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Raider cast his eyes down and navigated the debris of the shattered gate. Malik had come down from the wall. He handed Raider his kaftan.
If Raider had looked at Malik as he took the red silk, he might have seen how the arcanist regarded him with narrowed eyes. If Raider hadn’t been so fixated on the question of whether Seth knew who—what—he was, he might have asked himself whether Malik did.
But Raider was using all of his focus to keep his face from showing every fucking fear and every fucking doubt that was eating him up inside.
He barely even heard Malik say, “The gods must have sent you to us. Come. A magnificent dinner is the least of what Aqarat owes you.”
CHAPTER 36
SETH DIDN’T LIKE how quiet Raider had been since the sand serpent fight. It could have been the shock of the fight, a delayed reaction to the danger, but Seth didn’t think so. Except for a brief interaction as Seth had worked his multi tool free of the sand serpent’s head, Raider had withdrawn into a tense, troubled silence.
Was it the quicksilver?
This shit, Raider had called it once, and Seth had no doubt that the quicksilver lay at the heart of Raider’s nightmares. Beyond that, however, Seth couldn’t guess. Raider had told him nothing.
Raider had certainly not told him that the quicksilver could do what Seth had seen it do today. Seth shivered at the memory as he finished dressing for dinner. Maybe he was feeling some delayed shock himself.
When he had raced through the broken gateway to meet the full sight of the sand serpent, with Raider atop it, Seth’s heart had stopped. The fight had been impossible. But that hadn’t mattered—because it had also been unavoidable.
It was Seth who had, inadvertently, woken the sand serpent. Even if that hadn’t been the case, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d had to try. For all the people who would have died. For Raider, who would have died—or so Seth had thought. That had been before he’d seen the full, terrifying power of Raider’s quicksilver.
Gods, Raider had killed a sand serpent. And he’d done it with chilling arcane weaponry.
No wonder Raider was so confident in any fight, in any journey. Who could possibly defeat him?
It troubled Seth. He wanted to feel nothing but relief that Raider was alive, that he’d managed to stop that creature from destroying Aqarat, but he had too many questions.
Why did Raider have that quicksilver—and why couldn’t he remember? Or was that not true?
Those nightmares.
They said, if nothing else, that Raider remembered something. Something he had never told Seth.
It bothered him. It always had, no matter how hard he’d tried to put it from his mind. It had always been there, niggling at him—that same niggling he got when people lied.
Something was off. Something bad. Seth couldn’t identify it, but he could feel it.
Raider had barely looked at him as they had walked with Malik back to the palace. And when they had reached the doors to their rooms, Raider hadn’t even glanced Seth’s way before going into his own room. Raider hadn’t entered his own room since their first day in the palace. He had stayed with Seth. Until now.
What the hell was going on with him?
And what the hell was Seth’s problem that he didn’t go over there and demand to know?
Seth’s problem was that he knew that Raider wouldn’t answer him. He never had. And if Raider refused, still, to talk about it, Seth didn’t know what he’d do. Seth had managed, so far, to ignore everything that Raider had refused to discuss. But Seth couldn’t ignore it now, not after what he’d just seen. He couldn’t let Raider keep hiding things from him, but he wasn’t ready, yet, to face the possibility that Raider didn’t love him enough, didn’t trust him enough, to tell him the truth.
Because what the fuck would Seth do if that was the case? What would that mean … for them?
Stop being a fucking coward, he scolded himself. Just go over there.
As Seth tugged on his sandals and straightened his tunic, he eyed his dusty Curator’s garb longingly. He didn’t like these loose, lightweight clothes. They made him feel too exposed, too vulnerable. Seth never liked that, but he especially hated it now. Something was off, and it put him on edge. It made him feel like he needed to be ready to fight.
Grabbing onto some goddamn courage, Seth walked out onto the balcony. In the distance, the colossal body of the beheaded sand serpent coiled and looped away into the desert twilight. People thronged the wall, eager now to see what had almost destroyed their lives.
It shamed Seth, seeing it again. Raider had risked his life to save all those people. Did it matter what lay in his past, how and why he had the quicksilver, if it had given him the power to do that?
No.
Yes.
