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She’d heard nothing from Verol and Marquin since they’d left, and when she’d asked Fitz if he knew when they were coming back, he’d shrugged and said only that they likely wouldn’t return until Alaric did. And she told herself it didn’t matter—that they’d all but dragged her into their lives only to completely exit hers—but there was still this odd feeling of…abandonment? She’d never felt it before, because to feel abandoned, you had to first feel as if you were wanted. She had never felt wanted before. Not in any healthy sense of the word.
It was another thing she ignored, like she ignored her building resentment each night she continued to perform her one song for Alaric’s court, even in his absence. Like she ignored the harsh, hot claws of anger that ripped at her each time some woman ran casual touches over Numair and she saw his revulsion in the barely perceptible stiffening of his body while they never noticed. Like the ever-increasing pulse that beat within her own body, wanting action and release. Because now that Alaric was gone, the Song no longer hid deep within her, but took the full measure of the small freedom she’d granted it.
She’d had three weeks now of its constant presence, and she still wasn’t accustomed to it. Even now it looked out through her eyes, a heavy weight between her temples as she stood, layered in shadows, on the mezzanine that overlooked the dining hall. There was no denying her performances—and their results—had become less dramatic with Alaric’s absence, and the truth was that tonight she didn’t know what to make them feel. The possibilities seemed both too few and too many—a base set of emotions, but a thousand nuances of each—and yet she wasn’t inspired to any of them this evening.
“You get the most interesting expressions on your face when you observe the world.” The soft, velvet voice was a few feet to her right. He sounded more distant—more a stranger—than he had since that first day she’d talked to him in Galina’s dress shop.
But then, she’d hardly seen him alone since Alaric left. Had felt a subtle difference between them, as if that distance she felt was literal. Part of her wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing. But the other part was too glad he was here, even if it was only for a moment, to make her not feel so alone.
“Maybe I’m trying to discern how they can all be so content. How they can sit there night after night and continue being…that. Or”—she paused for effect—“maybe I’m trying to decide if it’s worth ruining their facade of happiness for the evening.”
“Maybe you should.”
She sighed, the Song throbbing behind her temples, and leaned against the wall. “To what end?”
He finally came and stood beside her. “It might be worth it, just to make it all change. Even if it’s only for a night.”
“What good is a night? What good is a temporary change? What does it accomplish?”
The remainder of that distance that had been growing between them broke, and he finally smiled for her. “I think it makes you feel better.”
“I don’t want to feel better. Toleration breeds complacency and I won’t be complacent. I won’t forget what I’m here to accomplish.”
“And what exactly is that?”
She smiled, a baring of her teeth because she needed to remind herself of what that was. “Everything.”
He huffed out a small laugh. “Then I’m sure everything will be yours.”
She wasn’t so sure. Not anymore.
“And you? What are you trying to accomplish, Numair?”
He hesitated and for a single, stupid second, she thought he might give her a real answer. But then he said, “At the moment? Hearing the way you say my name seems accomplishment enough.”
The anger that statement lit in her expressed itself so viciously on her face that he couldn’t mistake it. “Don’t,” she said harshly. “Don’t lie to me like you lie to them. I’m not like them.”
His face lost what little humor it had regained. He lifted his hand to her face but halted just shy of touching her. Always, always, he was so careful not to touch her, unless she’d given him permission. It didn’t fit. Nothing about who he was with her fit with who he was with them. He let his hand fall.
“I’m not.” He swallowed, and that sadness that swam perpetually in the deep, dark waters of his eyes came closer to the surface. “I’ve never lied to you.”
She measured him. “Never?”
“No.”
“Then tell me something.” She reached out and tugged the end of the green scarf hanging from his neck. “Why do you always wear this?”
“Because you told me to wear it when I think of you. And I’m always thinking of you.”
Her heart and her stomach did things they shouldn’t, things she was still desperately trying to pretend she didn’t understand. So she asked the question she wasn’t supposed to. “And what are you doing out there?”
He swallowed, pain shattering those almost-black eyes. “Surviving.”
Guilt hit her. It was a new emotion, one that had had no place in her life when she was the one only surviving. But he’d tried to stop surviving, and she was the reason he was still here. And she still didn’t know if he resented her for it.
“I’m not like you,” he said finally. “I can’t have everything. I can’t have anything.”
He walked away and she let him, certain she should have said something and equally certain she had no idea what that something would have been. She watched from above while he walked into the dining hall, and then she shoved off the pillar and followed. For once, in the palace, she played what she felt, and her melancholy spread like a disease, infecting everyone her voice reached. And when she was finished, she bypassed her table, with its seat across from Numair, and walked out.
