Chapter 16 #2
“I think you’re confused. This place has confused you,” she said, her eyes sweeping upward to find his. “I don’t know what Ryquin said or did because you won’t tell me, but I saw what Lexsea was doing to you, the hold she had on you. Controlling you.”
Jesstin didn’t want to think about that woman ever again. All he’d wanted was for her to stop touching him. The whole thing made him feel weak, and standing in the heat of Elloven’s judgment, he refused to feel that way any longer. “You need to learn to read people better.”
“Do I?”
“I’d say, or you’d know I fucked her.”
Her exhale was abrupt.
“I fucked her because I wanted her. Because she’s stunning. Have you looked at her?”
Elloven lowered, shrinking. He wanted to take it back, tell her it wasn’t true, and it was the least cruel thing he’d said that night.
It was a lie, a lie against his own ethics, and it somehow cheapened what Lexsea had done to him, which was more than just uncomfortable; it was wrong.
Even thinking about it made him want to retch.
“Well,” she said evenly. Her hands returned to her sides. She eased off. “If you’d have broken our bond tonight, then you’d be free to have her whenever you want.”
“I already can.”
“You’d be free of me,” she replied, sweeping him with indignant ferocity. “And I’d be... free.”
“No,” Jesstin said, laughing. “No, darling, they’ll never let you be free.
Neither will he, if he’s allowed back into your life.
But that’s what you need, isn’t it, for the cycle to continue?
” He shoved off the wall, forcing her to back up with each step he took.
Her bravado dimmed as they moved, daring him to finish the thought.
He warred within himself whether he should, knowing he would regardless, because it had to end, and it had to end now.
“Because if no one’s there to hurt little Elloven, then who is she? Do you even know?”
Elloven brought her hands up like a shield. Her mouth fought between words and silence.
Jesstin’s resentment abated just long enough to acknowledge how far he’d gone.
The things he’d said to her that night could never be unsaid.
The hurt he’d driven into her might never heal.
Had there been a mirror, he’d have seen Sestinn Edevane grinning back at him.
Was it better, then, to accept his nature?
To see himself for who he really was, to stop pretending?
That was the trouble with words said in the heat of anger.
They might be cruel, but they were the most honest someone would ever be, with themselves or others.
There was a cost to truth, and he was already paying it as the gulf between them widened, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop the sundering, even if he wanted to.
A part of him did. A part of him wanted to walk her all the way to the other wall, tangle his hands in her matted hair, and crush his lips to hers until neither of them could breathe.
But he was not that man, and she was not that woman, and the bond between them had run its course.
“My mother, you know, she...” Elloven paused to get a hold on her shaky breaths. It was a moment before she continued. “Esme, my mother, told me something about you before we left. She said you...”
“What about me?” Jesstin demanded.
“She said ‘you will learn something about Jesstin that will bid you forsake him, a great treachery that will send you to your knees.’”
Jesstin’s blood cooled. There was only one great treachery of which Esmeray Hawthorne would bear any concern, and if she’d known... If she’d known about Gennady, Jesstin would not be standing there.
“She warned me.” Elloven laughed and wiped her face, sniffling.
“And still I persisted, didn’t I? Believing the best in you.
Because that’s who I am, the ‘perpetual victim’ who refuses to confront her bullies because she enjoys the abuse.
Because she cannot possibly know who she is if someone isn’t grinding their fists into her lower back or raping her against a tree with a knife pressed to her throat or shoving searing heat into her birthmark because he couldn’t bear for her to have even one thing that was just her own.
She couldn’t possibly have just wanted to hold onto even one single shred of the humanity that separated her from the fiends, suffering instead of becoming one.
No, she endured it because she liked it, because only through inviting others to demolish her could she find any semblance of self.
” She turned and faced the wall. A light, desperate moan escaped her lips as her shoulders rose hard and fell harder.
Every barb he’d flung at her exploded back at him. Why had he needed to hurt her so thoroughly?
It’s the only way she’ll leave without you.
“Take the bed tonight. Go. Go on.” Her voice cracked, strained. When Jesstin didn’t move, she repeated the order as a scream. “GO!”
He ducked when the croft shook. Dust filtered through the rafters, sifting into lines on the floor. “Sending me a nightmare?” He laughed. She wouldn’t hurt him. She should, and he fucking deserved it, but she wouldn’t. “We both know you only act when it’s too late to matter.”
“Just... go.”
The one good decision he’d made that night was ending it there.
Jesstin trudged up the stairs, each step harder than the last. All he’d wanted was some time alone to think, and he’d imploded both of their lives instead.
The heaviness sent him sprawling into the bed, and he was out before he could find a comfortable position.
Sesto had no earthly idea how to follow through on Jesstin’s request, nor whether he even should.
It had sounded more like a demand, but no Skylark had ever made demands of him.
Jesstin’s plea came from deep love and trust. He had been a shy boy and was now a not-very-forthcoming man, so anytime he laid his vulnerability in front of Sesto, Sesto accepted it with the care and reverence it deserved.
Simply put, Jesstin had asked Sesto because he loved him.
Sesto’s relationship with the family was the most fulfilling part of his life.
Rhiain would slay a village for him. Asterin trusted his insight and often relied on it.
The children called him “Uncle Sesto,” and playing their strange games were often the brightest moments of his day.
And Jesstin... It was a relationship that had begun similar to the one he had with Rhiain and Asterin’s children, but as Jesstin aged—and his secrets with him—it was Sesto Jesstin confided in.
Sesto he trusted with his deepest, darkest secrets and shame.
Sesto he’d come to when he’d needed help with a delicate matter no one could ever know about.
In turn, Sesto had felt safe sharing parts of himself he hadn’t even revealed to his dear Rhiain. And though Jesstin’s advice was often unhinged and irrational, it was to him Sesto confided in the most. Now, when he most needed to, he could not.
He found himself moving toward the garish sept, where the great evils of the dark land were born and reared.
Why, he could not say. He hardly knew Daire, despite the kinship that had blossomed between them over the long evening, the craved connection with someone who understood the life of a social pariah.
Did Daire possess the same need for mutuality?
Would he offer sincere counsel or betray him to his wicked master?
Was he about to do the stupidest thing he’d ever done by opening up to Ryquin’s consort?
Sesto had relied upon his instincts to keep him alive longer than fate had intended, and he would not ignore them now.
Daire had told him about the sloping hill on the east side of the dome, which spiraled into the lower bowels of the mammoth structure.
It was where the necromancers lived, except Daire, but Daire would not be sleeping with his master that night.
Ryquin had business, and whenever he was occupied, he ordered Daire to retire to the bowels of the sept.
The spiral path was longer than he’d envisioned, and he considered he’d taken a wrong turn into the netherworld until he saw the esguards. One slept against the frame of a large wooden door. The other tossed dice into the air and watched them settle on the ground.
“Pardon me.” Sesto straightened, an instinctual move to make himself seem taller. It was a habit he’d never been able to break despite knowing it did nothing but highlight the matter. “I’m here to visit one of the necromancers.”
The esguard didn’t even look up from his game. He nudged the sleeping one hard enough to knock him sideways, then gestured at the door.
My, what a warm welcome. Sesto didn’t wait for them to take a closer look and decide he warranted interrogation.
He stepped inside and into the largest room he’d ever been in.
All around were bedrolls and cots, separated by nothing except space.
The ceilings stretched so high, he had to squint to make out the detail in the frescoes, which explained the lengthy spiral, but how far under the ground were they?
If he stopped to count the candles burning along all the walls, dangling from the high ceiling, and set hazardously near beds, he’d be in Rivenholde for another fortnight, and that was a fortnight too long.
But there were so many people. He refused to call them necromancers, for the same reason he never thought of himself as a eunuch; they’d been segregated for what they were, and that had never been so starkly clear until Sesto, dumbfounded, saw them all crushed in like refugees.
No.
Slaves.
Ryquin might be the one with a necromancer fetish, but Estelar was pretor, and no matter what else was true, he couldn’t be unaware of what was happening in the bowels of his own sept.
Tears threatened, but Sesto hadn’t the time for them. If he was going to get Elloven out of Rivenholde, he first needed to ensure Jesstin wouldn’t martyr himself to make it happen.