He thought she might speak again and waited. They sat in silence for several minutes. He watched her close her eyes and he took another breath. This was harder than he had expected.
“The real reason I never told her,” Hadrian went on, his own voice sounding awkward to him, odd and off key, “if I am honest with myself, is that I’m scared.”
She rolled her head to look at him with a sidelong glance. “Scared? You? Really?”
“I guess I was afraid she’d laugh at me. Or worse, become angry and hate me. That’s the worst thing I can think of—that she would hate me. I’m not sure I could live with that. You see, I’m very much in love with her, and I’d rather be drawn and quartered than have her hate me.”
He watched as Arista’s shoulders sank. Her eyes drifted from his face, and her mouth tightened. “Sounds like a lucky woman. It’s a shame she’s not here now. There’s not much to lose at this point. It could give you the courage to tell her, knowing that if she hates you, you’ll not have to endure the pain for long.”
Hadrian smiled and nodded.
Arista took a breath and sat up. “Do I know her?” She cringed again, as if expecting to be struck.
Hadrian sighed heavily.
“What?” she asked. “I do know her, don’t I? You would have told me her name by now if I didn’t. Oh come on. It hardly seems worth keeping the secret at this point.”
“That’s it exactly,” he said. “The reason I was thinking all this is because…” He paused, looking into her eyes. They were like pools he was preparing to jump into without knowing the temperature of the water. He braced himself for the shock. “The one thing I regret the most in my life is the one thing I can still change before it’s too late.”
Arista narrowed her eyes at him. She tilted her head slightly the way a dog might when it heard an odd sound. “But how are you going to—” She stopped.
Her mouth closed and she stared at him without speaking, without moving. Hadrian was not certain she was still breathing.
Slowly her lower lip began to tremble. It started there and he watched as the tremor worked its way down her neck to her shoulders, shaking her body so that her hair quivered. Without warning tears spilled down her cheeks. Still she did not speak, she did not move, but the robe changed from blue to bright purple, surrounding both of them with light.
What does that mean?
“Arista?” he whispered fearfully. The look on her face was unfathomable.
Fear? Shock? Remorse? What is it?
He desperately needed to know. He had just thrown himself off a cliff and could not see the bottom.
“Are you upset?” he asked. “Please don’t be mad—don’t hate me. I don’t want to die with you hating me. This is exactly why I never said anything. I was afraid that—”
Her fingers came up to his lips and gently pressed them shut.
“Shh,” she managed to utter as she continued to cry, her eyes never leaving his face.
She took his hands in hers and squeezed. “I don’t hate you,” she whispered. “I just—I—” She bit her lip.
“What!” Hadrian said in desperation, his eyes wide, trying to see everything, searching for any clue. She was torturing him on purpose—he knew it.
“This is going to sound really stupid,” she told him, shaking her head slowly.
“I don’t care—say it. Whatever it is, just say it!”
“I—” She laughed a little. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my entire life than I am right now.”
It was his turn to stare. His mouth opened but his mind could not supply words. He was lost in her eyes and realized he could breathe once more.
“If you knew that I—how much I hoped—” She tilted her head down so that her hair hid her face. “I never thought that you saw me as anything more than a—a job.” She raised her head and sniffled. “And the way you and Royce talked about nobles…”
Hadrian noticed his heart was beating again. It pounded in his chest, and despite the chill in the crypt, his shirt was soaked with sweat, his hands trembling.
“We’re gonna die here,” she told him, and abruptly started laughing. “But suddenly I don’t care anymore. I never thought I could be so happy.”
This got him laughing too. Somewhere inside him, relief and joy were mixing together to create an intoxicant more powerful than any liquor. He felt drunk, dizzy, and—more than ever before—alive.
“I feel—I feel so…” She laughed once and looked embarrassed.
“What?” he asked, reaching up and wiping the tears from her cheeks.
“It’s like I’m not buried alive in a crypt anymore. It’s like—like I just came home.”
“For the first time,” he added.
“Yes,” she said, and tears began anew.
He reached out. She fell into him, and he closed his arms around her. She felt so small. She had always been such a force that he had never imagined she could feel so delicate—so fragile. He could die now. He laid his head back on the stone, taking in a breath and feeling the wonderful sensation of her head riding up and down on his chest.
Then they heard the rock begin to shatter.
No one could see anything and they gathered around the light of Arista’s robe as she and Hadrian came out of the alcove. The bright purple light shifted to white, revealing everyone’s faces, making them look pale and ghostly.
“What’s going on?” Hadrian asked as another round of thunderous ripping occurred. The noise came from the direction of the Vault of Days, the sound bouncing around the stone walls.
“I don’t know. Maybe the Ghazel are tunneling in,” Mauvin replied; then he narrowed his eyes at Arista. “Are you all right?”
“Me?” Arista said, smiling. “Yeah, I’m great.”
Mauvin looked confused but shrugged. “Should we barricade?”
“What’s the point?” Hadrian replied. “If they can cut through that rubble, a few golden chairs aren’t going to stop them.”
“So what are we going to do?” Gaunt asked.
Hadrian looked around, mentally tallying the faces. “Where’s Royce?”
Around the circle of light of Arista’s robe were Myron, Magnus, Gaunt, Mauvin, Arista, and Hadrian. Royce was nowhere to be seen. Hadrian turned toward the sound and began walking. Behind him, the others followed. When he reached the Vault of Days, he paused, and together with Arista he carefully entered the room.
“Where is it?” Hadrian asked no one in particular.
“Where’s what?” Mauvin said.
“The creature, it’s not in the corner anymore.”
“It’s not?” Gaunt said fearfully. “It ate him!”