Chapter 33 #3
“Bullshit.” Flint sneered. “Just wanted to show off his keen eyes. Just wanted to do a grand gesture to impress snot-nosed urchins. Took Lyell’s hands in his own, asked his name and thanked him before all.
Then climbed back into his carriage and rolled away, with all his guards and his sugared almonds and his toys, and left Lyell standing on the grass with Master Aldwin’s eyes on the back of his neck. ”
The lantern guttered, and Richard felt the slow, sick unspooling of the next words before Flint said them.
“Master Aldwin locked Lyell in the cellar that afternoon,” Flint said.
“By the time Edith and I had pried our way down to him with a stolen key, there was a buyer on the road from Estara already. We tried to run. The three of us. Got as far as the orchard wall. Master Aldwin’s guards were already there.
They dragged us back to the front yard, and Master Aldwin rallied the other children in the house to watch.
He started with Lyell. Held Lyell’s head down and laid both palms over his eyes. By the time Master Aldwin took his hands away, the eyes were—” He gestured vaguely at his own face. “Cooked. Like eggs. Utterly blind.”
“Flint—” Richard could not form the sentence. He stared at the man, and Flint gazed back at him with that same easy, terrible smile. Outside, Daisy was laughing at something, and hearing it made the urge to vomit all the stronger.
“Edith went for Master Aldwin with her teeth. Brave fool—she always was the fiercest fighter of us three.” A muscle ticked in Flint’s cheek.
“He set fire to her skirts. Just the hem, to make her dance. But the wind caught it, and the skirt went up faster than he’d bargained.
By the time someone threw a blanket on her, it had burned her legs from ankle to hip.
The skin took years to heal. Some of it never did.
There’s damage that healed wrong, and there are parts of her that do not feel as they should.
She and Lyell invented a different door to pleasure, in the end.
Through magic and patience, we three managed.
But the front of that door is closed for good. ”
Richard winced, his nails digging into his palms.
“And me, well.” Flint smiled, and the scarred half of his face pulled crookedly with it.
“I’d charged Master Aldwin while he was busy with Edith.
Got two good blows in before his men caught my arms. Master Aldwin said it’d be a shame to waste a face like mine, but lessons must be lessons.
So they held me down on the grass—on Lyell’s bluebells, mind—and Master Aldwin clamped his hand here.
” He touched the cheek. “He’d taught us a valuable lesson, he said afterwards.
And he was right, in a manner. Suffice it to say that the next six years of our lives were not the soft sort.
We left at eighteen, the three of us. Found the road.
Found each other—properly. Built our Guild.
Built a life. We had plans for Aldwin once we’d mustered enough strength.
” Flint sniffed. “But the gods got there first. Died peacefully in his bed of old age. Bastard till the end, and we were robbed of our revenge.”
“Those six years—” Richard swallowed hard. “I can hear your story.”
“Some stories need no telling, handsome.” Flint’s voice was gentle.
He reached across Kaelen’s bedroll and tapped the back of Richard’s hand with two fingers.
“Especially not to a man with no taste for it. You’ve gone the colour of milk, you have, but there’s no need for it.
It’s an old wound, and I don’t bleed from it any longer.
I only tell it because you asked, and because I find you, against my better judgement, rather difficult to refuse. ”
The wagon flap snapped open.
Kaelen ducked through it, marked with exhaustion. His hair was damp at the temples, and dust smeared his cheekbones. He paused with his hand on the flap and took in the sight—Richard and Flint facing each other, Flint’s fingers still resting on Richard’s hand.
A frown wrinkled Kaelen’s brow as he let the flap fall behind him. “What is this?”
“Ah, the labouring hero returns.” Flint stretched. “Just in the nick, my friend. Handsome and I were about to have ourselves a thorough snog.”
Kaelen’s face went through a peculiar mix of colours, and a vein in his temple throbbed.
Richard glanced at Flint. The confession now painted the man in a new light. He’d presumed already there’d been horrors Flint and his lovers had endured. But he’d never thought of his part in it.
And it’d occurred under his father’s rule. Perhaps it still did under his own.
How well he’d been shielded to be so oblivious.
“He is only jesting, Kaelen,” Richard said quietly. “We were talking. Come and rest. You look tired.”
The outrage in Kaelen’s face drained away. He glowered at Flint, then gave Richard a sheepish smile. “It is you, I believe, who has had the more taxing day. The children are still laughing about a certain pie.”
“Yes. Those miscreants.” Richard smirked. “They shall not see what comes their way tomorrow.”