“What are you talking about?” he said.
“It’s Celedin,” she said. “He’s not actually dead.”
Dathor leaped to his feet again. “You have got to be joking.”
She shook her head. “But you’re not allowed to kill him. I mean, not again.”
He sat back down again next to her. “Not allowed to kill him? This is the point of everything, to kill him.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “And that is precisely why you must not do it.” She supposed she’d realized it when she had that outburst, when he’d said that he had offered up not only her to his orc cause, but all the women in all the keeps that got attacked. He’d had themallviolated and not for the orc cause.
For Celedin.
All to get back at Celedin.
She wanted to strangle him, truly.
“More than kissing with him, you said,” he muttered, his voice lethal.
“Oh, no,” she said, glaring at him, disgusted. “I never enjoyed whatever he forced on me, just as I did not enjoy what you forced on me.”
“That was not the same thing.”
“No, it was worse when you did it, worse because it wasn’t even about me. You didn’t do that because you wanted me. You did that to get back at him. To hurt him.”
“You know all the things he did to me, however,” growled Dathor.
“Well, I’m not saying you have to be his friend or something,” she said. “I would think, however, that using him to take back Foxglove Peak and then throwing him out and telling him to fend for himself should be good enough. You do not have to kill him. Besides, his voice is all raspy anyway. I think you’ve hurt him enough.”
“Hurt him enough?” He let out a disbelieving laugh. “This is the man who brought back men from the tavern and paid them to hold me down while he carved into my arm. You remember that?”
She nodded, unable to look at him.
“This is the man who kicked a ladder out from beneath me in the barn and laughed when I fell? This is the man who used to say I was nothing but a lowly creature, an abomination, a freak—half beast, half man? This is the man—”
“I am not defending him,” she cut in.
He huffed.
“Shall we make a handy list ofyoursins, Dathor?”
He glared at her. “It’s not the same. I was abused, badly treated, and I was barely surviving—”
“You know what his father was like,” she said. “He says that when you were boys, you had a mother who loved you, and he never did. He says he was cruel to you because he was jealous. Because all he wanted was someone to love him. And you must see it, Dathor, that no one ever has.”
“Doesn’t deserve love,” said Dathor.
“Well, neither do you,” she said. “Neither do I. Ask Nathre if she thinks I should have a happy ending.”
He was quiet.
She sighed heavily.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s too far. I can’t forgiveCeledin.”
THEY RODE THEtrain through the night, and they were dropped off at the station closest to Foxglove Peak in the early part of the morning, before the dawn.
Dathor knew that no one would be there to greet them, of course, and they had little in the way of money, even if they had wanted to procure a horse, not that anyone was awake and willing to rent a horse out.
