“So, it did not work.”
“It didn’t hurt,” she said softly. “Not physically, I suppose. But it broke me, and you know that it did.”
“You don’t seem broken,” he said. “I don’t think that would be the thing to break you.”
“No?” she said. “You truly thought I would welcome you.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “No, I did not think you wouldwelcome that done to you. But when they found out that I used to live here, they wanted it as a target, and I could not exactly say no.”
“So, you were reticent?” She was mocking him.
“I told you that it had to be done,” he said. “I told you it was not the way I wanted it between us.”
“Well, it is not the way I would have wanted it either, but to be quite honest, I had thought it was something that was never going to happen anyway. Because you left me, for that orc woman, and I—”
“Let us not do this again,” he said, rolling onto his back.
She rolled over to face him. “Were you with her after you caught up to her? Did you sleep in some orc hovel together and did you run your hands over her swelling belly—”
“I told you she died!” he growled.
“You did,” she said. “But you didn’t say when or how.”
“She never made it through the pass,” he said. “I left everything behind for her, and I sought her as I made my way through, and you don’t know what it is like, all the elf soldiers with their guns. They shoot if there is a hint that you are trying to go back to Lothnehil.”
“They shot her?” Her voice was different now.
“I found her body,” he said. “I didn’t see it done. I don’t know why it happened.”
“Did you sob over her?” She was ugly again.
He flung an arm over his face. “I won’t do this with you. You know there’s no reason to be jealous of her.”
“I’m not jealous.” She rolled over again and put her back to him.
He drew in breaths, one after the other, trying to get the image of Nathre’s broken form, tossed aside like nothing, lying there on the side of the path. She’d hated him. He’d deserved it.
He’d wanted to atone somehow, to make up for all of his many sins, but it had not turned out that way. He’d impregnated that woman and gotten her killed, and then the worst of it was that he was stuck in Arzakh. It was the worst because he hated it there and it was the worst because hewas so self-absorbed that he could only think of his own discomfort.
He would think of her then, not Nathre, but Aerhril, screaming at him that he thought he was the only person who suffered in the whole world, and his countering, saying he did suffer worse than she did.
Certainly, he did.
But his suffering, his relative suffering, sleeping in that room above the stable with the fire, her slipping out to find him in the night, the way they had lain in his narrow bed together and kissed each other senseless until their hands started wandering, the way he’d been fed every day and clothed and sheltered—all those things his uncle had spat at him as being privileges and he had despised the man for pointing them out.
Turned out theywereprivileges.
Turned out there were worse ways to live.
Turned out that perhaps he was just… prone to complaint, difficult to satisfy, a bit of an unpleasant person all around.
He took his arm away from his face. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She twisted to look at him over her shoulder. “For what?”
“For fucking her,” he said. “For fucking you.” A long pause. His voice came out defeated. “For all of this.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” she said, turning away with a yawn. “I’m sorry I did not run away with you to go live in a hovel of our own.”
