant to say.
I sigh, then look back over my shoulder to the protected hollow where my wife is sleeping.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “I— Gods, I fucked things up.”
Petrys makes a little humming sound in the back of his throat.
I shake my head as I try to sort through the jumble of humiliating memories.
Collapsing on the floor of the room in Ethiria, shaking in my wife’s arms on the rug that still smelled like red wine.
Pushing Lilias to her knees and taking her from behind.
Crawling through the darkness toward the bedroll where she lay, whimpering and tossing in her sleep, chased by her nightmares.
Lilias standing on the balcony in the abandoned hunting lodge that held the remains of Marion’s royal family. The look on her face when I told her I was going to find a priest who could divorce us and a barrel of wine big enough to drown in.
And that was the last proper conversation we had, wasn’t it? All the way back in Marion?
Gods, I’m an idiot.
“It doesn’t look that fucked up to me,” Petrys offers.
“Hells,” I mutter as I bury my head in my hands. “I have so much to apologize for, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“So, I take it you two weren’t exactly talking in the servants’ hallway back in Vsenrog?”
“Fuck you,” I say through the cage of my fingers.
“Let me guess,” Petrys says. “You had too much to drink and made an absolute ass of yourself?”
“Well, yes” I admit. “And—”
“And?” Petrys interrupts. “Holy hells, there’s more?”
I pull in a deep breath and listen to the birds chattering all around us. Gods, I’d give anything to forget Ethiria, but the memory rises all the same. Panic and helplessness, like an iron clamp around my lungs. And my beautiful wife, singing prayers over her broken, useless husband.
“Shit,” I mutter, wiping my eyes. I turn to Petrys. “It happened again,” I admit, in a low rasp. “In Ethiria. I— I fell apart.”
Petrys looks at me with so much pity that I want to punch him. I turn my attention back to the grass under my boots as he clasps my shoulder.
Petrys has seen me like that before. He’s the only other person alive who has.
“Gods,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“It happened in front of her,” I say, through gritted teeth. “Damn it. She must hate me.”
Petrys laughs. It sounds a bit hollow in the soft sunlight.
“Why would she hate you for that?” he asks.
I shake my head. The answer is so obvious I can’t even find a way to put it into words.
“Look,” Petrys says. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her. She doesn’t hate you, asshole. These past few days, she looked like she was going to rip the whole palace down to find you.”
I sigh, then tip my head back against the tree. Leaves float and shimmer as my vision blurs.
“She loves you too,” Petrys says. “You know that, right?”
I open my mouth. But I can’t think of a way to reply that isn’t a lie.
Petrys eases back against an old, grizzled aspen tree and lets his hands rest on his knees. Wind makes the leaves above us rustle and sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
“Hells.” Petrys turns to me and raises an eyebrow. “What are you feeling guilty about now?”
I swallow hard. “The whole ballroom saw you leave,” I continue. “The guards will be looking for you as much as they’re looking for me.”
Petrys frowns like he’s not sure what point I’m trying to make.
“You can’t go back to Vsenrog,” I tell him. “Not soon. Maybe not ever.”
He snorts, then glances up at the sky.
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to destroy Vsenrog,” he says. “Why would you ever think I’d want to go back?”
“Do you?”
He doesn’t look at me, and it occurs to me for the first time how very little I know about my brother’s private life.
Every time we meet, we discuss the royal family, the movements of Vsenrog’s troops, the schemes of spies and assassins.
I have no idea what he might have left behind in that broken palace. Or who.
“Was there—” I hesitate, not sure exactly how to put this. “Someone special? In Vsenrog?”
Petrys sighs. He’s silent for so long that I think he’s not going to respond, and then he turns to me.
“No,” he says, softly. “There was. But not anymore. He wanted—something different, I suppose.”
“Shit,” I reply, before I can stop myself. “I’m sorry.”
Petrys shrugs, then blinks at the sky. “It was years ago.”
I shake my head. I can’t imagine the number of years would make any difference if I lost Lilias. I don’t think I’d ever recover.
Petrys shifts on the grass to face me.
“You want to talk about what happened last night?” he asks.
“Nope,” I reply.
Petrys just stares at me. I run my thumb over the hilt of the dagger he gave me and let my teeth sink into my lower lip. Somewhere overhead, a hawk lets out its shrill cry. I imagine the rabbits freezing in fear, tensing as the shadow of the predator passes overhead.
“I— I don’t know what happened,” I finally say. “It was—”
My throat closes around the word. It’s too much, too insane. But there’s no other word for it.
“Magic,” I acknowledge, through gritted teeth.
“Yeah,” Petrys says. “I know.”
“You what?”
Petrys raises his eyebrow again. “You knocked down the palace wall,” he says. “With your bare hands. What else could it possibly be?”
“Well, okay,” I say, forcing the words out. “But I don’t know how it happened. I don’t understand how it works.”
My hand drops to my thigh, and I press my fingers against the outline of the silver chain in my pocket. It doesn’t feel like anything anymore; that strange burning hiss of magic is gone. Still, I can’t bring myself to leave it behind.
Petrys snorts again, then meets my gaze. “You saved our lives,” he says. “I don’t give a shit how it works. What I want to know is, are you okay?”
I exhale slowly as the jumble of memories surges through my mind. Dust and ash. Screaming and crumbling stone. Magic burning through me, until I felt like the marrow of my bones was boiling.
I stare at my open palms, at the curl of my fingers. I expected my skin to be charred and blistered afterward. But I look the same. On the outside.
“I— I think so,” I stammer. “I don’t feel—broken.”
“No more broken than usual?”
My brother’s lips curl into his little half-smile.
“Asshole,” I reply, and I realize I’m smiling too.
“What’s going on up here?” a voice calls from behind us.
That strange expression flickers across Petrys’s face again, and I turn to see Gerard walking up the hill, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“It takes two Vsenrog soldiers to keep watch, huh?” Gerard says.
And then the bastard winks at Petrys. Actually winks. Petrys turns away, but not before I see his cheeks darken.
“Eat shit, Gerard,” I grumble as I pull myself to my feet.
Gerard squints at the valley. “There’s someone coming up the road,” he says in a lower voice.
I spin, then hold my hand up to shade my face.
“Damnit,” I mutter.
Gerard’s right. There’s a thin dust cloud rising above the road. It could be nothing. Travelers, traders, a farmer moving his flock.
Or it could be a patrol from Vsenrog looking for the asshole who broke the ballroom last night.
Gerard claps me on the back, and I flinch.
“Looks like it’s time to go,” he says. “Hey, maybe tomorrow I should be on watch, huh?”