Did I love him?
At times, during our two weeks in Dombang, it seemed that I could almost say yes. When we’d raced through the city together, tracking the Asp in pursuit of Lady Quen, the fierce delight pounding through my veins had felt the way I thought that love should feel. When we lay in the hut of the Vuo Ton, lost in the labyrinth of each other’s arms as rain tattooed the reeds of the roof—that had felt like something that a person might call love. If I’d killed him in those moments, with Ela looking on, maybe I could have claimed my victory.
In each case, however, just when the prize seemed within reach, it slipped away. I would look at Ruc, as now, and find him suddenly, impossibly distant. There were days, like the long trip back to Dombang after the Vuo Ton had disappeared, when he seemed almost a stranger. Whatever we achieved, however close we came, whatever delicious fever seared my heart—it didn’t last.
Whenever I asked myself that question—Did I love him—I always arrived at the same answer—no—the word like an iron gate barred against my entrance.
For the first time, however, lost on that island in the delta, witnessed by the gazes of the living, the undying, and the dead, I began to doubt the question itself.
I’d been treating love like a thing, an achievement, a trophy to be won and hung around my neck. People talk about it that way sometimes:
My love for you is undying.
He never knew my love.
It is an error of grammar to make love a noun.
It is not a thing you can have.
Love—like doubt or hate—is a verb. It has no fixity. Like song, its truth is in its unfolding. Language is filled with these illusions. A fist, an embrace, a blow—they are actions, not things. Action takes time, and time is the tool of my god.
I didn’t love Ruc yet, but there was still time.
I turned to face him. They’d stripped away his vest before tossing us into the delta. I could see the scar etched over the muscle of his stomach and chest. Some of those scars, I’d given him. Others he had come by on his own. I wanted to touch him, to run my fingers one more time over that smooth, warm skin, but I’d touched him before, and touching hadn’t been enough. If I was going to love him, really love him, I couldn’t just touch him. Even the bright violence of our fighting hadn’t been enough. I needed something more. I filled my lungs with the hot delta air.
“I came to Dombang to kill you,” I said.
I don’t know what I expected from him. A quick retort, maybe. Scorn. Silence. He’d faced the betrayal of the Greenshirts without much more than a flicker of anger. All the time I’d known him, he’d been so cool, so ready. Even busted up, even bleeding, he never really looked hurt.
As I finally told him the truth, however, the whole truth that had been burning away inside me, the words seemed to land like a blow. He took a step back, not the tactical step of a brawler giving himself room, but the half stagger of a man who’s just taken a fist to the chin. He watched me a moment, then closed his eyes, shook his head, as though he could deny what I’d said, as though that gesture could cancel out the whole world.
I could have killed him then—I could feel Ela’s eyes on me, and Kossal’s, his dispassionate, hers eager, curious. I could have ended him in that moment, but I needed more. I needed him to scream at me, or beg, or start sobbing. I needed him to deny me, or accept me, or do anything other than rock with another punch. I needed to see past the calm to the beating heart of him. The surface of the man was gorgeous, but I couldn’t love a surface.
“I’m going to kill you now,” I said, testing the weight of the knife in my hand.
He opened his eyes. Sweat dripped from his face, soaked his vest, mingled with the blood leaking from his shoulder and arm. He didn’t seem to notice any of it. His eyes never left me. The whole world might have disappeared, might have sunk into the mud.
I held the bronze knife in one hand, my bronze-tipped spear between us. “Don’t you want to ask why?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll lie.”
I shook my head. “I’m done lying.”
“I liked you better when you were lying.”
I closed my own eyes, searched the corners of my reluctant heart, waited for him to strike. He didn’t.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said at last.
“What, exactly, were you afraid of?”
“That you wouldn’t let me get close to you.”
I opened my eyes to see Ruc’s face move through a series of masks: amazement, confusion, disbelief. Then his laugh tumbled out in great, delighted whoops. I hadn’t heard him laugh like that since Sia, since right after our first fight, our first night together, when we lay in bed dabbing a sweet-smelling salve on each other’s wounds, passing back and forth a bottle of plum-dark wine, each ministering to the other’s broken parts with the lightest of kisses.
“Yes,” he managed finally. “You’re right. Knowing you’d come all the way to Dombang to slide a knife between my ribs might have made things more complicated.”
“Complicated is fine. I like complicated. But you wouldn’t let it be complicated.”
“Why, in the name of your broken god, would I let it be complicated, when complicated, in this case, stands in for murderous?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, then tried again. “Because you love me? Because I thought I could love you.”
He stared at me.
“Love isn’t killing people, Pyrre. Killing is the opposite of love, you twisted bitch.”
“How do you know?” The question was barely loud enough to hear, but it burned like a coal in my chest. “How do you know?”
“Because I was raised in a world where people value life.”
“And that world told you there was one way to love, just one. It told you the only real love was what you hear about in the songs, what you see in the plays. It said love was flowers and gentle caresses under the moonlight.”
“As opposed to what? A knife in the back and a bath full of blood?”
“Yes!” I said. “What are flowers? What is moonlight?”
“They’re beautiful and gentle, for starters.”
“And who said love was beautiful or gentle? Who said it was only those things?” I took half a stab at him with my spear. It wasn’t a real attack, but it felt strange to be holding the weapon without doing something with it. He knocked it aside casually. I circled to my right, still talking. “The night I met you, I broke two of your ribs and you beat me unconscious.”
He shook his head. “That was different.”
“Different how? A bare-knuckle fight is a long way from tulips and moonlight.”
“It wasn’t the fight that made me—”