Page 86 of Fragile Oath

A shadow passed over her face, like she heard the turn my thoughts had taken.

“Indeed,” she said softly. “Goodnight, Davin.”

She stood gracefully, walking toward the door with Malishka at her feet. Just before she closed the balcony door behind her, she stopped, her eyes fixated on the hazy night sky.

“I didn’t give you a truth tonight.” Her voice was low, but it carried in the still night air.

“No, you didn’t,” I prompted, sensing whatever she said next would have nothing at all to do with dinner preferences.

Her shoulders tightened, and she drew in a shaky breath.

“The truth is…writing that letter was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Leaving Socair, being taken by Alexei —storms, even marrying him… Not one of those things compared to hurling lies your way designed to hurt you.”

My breath seized in my lungs. She never spoke of her time with Alexei, had never brought up the letter, had never referenced the fact that she was kidnapped and forced to marry a man who abused her.

Now she was acknowledging all of those things, and she was saying that causing me hurt was worse than everything that happened to her. Before I could make sense of that or find my voice to respond, she was gone.

Her words hung in the air, playing over and over in my mind until they cemented themselves there. Swallowing hard, I reached into my desk drawer, pulling out a folded piece of parchment. I had memorized the words, folded and refolded the paper until it was nearly crumbling at each crease.

It had become like a talisman to me, a symbol of all the pain I couldn’t let go of, where she was concerned. One more time, I opened it up, running my hands over the perfect script crafted by the steady hand of a woman trapped in a room with the embodiment of her nightmares.

Then I tossed it into the fireplace and watched it burn to ashes.

ChapterThirty-Seven

GALINA

My confessionthe night before was the first one that didn’t fill me with panic. It was long past due, an admission he more than deserved.

And it wasn’t a lie. Of everything that happened, hurting Davin had been what threatened to break me. He didn’t mention it the next day, but things between us felt just a little easier.

Once again, long after the day was over and we had all retired for the evening, I found my way to his rooms. We spent some time updating the map with the information he had gotten from the prior day’s interrogation. It painted an interesting picture of the Viper’s movements and locations.

There were traces of the Uprising throughout Lochlann, but the attacks seemed centrally located in the south. We didn’t have answers yet, but at least we knew where to focus our attention.

After that, I worked quietly at his desk while he wrote letters by the fire. Though the air between us was lighter tonight, filled with casual greetings and offers of whiskey and occasional polite conversation just as it had been at dinner, it felt more charged, too. Weighed down with tension.

Or perhaps it was only me who felt that way. I couldn’t help but track the motion of his glass to his full lips, his deft fingers closing around his quill. Surely it was unreasonable to be jealous of glass and steel and everything that touched Davin when he still felt so far from me.

I was watching him more closely than I meant to, which is why I noticed the third time he stopped to massage his hand.

“I have a salve for that,” I offered, belatedly remembering he had something far better at his disposal. “Unless you want to call for Gallagher…”

The corner of Davin’s lip pulled up in a rueful smile. “Gal alleges he can’t heal aches and pains, though I maintain that’s just something he says to get out of curing our hangovers.”

I considered what Gallagher had told me about his ability, wondering if Davin was right. I hadn’t taken much time to reflect on our conversation since then, but in hindsight, I remembered what he had said, that his secret involved more than one person. I thought of Gwyn’s unnatural speed and Avani’s pet squirrel and the way Rowan always hid a smirk when my uncle coincidentally got rained on just as he was walking into her palace.

“Is it strange, being the only one without…whatever it is?” I asked, pulling the small tin of salve from my satchel.

Davin looked taken aback. He studied me for a moment, and I wondered if it was a topic I shouldn’t have broached.

“I call it theirwoo-woopowers,” he said after a beat. “Though they insist it isn’t. He told you about the others?”

“No, I just put it together.” I gently pried the lid off the salve, letting its pungent aroma out into the air around us.

“Of course you did.” He smiled, but it died as quickly as it had come.

“I wasn’t the only one,” he said quietly, pain flaring in his sapphire eyes, “when Mac was around. By the time he was…gone, I was used to it, I suppose. It doesn’t really come up.”

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