I wanted to try to think about what that might mean and how I should broach the subject with him when he finally awoke, but I was spent and weary. When Brindle padded into the tent and lay down over my legs, a warmth came over me and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I drifted away to sleep to the sound of doggy breath, the gulls shrieking overhead, the pounding of the sea’s turbulent breakers, and Hefertus outside the tent humming a tuneless melody.
Chapter Forty-One
Poisoned Saint?
I wake a new man.
Victoriana sleeps just inches from me, her fringe of lashes a fan over her cheeks, her breath soft, dark hair tangled around her face.
She’s so beautiful that it hurts. Grips my heart in a fist.
She’s layers. The wild woman who streaked herself with mud. The girl too soft to kill her dog even knowing it housed a demon. The stalwart warrior, chin thrust out, refusing to bend when outnumbered. The paladin blessed by the God, shot through with the gold veins of his holiness. She’s all these things at once. I love them all.
I reach a hand as if to caress her cheek and then I stop abruptly.
Beneath the ground, she had turned her heart to me. When she was backed into a corner. When she had no other allies. I dare not assume she will choose me here in the open air. It’s not that I am insecure, thinking a rival will sweep her away. It’s more that I am cognizant that she is a wild creature at heart. A wanderer. A freewheeling bird of the sky. She will not thank me for anchoring her.
Nor will she thank me for pressuring her based on a vow she gave while under duress. I am no blackguard to hold a woman captive by words spoken under fear and pain.
A doggy face appears from over her shoulder, narrowing his eyes at me. No quarter is given me though I’ve healed him. He huffs once at me.
I draw my hand back, frown, and rise. Even without additional spirits occupying him, Brindle is a sticky fellow. He has no love for me.
I step out of the tent and find Hefertus cooking a fragrant-fleshed fish by the fire. He has no fishing gear. I can only assume he asked the God for the fish and it leapt from the sea to his hand to satisfy his hunger.
I’m constantly fascinated by how the God deals with Hefertus. Where I am offered pain, he’s given plenty. Where I am constantly winnowed to clarity, he is left happily oblivious.
“Pretty girl,” he remarks as he turns his fish, not looking up at me. His missing finger doesn’t seem to bother him, though it must serve as a reminder forever of the terrible road we walked. “Turned your head, didn’t she?”
I grunt. For a man swathed in pearls, his beard oiled and hair brushed until it gleams, he’s hardly one to judge another for being too pretty.
“What are you going to tell your aspect about the cup?” he asks, changing tacks.
“Nothing.”
His snickering laughter makes me frown.
“Well, my ill-tempered friend, if you say nothing then they’ll only have my word for what took place. I think it likely your dark horse in there will only write a letter.” He gestures at the tent, where Victoriana sleeps. “Can she write, do you think?”
“Rude. She read Ancient Indul, a thing you could not achieve.” I bristle at his insults but they feel good. Like the bracing wind along the shore that bites at my exposed skin, they remind me I am alive.
I look out over the hole in the ground left by the collapsed ruins across the water from us. There’s nothing there. Not even the arch or the statue that once graced the hilltop. It’s all water now. I shiver. It’s a miracle that is not my tomb.
“Her demon read Ancient Indul,” Hefertus corrects dryly.
I shoot him a look.
He smirks. “What? I keep up. Common sense may not be my greatest strength, but you should be glad for that. A man with any sense would have run the moment he was free of that place.”
I grunt again. “I would say rather that it shows your lack of sense that you stayed.”
He laughs. “Then you should thank the God that he took my excess sense, for it saved your sopping wet soul from death.”
We’re quiet a moment and then he sobers.
“If I’m to give the report on this incident, my surly friend, then I will have to make a decision. I can report the incident as it happened, and you might find there are people with many questions to ask you. An uncomfortable thought, no? Some of the Aspects of the Divine God are … how do I say ‘hellishly awful’ without being rude?”
“I think you just did,” I say, amused.
