Page 30 of Thief of Roses
“It will be.Your cycle is irregular.I can smell it coming.”
“I find it a little unsettling that you predict my cycles better than I can.”
“I will be at your disposal the next few days to obtain anything you might require.”He squeezed her hands.“Devote yourself to your food stores, your balms, your oils, anything that you would desire if you left.”
“Are you sending me away?”
He glanced at her and then back down to her hands in his.“No.I desire your company above all else.When I return, I will tell you of my misdeeds as I know them.You may wish to be away from me then.”His shoulders dropped.“I would not have you go back out into the world unprepared.”
“You’re letting me go, after only a couple of months?”
“It has never been my intent to see you miserable.If you can no longer bear to be with me, I will break our contract if necessary.”
“I suspect that breaking the contract will come at a high price for you.”
“That would be between me and the Magic,” he shrugged.“You need not worry about that.”
“Can I stay if I choose?”
“Yes.”He kept his eyes fixed on their clasped hands.
“You were a man once,” she whispered.“These misdeeds,” she ventured, “they happened then, didn’t they?”
“I have always been a monster,” he said.
“I forgot — you can’t say that, can you?”She rephrased it.“They happened when you did not look as you do now.How long ago was that?A hundred years ago?”
“I look so young?Thank you.”
“My vain Baró.”She arched a brow.“Am I close?”
“Much more than that.”He released one of her hands and set it on top of the two that remained clasped.He reached out slowly, so slowly that she would have time to object.With his claw, he lifted a long tendril of her loose hair and ran his thumb over the silken strand.
She gave a sharp intake of breath.“All alone?”she whispered.
“I had visitors, like you.Not many.They did not stay for long.”He could have stopped there.He should have stopped there, but honesty compelled him to be more explicit about the other Occupant of the fortress.“And then there is the Magic, who, to me, often takes shape.I am never alone.”
“Are those,” she asked, placing her free hand on the networks of scars on his side, “from the Magic?”
“No.The wounds from Her do not scar.Her enduring marks are the gifts.”
“She’s the one with whom you bargain when your attention drifts.”
He confirmed Rivani’s suspicions with a nod.
“Can I do anything?”
He let the strand of her hair slip through his fingers before he put his hand over their joined ones.Of all the things he wanted and needed, he could only think of this current blessing — her hand in his, her willingness to be touched, her willingness to touch him.
“Continue to be begrudgingly civil.”
