Chapter 23 #2
“Go on! Do it, you dickless bastard!” Buck thundered, twisting in Bastion’s grip. His remaining hand clamped around his severed arm. “What are you waiting for?”
Ulla rose out of the water, the very picture of a vengeful goddess.
She stepped onto the rock, her hair clinging to her like a slice of night.
She caught and held Buck’s gaze. Every muscle in his body went rigid, as through the hand clenching his hair, Basiton could feel Buck’s descending terror that mortality had caught up with him.
He leaned down and whispered in Buck’s ear. “Her.”
The vein beneath Bastion’s blade jumped so hard he could practically feel it pulse through the hilt. Buck began to struggle, clawing with his single hand. Bastion pressed his sword more firmly into the pirate’s neck, throwing everything he had into holding the bastard in place.
Bastion straightened, meeting Ulla’s eyes. Her slitted pupils were so narrow they were almost invisible, giving her a terrifying, otherworldly look. Bastion had enough wherewithal to think there was nothing more beautiful than a woman about to exact vengeance.
He let his sword slide off Buck’s shoulder and pulled his head back, baring the pirate’s fleshy throat.
Wild-eyed, Buck spewed a string of expletives, each more foul than the last. Ulla didn’t hear him.
She was looking at Bastion, her expression unreadable.
But through the bond, tempered rage boiled.
Nothing would give him more pleasure than to see it unleashed.
Bastion nodded.
And Ulla ripped Buck’s throat out.
Blood sprayed her. Vibrant red stained her skin and clothes, softening as it combined with the rivulets of water racing towards the ground.
A hollow gurgle pumped more blood into the air like a macabre fountain.
Bastion stared at Ulla as Buck clawed at his neck.
Anger and relief seeped through the bond, as nebulous as mist. Her chest rose and fell, her breathing deep and even, though her nostrils flared.
On one side of her mouth, a fang peeked out.
Buck went slack as the life left his body. He slumped to the side, and Bastion let him fall. He put a hand over the wound in his side. He didn’t have the energy to speak, so he pushed one thought through the bond.
You’re safe.
__________
It took hours to clear the scene.
Hanniel arrived with a dozen royal guards shortly after Buck’s death. Half the king’s council were with him, including Lord Kyrith, Lawrence, and Lyanthis. Apparently, they’d seen everything from the Rainbow overhead.
Hanniel’s men spread out to secure the area while the captain examined the body. The council members argued until Kyrith silenced them, drawing everyone away from the waterfall where they could hear better.
The questions came in earnest, then.
Every explanation Bastion gave had to be repeated, the emphasis varying from questioner to questioner.
Hanniel and Kyrith were most concerned with security, Lawrence got hung up on what Buck had said about Visara, and Lyanthis wanted to know what any of this had to do with his daughter in the first place.
Taro was nowhere to be found.
Bastion continued to answer questions while Ulla stopped the bleeding at his side.
His eyes kept drifting back to her and the blood staining her front.
A deepening frown spread across Lyanthis’s face, but he listened without interruption.
Bastion’s responses came slower and slower, until finally, Lawrence intervened.
“That’s enough for now,” he said, shooing the council members away. “Bastion is wounded. There will be time for more questions later.”
He slung Bastion’s arm over his shoulders. Bastion pinched his eyes shut with a grimace, and Lawrence hauled him to his feet. His nerves sang, lighting up his exhausted muscles and darkening bruises. It took all his effort to stay upright, as fatigued as a thirsty plant on a hot day.
“Can you finish up here?” Lawrence asked Kyrith. The commander nodded. “I’ll see Bastion to his room.”
Bastion looked at Ulla. He couldn’t decipher her expression, and regret made him reluctant to leave. He was desperate to tell her everything he couldn’t say, but she turned away. The bond was silent, like an abandoned room in his heart.
A flash of triumph on Lyanthis’s face was the last thing Bastion saw before Lawrence shepherded him away.
Somehow, they made it back up to the university and across the Rainbow.
Bastion replayed the heartbreak, the battle, every stupid moment again and again. He couldn’t stop the raw feelings slicing through him.
Minato met them at the bottom of the grand staircase. He gave Lawrence an astonished look, but took Bastion’s other arm and slung it over his head. By the time they reached his room, sweat had soaked his whole body.
“Leave me,” he croaked as they lowered him onto his bed.
The pair glanced at each other. Without a word, Lawrence turned and left. Minato remained, watching Bastion with a measure of disdain.
“I said leave,” Bastion said.
“No.”
He scowled at the Yvri.
“I’m not in the mood to be chastised.”
“Your wound needs to be tended. You need food. And fresh clothes,” Minato said. “Where are your things?”
Bastions waved vaguely at a chair by the fireplace, then dropped his face into his palm.
The sound of rummaging came to him, and a moment later, a clean shirt landed beside him. Water poured from a pitcher, an everyday sound that helped remind him he was alive.
“Take this off,” Minato ordered, waving a finger at his torn and bloody top. He had a swollen sponge in his other hand, and a basin of water now occupied the side table. Bastion glared at him, but obeyed.
The laces of his doublet came undone slowly, like roots clinging to the earth. He struggled, grimacing as he peeled it off. Something fell to the floor with a wet smack!
His Account.
Bastion stared at it like it might explode.
He would have thrown the damn thing across the room if he could reach it. Instead, he turned away and began to wrestle with his shirt, too.
The garment clung to him, damp and gritty and stinking. Bastion clenched his teeth. His side throbbed, and the smell made his stomach buck, taking him right back to the hot springs.
When he finally shed it, he threw it on the ground and flopped onto his back.
Minato sighed. “Nammu help me.”
The Yvri didn’t say anything else. He simply moved Bastion’s arm and began to minister to him.
The cold sponge wiped away the evidence of the fight. Goosebumps prickled every inch of exposed skin, pinpointing every stinging scrape and bruise. Ulla might have closed up the wound in his side, but it still hurt.
All of that paled in comparison to the look in her eyes that haunted Bastion. The hope he’d extinguished with only a few words. He’d vowed to protect her, so why did it feel like he’d cut out her heart just to see what it looked like?
Bastion closed his burning eyes.
“I’ve lost her,” he whispered.
Minato stilled.
“No, you haven’t.”
Tears began to flow, a torrent that refused to be dammed. They streamed down his cheeks, collecting along his ears and mingling with the dried sweat crusted in his hair. Bastion shook his head.
“No, you haven’t,” Minato repeated.
Bastion sat up. “You don’t understand! I took everything I know about her, everything I’ve witnessed, admired, loved… been in awe of, and threw it in her face! I may as well have told her I know better! I’m as worthless as every other man in her life. Maybe worse!”
Minato straightened slowly. “That is… particularly insightful.”
“Don’t mock me,” Bastion sneered.
“I’m not.” Minato dropped the sponge into the basin with a plop! From a table beside the fireplace, he retrieved a bottle of liquor and a clean cloth.
“Ulla is a mirror,” Minato said as he returned to Bastion’s side and splashed liquor onto the cloth.
None too gently, the Yvri began to disinfect the cuts and scrapes littering Bastion’s body.
“When the bond begins to form, there’s a period of exposure.
The lies we tell ourselves are burned away, and the other is able to see everything we would rather ignore.
Not every couple makes it through this stage.
It’s why the bond is so rare, so coveted. ”
“I failed that test too, then,” Bastion muttered.
“Did you?” Minato mused. “Every step of the way you’ve showed her who you are, protected her. You even gave her one of the highest honors, and let her have the killing blow. Death is a mirror, too.”
“I didn’t go there to protect her,” Bastion said. “I went to end things. To free her of any attachment.”
Minato’s jaw fell open.
“That’s why you went after her!?” he exclaimed. He dragged his hand across his face with a groan. “You poor, stupid boy. I never said don’t be with her. I merely wanted you to consider the consequences!”
Bastion stared at Minato for a long, long moment.
Was he hallucinating? He recalled their conversation on the stairs at Moonwatch, turning it over in his memory, looking for the lie.
Then, a typhoon of emotions hit Bastion, each one swirling around him like wreckage.
He hadn’t really been thinking of Ulla, had he?
He’d been thinking of himself and the reasons she was better off without him.
“You didn’t, did you?”
Minato shook his head. “I only challenged you. I wanted to make sure you were thinking with your head and not your cock.”
A hot flame flooded Bastion’s face. “I would nev–”
“You’re a man,” Minato cut him off, his tone droll.
“Of course you would. We’ve all been there.
But this isn’t some fleeting infatuation.
This is the bond, Bastion. We’re talking about every thought, every dream, every insecurity laid out before the other.
All the darkest and brightest parts of yourself.
To be bonded is to be seen. There is no hiding. ”
He seized Bastion’s face and dabbed the cloth against his temple.