A chill skates down my spine. “That doesn’t sound like something the stubborn man I knew would have done.”
“I have my methods for making people talk.”
“Torture?” The word chokes out of me. “You tortured him, didn’t you?”
He doesn’t deny it.
The room is starting to spin. I tuck my head toward my chest and briefly close my eyes, trying to stop my stomach from churning.
“It was no worse than what he likely had planned to do toyou.” I glance up to find Reave studying the bruise along my collarbone, which still hasn’t fully healed. “He had already crossed a line with you. And I believe he would have crossed more, had I not intervened.”
“If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have already done it. I don’t know why you?—”
“I’m not saying he would have killed you. Because he knows the stories as well as anyone.”
I give him a curious look.
“About the kind of destruction divine dragons have rained down upon those who kill their chosen bonds,” he explains. “It’s only happened a few times throughout history—because it drives them to a kind of madness that levels mountains and empties seas, that swallows cities and ragesuntil there’s nothing left to destroy. He wouldn’t have risked that.” He runs a hand through his hair, making a bigger mess of the already disheveled waves. “But there are worse things than death, Arowyn.”
“I’m well aware,” I snap.
He sighs, pushing away from the desk and moving to the window, staring out of it as he says, “His actual orders were likely just to find you. To test you. To make sure you were who we believed you to be, and then to feed his kingdom whatever information they needed to make their next move. And he neededmyresources to do these things. Dralsk wouldn’t have had the power to comb those desolate places where we found Sesca, or to apprehend both her and you.”
“And Mouren would have just slaughtered any regiment they sent into the Ashlands, anyhow.”
Another brutality he doesn’t deny.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting off a second wave of nauseating dizziness. “You sent your condolences to their royal family…” I think aloud.
“I believe Gareth was related to them, however distantly. Though I obviously didn’t know this when I elevated him to the position I did. I fell for his lies, because I…”
“Because why?”
He turns to face me, leaning against the wall beside the window with his arms folded across his chest. Several times, he seems close to speaking, and I think he might be on the verge of letting one of his many secrets free.
In the end, he only shakes his head. “The reason doesn’t matter, now. I never should have trusted him. Never should have let him get as close to you as I did.”
“I could have handled his anger. Whatever brutal attacks he decided to throw at me, I would have survived.”
“I never doubted that.”
“I wasn’t afraid of him.”
“I know you weren’t.”
I barely resist the urge to throw my hands up in exasperation. “Then why did you lock him in the dungeon? Why escalate it so recklessly to this point? Kestrel was right to call you rash. The political fallout of this…”
I trail off as his gaze fully takes mine, my breath catching as I realize: He isn’t looking at me as though I’m merely a political piece, or a weapon that needs to be carefully kept and maintained. He isn’t studying my sharp edges with his usual cold, calculating precision, wondering how he might set me and my dragon upon his enemies.
He’s looking at me like he wants to protectme from those enemies, if only he could figure out how to do it.
Like he doesn’t care about any of the ramifications of anything he did tonight, even though we both know heshould. It’s the same look of conflicted yearning I saw in his eyes earlier.
And, just as he did earlier, he quickly averts his gaze. “We can discuss this more later. For now, just…stay in here and wait for Briar, please. So I know you’re safe and guarded while I go clean up more of the mess outside.”
It sounds like a command, even though he slips the wordpleaseinto it.I bristle, but I can’t bring myself to argue with him.
Instead, I walk over and sink into the chair behind his desk, one hand gripping the edge of that desk, while I rapidly try to replay every interaction we’ve ever had, wondering how I ended up sitting here, unable to take my eyes off himwhile a dozen different, confusing feelings all claw for dominance in my tired heart.
