“I know you think I enjoy this, but I don’t.” He dropped to his knees. “And I know you think that stubbornly ignoring pain is some kind of victory. But it isn’t. Trust me. It will only injure you more in the long run. Now, let me see your feet.”
Safi didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the glistening gash running beneath his collarbone. Red webbed out, a sign rot would soon be setting in. Yet that wasn’t what surprised her—it was the scarring below that wound. And above it too, and all across his chest and arms. Jagged streaks, no whiter than his already pallid skin, yet raised and vicious. They covered every inch of Caden’s body, identical to the ones on Lev’s face.
“Your feet,” Caden repeated.
Still, Safi remained frozen, her gaze trapped by the worst scar, at his throat. Just above the gold chain, identical to a chain Uncle Eron wore, this mark was as thick as Safi’s thumb and circled all the way around Caden’s neck.
“Good enough,” Caden said at last. “If you don’t want me to tend your wounds, I won’t. The empress needs tending too.”
“Yes.” The word slipped out. Safi gulped, forcing her eyes away from the Hell-Bard’s scars. “I do want them cleaned.”
“Smart.” He bowed his head, an almost gracious movement. Almost. “You know, I’ve been where you are, Heretic. All Hell-Bards have.”
“Then let me go.”
“So you can run away? Henrick wouldn’t like that.” Then slowly, as if he didn’t want to frighten her, Caden reached for her ankles.
Safi almost fainted from the pain. A punch of heat and light. The world swam. She crumpled in on herself.
She wasn’t stupid, though. She let the Hell-Bard clean her ankles because Caden was right that her stubbornness had served no purpose. It had only hurt her in the end. Though goat tits, it bruised her pride to admit that. Even to herself.
“Why did you run from the Truce Summit?” Caden asked as he dabbed at her wounds.
“Why,” Safi hissed through the pain, “not? Would you want to marry an old toad who would use you for your magic?”
A chuckle from Caden, though if he smiled along with that sound, Safi missed it. “If you marry him, you could help Cartorra. You could help Hasstrel.”
“They don’t need me.” She barely got the words through her clenched teeth. Caden had moved from her ankles to her soles, and somehow, they were worse. “Why do you even care about Hasstrel?”
“I grew up nearby.”
“Then you should know how awful the Orhin Mountains are—and how small-minded its people. They love living under Emperor Henrick’s yoke.”
“And you should know how callow that sounds.” A hardness laced Caden’s words now. The first flare of anything close to emotion. Good to know. Yet none of his frustration affected his methodical washing of Safi’s feet. “Cartorra has its flaws, Heretic, but it also has safety. Food too, as well as wealth, roads, education. I could keep going, for the list is long. Give me your wrists.”
Safi did, her eyes screwing shut at that first slash of contact. Pain came. Pain receded. “But,” she forced herself to say, clinging to the conversation, “you won’t find freedom on your list, will you?”
“There are degrees of freedom. Complete freedom isn’t always good, nor is the lack of it always bad.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one being held against your will.”
Again, the laugh, and Caden’s eyes—bloodshot, thoughtful—lifted to hers. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“About what?”
But he had already moved on. “There are degrees of everything, Heretic, which I know doesn’t fit well into your true-or-false view of the world.”
“That’s not how my magic works.” Not entirely.
“Then tell me,” he said.
Safi pinched her lips together, hesitating. She’d spent so long hiding her magic from the world. From the very man now kneeling before her … Though she supposed there was no point in hiding her power now. Not when the emperor and the Hell-Bards had already won.
“Everyone lies,” she finally said.
“I don’t.” He popped the cork from the healer salve, and with a clean linen, he scooped some out.
The instant it touched her wrists, the pain receded. Cold fizzed in.
“Of course you lie,” she argued, eyes closing to savor the cool relief. “I told you, Hell-Bard. Everyone lies. It’s in the way we banter with our friends. It’s in the mundane greetings we give passersby. It’s in the most meaningless things we do every single moment of every single day. Hundreds upon thousands of tiny, inconsequential lies.”
Caden’s careful application paused. “And do you sense them all?”
She nodded, eyelids lifting just enough for her to meet his unflappable gaze. “It’s like living beside the ocean. The waves eventually fade into nothing because you’re so used to it. You stop hearing each crash, each swell … Until, one day, when a storm comes along. The big lies—I feel those. But the little ones? They ride away on the tide.”
He offered no reaction, his face utterly still as if he was thinking through each sentence. Each word. Each pause. Yet before he could offer a response, a double knock came at the door.