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He narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe me. “This isn’t your fight.”
I sank onto the couch and stared up at him. He turned his back on me and flexed his shoulders forward, his skin tightening. Stark white scars raked across his shoulder blades and ran down the length of his back.
“Look,” he said. “See the scar below my left shoulder blade?”
“Which?”
“The thickest one. About as wide as a dagger.”
“A…dagger?”
“Yes.” He sipped his absinthe, then laughed hoarsely. “Stabbed me in the back.”
I shrank back. “You survived?”
“Backstabbing is easier to survive than you might think.”
“Who tried to kill you?”
His shoulders tensed like he was bracing himself for another dagger in the back. “The Grandmaster of the Order. Your…your father.” He hesitated to admit it out loud. “But he wasn’t trying to kill me, he was trying to teach me a lesson.”
My jaw dropped. “Why?”
“I defied him. He had a healer save me before I died.”
“You almost died?”
“They had temporal magic readily available, like Konstantin’s technomancy, so I wasn’t in any real danger.” Venom poisoned his voice. “To be honest, I have lost count of how many times I returned a little worse for the wear, and they patched me up and sent me right back out again.”
I was stunned by the Grandmaster’s cruelty. He had punished Wendel severely, stabbing his prize necromancer in the back as a warning to anyone else who dared disobey him. It was beyond barbaric.
“I can’t even imagine how much that hurt,” I said.
“You grow accustomed to pain.” He drained his glass. “As I’m sure you know.”
“They never should have done this to you.”
“Done what? Twisted me into something evil?”
His words knocked me back. “You aren’t evil.”
“I’m not a good man. You should know that by now.”
“How can you say that?”
“I’m a good necromancer.” He let out a scornful laugh. His eyes glittered with loathing. “Better than good. What can I say? I have my pride.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not pride. Wrath.”
His eyes hardened. “I’m guilty of more than one of the seven deadly sins.”
“Tell me. Tell me who you are.”
Darkness filled his eyes. “Ardis, you are one of the few who has ever truly known me. And I would not want you to remember me that way.”
“I would rather know the truth.”
“The truth of my life will die with me, as it does with us all. And my memories will fade as my bones grow old, and I will live on only in the memories of those who cared that I should not be forgotten.”
