“All the while we were following the cat up here,” said Alistair, “I told myself I wouldn’t breathe a word. I told myself to let it go, to let the past be what it was, to think no more of it. After all, we’re probably all of us going to die. Me now; you, soon enough.”
She heard his voice shake. She could guess at every word that rained down upon her head, and she wanted to cower. At a command from him she might have flung herself from the mountain, so deep was her shame! Traitor. Liar. Demon’s minion. Nothing he could call her was as bad as what she called herself.
“I’m going into that dark,” Alistair said, “and I know what end I’ll meet. You’re off on a death march yourself after all those dragon-eaten priestesses. And I think to myself, this is it. This is where heroes either declare themselves or go home. Well, I’m not going home.”
His fists clenched and she wondered if he would strike her and if she would have the gall to ward off his blow.
“Look,” he said, “you can’t understand me, so I’m going to say this the simplest way I know how.”
The next moment he took her by the shoulders. Because she could not help wincing away, the first kiss he gave her landed awkwardly on the side of her mouth, causing him to catch her face and shift her into a better angle. Her limbs went to stone and her heart stopped beating.
Then he was looking down at her. He blinked once and let her go. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
Before she could draw breath, he was climbing back up to the cave and soon would be swallowed.
“Why did you do that?” Mouse cried and nearly fell over herself scrambling after him. “Why didn’t you hit me?”
He was at the cave mouth now. He was inside. The red of his hair gleamed in the sunlight and then vanished. Mouse fell on her hands and knees, cutting her palms, but was up again in a moment, standing on the brink of that darkness and shouting, “You had no right to do that, you pale-faced dog of a bullying man!”
Eanrin, leaning with his shoulder against the rock of the cave opening, called down into the dark, “She says your kisses are like drops of summer rain on a parched and thirsty land.”
Alistair’s voice carried up. “I don’t want to hear!”
“Cat! Cat!” Mouse cried, turning to Eanrin. “Tell him I hope he trips in the dark and breaks that stupid face of his! I’d like to see him try to kiss me again!”
“She says,” Eanrin called into the black, “she’d like to see you try to kiss her again.”
“I’m not listening” came Alistair’s voice, faint from the shadows.
“Tell him I hate the sight of him!”
“And she loves you.”
There was no answer. Alistair was gone.
Mouse stood breathing hard, tears brimming in her eyes. She pressed a hand to her heart. Why did it beat so fast? Fury, most likely.
“Did you tell him, cat?” She gulped, anxious to disguise the tremor in her voice. “Did you tell him right?”
“I told him, girl,” Eanrin said with a cattish smile. “I told him better than you could yourself.”
11
I DO NOT WELL REMEMBER WHAT TRANSPIRED after that. I lay for a time exposed and mindless upon that mountain. I did not know myself, and when Amarok the Wolf Lord came to me, I did not know him either. He told me I was a mortal, and I believed him. He told me that he loved me, that I loved him in return, and I believed this as well.
He, a mere Faerie-shifter, not a king, not a lord! Master of a stolen demesne carved from the mortals’ world and peopled with slaves who called him “god.” And I believed him a god as well, and I worshipped him, and I bore his monstrous children.
Twins. Dogs.
She could almost believe she was alone in the world, so quiet was Gaheris Castle at night. Even the breaking of stone below was stilled, and the crack of the whips as the slaves were shuffled off to sleeping quarters to steal a few precious hours.
Not Leta. She lit the few candles provided for her and continued searching the documents. It felt hopeless, but better to work than to sit in the darkness and be afraid. So she lit candle after candle, her eyes burning as she searched the various books and scrolls.
Four days had passed since she’d been imprisoned in the library. Every day Corgar returned and asked her what she had found. Every day, when she could tell him nothing, she expected his wrath to fall upon her. Instead, he would stand quietly and watch her work. Then he would leave, and she would find the ability to breathe once more.
“You’ve read everything,” she muttered that night, shivering, crouched over her small candle flame. “You’ve read everything in this room! There’s nothing here.”
So he’ll kill you, said her practical side.
Rebellious Leta had only the energy to shrug. “Let him kill me, then,” she muttered. “I still have nothing.”