Chapter 8
Taran had lost his fine cloak and tunic somewhere, but he seemed in a good mood nonetheless, considering the dirt and jagged claw marks that covered him all the way up past his elbows. Marit wasn’t with him.
He gave my seat on the floor a curious glance as he went to one of the tiled pools to scrub his arms clean, but he didn’t immediately speak.
“Did you kill them?” I asked when the silence began to press on me. “Those two Fallen, I mean.”
Without looking at me, Taran tipped his head to the side in a half shrug, like he wasn’t totally sure. “Time will tell. But they’re not bothering anyone while buried under Genna’s rhododendron bushes.”
He pulled a towel out of a wooden cabinet and fastidiously dried himself off, wincing in elaborate disappointment when he noticed a spot of blood on his trousers. Sighing, he crossed the room to a clothing chest and rooted through it, eventually taking out a simple pair of linen drawers.
Even though I saw his hands move to the laces at his hips, I was not prepared for him to let everything drop to the floor. I closed my eyes and turned away just in time to avoid seeing more than a flash of muscular thigh. My cheeks heated as I reflexively clapped my hands over my eyes.
Bodies. I’d seen hundreds of bodies, of all shapes and sizes. Sick bodies, healthy bodies, live and dead ones, babies and elderly. I knew in detail how they functioned and how I could fix them. I wasn’t precious about nudity.
But Taran had always been precious about me.
“I see you have the infamous delicacy of Wesha’s priests, at least,” he observed, voice dripping with amusement. “Though I might have expected you to wash up when you had the chance.”
Was he calling me dirty?
As I hadn’t bathed since I’d sailed across an ocean, was thrown onto a burning altar, and was thereafter chased by Fallen through the gardens of the immortals, all on his account, I did not look entirely presentable, but he’d previously considered my grooming habits to be not only unobjectionable but the absolute height of sophistication for anyone fighting a civil war.
I opened my eyes to glare at him, but he was still dressing, expression challenging as he tied the waistband of his underwear.
“My first impulse upon being locked up was not to take my clothes off.” My voice was weaker than I would have liked.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.” He said it easily, but the way he said it bothered me—there was a new assumption in his voice that people would be afraid of him. He had the confidence of a warrior, the lazy energy of a predator at rest.
I’d always thought he was just very tall, and lean because of that.
But he’d filled out since I last saw him.
The heavier muscle along his arms and shoulders matched the length of his legs and gave an impression of size and power to match.
He was simply not built along ordinary human proportions—he had to have been starving on our diet of charred rabbit and boiled barley mush to ever look like he was.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I retorted, and it might have been more convincing if I’d said it in more than a whisper. He was not convinced, and he gave me a close-mouthed smile to say as much.
Once dressed, he walked out of the room, returning with my stone knife in his hand, the blade chipped and filthy. He squatted in front of me and dangled the knife between finger and thumb.
“So, who were you planning to kill?” he asked, trying the tip of the blade until a shimmering dot of blood formed on the pad of his finger. I didn’t think it was a real question until his bright emerald eyes lifted to mine for the answer.
“I didn’t come here to kill anyone.”
At his look of disbelief, I wrapped my arms around myself tighter. He’d just killed two immortals with the attitude of a man doing a mildly unpleasant chore.
“You were carrying a stone knife on your belt. Who was it for?”
“Every maiden-priest carried knives like that,” I insisted, but his lower lip remained stiff with skepticism.
“This is going to take forever,” he sighed, tilting his head to the right side. “Swear that you aren’t lying. Give me your vow.”
“What? No.” I was so offended by the request that my rejection came out as a snort. He’d lied to me for three years.
Taran smiled, the expression not reaching his eyes. “Let me rephrase. You’re going to swear that you won’t lie to me, or I’ll turn you out of this palace. You look like a five-course dinner for any of Death’s Fallen still alive in the City.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said, studying his face for tells.
“Try me.”
The idea that Taran would ever do anything to risk my life was too unthinkable to stick long in my mind, but his eyes glinted like a metal blade.
This wasn’t the same man. The man I loved was dead, and if Awi was right, this immortal had been crafted anew by the Allmother.
He could be different. He could be terrible, a merciless killer.
“I vow that every word I speak to you will be true,” I finally said, wincing at the now-routine twist in my soul as the promise turned irrevocable. The quick flash of his dimples indicated that he’d caught the nuances of my wording—I didn’t have to tell him anything—but he relaxed.
“I didn’t come here to kill anyone,” I repeated, and he nodded in satisfaction.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, gesturing with the knife.
“A surgical blade.”
“Did you make it?”
I shook my head. The rainbow obsidian came from a quarry on sacred Mount Degom, but I’d never been.
“If you’re not here to murder someone off Wesha’s long list of people who have it coming, what are you doing here, then…?” Taran inclined his head inquisitively as his voice trailed off, and I realized he wanted my name.
“Iona,” I said after letting the silence stretch too long. I had to introduce myself to him for the second time. I had to tell my betrothed my name. “Iona ter Wesha.”
“Iona,” he repeated, testing my name in his mouth, though he’d called me nightingale from the first time he’d heard me sing. I searched his face for some glimmer of recognition, some faint hint that he’d heard my name before, but his green stare was cool.
“What are you doing here, Iona?”
I’d come here for him. But if Awi was right about what he’d been doing in the mortal world, I was lucky he hadn’t found it convenient to murder me.
“I didn’t mean to come here. I sailed from the mortal world to ask Wesha for a boon.”
“A bad idea. The Stoneborn don’t do anything for free, Wesha least of all.”
“I didn’t think she’d do it for free. I was her last priest.”
“What did you want, then?”
“I—I wanted my betrothed back. He…died a few months ago.” My voice cracked when I spoke.
It made my vow throb in my chest to speak of him in the third person, but it was just barely acceptable to the nearly sentient force of my promise.
I couldn’t let Taran know that I knew him, not if he’d gone to quash our rebellion.
Taran lifted one eyebrow, attitude now mildly interested.
“I thought Wesha’s priests were celibate?”
Any reply stuck in my throat until I swallowed the shame of it, because yes, in retrospect, it was always ridiculous that I had thought I’d marry him. “I never took my final vows to Wesha. The rebellion broke out, and Death started hunting us. The rest are dead.”
“Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. What was Wesha’s price for your man?”
I blinked at him, hesitating. I was rapidly reevaluating everything I’d thought I knew about his allegiances. What he cared about. And I only realized now that Wesha hadn’t extracted any price from me at all. “You. I promised that I’d bring you to her.”
“Me? You vowed that you’d bring me to the Painted Tower?” Taran laughed in a rough bark. He stood and paced a few feet away. There was a brief flash of emotion on his face, quickly suppressed under that mask of bored amusement he now wore. “No wonder you looked so happy to see me.”
He wheeled around and crouched back down, closer than before. There was an electric aura to his presence that made my heart pound even while broken. He’d always been strong enough to be dangerous—I’d just never thought before this moment that he might be dangerous to me.
“Did she say what she wanted with me?” he asked, words clipped.
“No. Nothing. She didn’t tell me anything. I thought you were mortal,” I said, banked anger flaring up again.
He’d lied. He’d lied over and over. To me, to everyone. Maybe he’d secretly undermined us. Maybe nothing was what I’d thought.
“Are you sure there was nothing else?” Taran asked intently.
I shook my head.
“It sounded…easy,” I said, remembering. “I would have done anything she asked. And all she asked was that I bring you to her. I thought I’d get you from the Underworld, then go home.” I bent my head forward, heart twisting painfully.
I should have known better. Like he said, the gods did nothing for free.
His gaze softened in response to my slump, or perhaps it was only that the possibility of violence retreated. After a moment, he stood and put his hands on his hips.
“Iona ter Wesha,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, you’re not Wesha’s anymore. Iona. I suppose I’ll put you in the solar for now.”
“What?” I was startled out of my moment of deep self-pity.
“I’ll bring in some furnishings,” he said, gesturing toward another door off the lavish front room. “But you can sleep on the pink couch tonight. Bathe first, please, I don’t want dust on the cushions.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, climbing off the ground.
Taran smiled brightly. “It seems you’ll be staying. Never had a priest before, but I’ll accept Wesha’s gift despite the spirit in which it…well, you were given.”
“What?” I protested again.
With a playful, insincere gesture, Taran tapped me on my forehead with one fingertip. “You are Wesha’s pretty little trap, darling, one which I will not be falling into. But I’m happy to steal the bait, found my own temple.”