“You must think me a fool.” If my words held the sharpness of iron, well, my thoughts were equally sharp and terrified.
He paused, and whatever chagrin he felt was clearly set aside. He held my gaze with calm assurance.
“I think you’re a woman pushed past exhaustion, threaded through with sorrow, and now responsible for a demon posing as a dog.”
I sucked in a breath, afraid to so much as flinch. Had he discovered us?
He jests, snackling. And yet, don’t you think it’s funny that he sees I could be a demon and yet he doesn’t slay me now? Were he a real man, he’d have lopped off Brindle’s head already. Maybe I’ll get to have two delectable treats. One that tastes of plum and cinnamon and another that tastes of … what do you think your screams will taste of? Tart apple?
That echoing laughter was getting annoying.
And Sir Adalbrand was watching me, watching how my face had formed a still mask.
“You know all my secrets now,” I said, breathlessly, hoping not to be caught in the lie.
“Truly? So few?” He teased, but his teasing had a note of sympathy under it.
“And you offer to heal me. I’d be in your debt and debt again. I don’t like that accounting.”
“Hmm.” He’d finished his stitching and was smearing salve liberally over the wound. “That’s fair, I suppose.”
We were both silent for a long time and then he looked up at me and bit his lip — a shockingly vulnerable gesture for a man hard and lean with rippling muscle and lined from pain around eyes and mouth.
“A secret for a secret? Would that settle our debt?”
I couldn’t have said why it was suddenly so hard to breathe. Maybe it was the infection affecting my mind.
Yes, we’ll call it that.
I nodded wordlessly.
“I was raised the son of King Abrent von Menticure by his third concubine, Amaranda. They had a knighthood in mind for me, but I ran to the Aspect of the Sorrowful God when I was but fifteen and the Aspect took my vows. Sanctuary and service. They gave me one and received the other.”
I nodded along. We both knew this was not the secret.
“I killed a girl. She was just fifteen.”
The laughter echoing in my mind was like flames flickering up from the center of the earth.
Plums and cinnamon and sweet, sweet shame.
“A secret for a secret,” I said, as if a debt had been paid between us.
He nodded, but there was a quaver in his nod, as if he were reliving a memory he wished to forget. When his words came, they were rough.
“Now, let me heal you of your wounds. Secrets fester in the soul. I can do nothing for them. But I can heal the wounds festering in your flesh.”
Accept his gift. Only the arrogant turn their backs on mercy.
With a long sigh, I opened my palm to him.
Chapter Nine
Poisoned Saint
The thing about taking another’s sorrows is that it makes you them for a moment. For what is more personal than pain? What is closer to the spine of the soul than the aches and agonies that wrack the body?
We are so intertwined in our flesh and spirit, heart and sinew, that there is truly no way to disentangle one from the other without destroying both. Unless, perhaps, that way is death — the eventual unraveling, like a pair of lovers breaking apart after passion. Inevitable, and yet unexpectedly wrenching.
