The Broken: A Dark Fantasy Romance, page 14
“My lord,” began Thrache.
“Enough,” growled Cursa Dram. “She is not going back to that place. There is nothing more to be said.”
Isobel sat in her room, mentally drained. “There is sense in what they’re saying, really,” she said. “And I think he knows there is. I just don’t know how to get him to admit to it.”
Shaiva put her hands up. “Well, happily for me, you are now his wife, and thusly in sole charge of telling him things he does not want to hear.”
“But you’ve had so much more practice at it,” said Isobel. “I thought perhaps you’d like to continue on with the job for a while.”
“I may have had more practice,” Shaiva answered with a loaded grin, “but we all know you have more success.”
“Some success I’m going to have when he’s nowhere to be found.”
“You’ve really not seen him since this morning?”
“Neither hide nor hair.”
“I’m not sure I believe you,” Shaiva teased. “I’m so used to seeing him glued to your heels like a lost puppy.”
Isobel rolled her eyes. “I suppose I had better go and find him. Do you think he’s had time enough to calm down?”
Shaiva pursed her lips. “Probably. And if he isn’t calm by now, you definitely ought to go and find him. There may be more than one poor soul out there who needs piecing back together.”
51
Isobel
“Jaehen, have you seen Cursa Dram?”
“Stables,” answered the jagged-faced man, with a jerk of his head toward the faded grey building.
“Thank you,” said Isobel, giving him a peck on the cheek, just for spite. In return, he made a great show of snarling and snapping at her with his teeth, which made her yelp and giggle, which in turn finally put a smile on Jaehen’s face.
Isobel was close enough to the stable door to hit it with a rock, when Deros stopped her, bodily. “Deros? Is something wrong?”
“No, I just … Are you going somewhere? I can saddle a horse for you, if that’s what you need.”
“No …” Isobel answered. “I’m looking for Cursa Dram. He left the meeting in a huff earlier, and Jaehen says he saw him go in here.”
Deros nodded. He seemed to be holding his breath. Deros was a lot of things, primarily a slick bastard; he was never, ever awkward. “Look,” he said. “I don’t think you should go inside.”
“Why? Is he not in there?”
“No, he is, but I don’t think he’s ready to talk to you yet.”
“Well, that’s just too damn bad,” said Isobel, trying and failing to push past the wall of man in front of her.
“Izzy, please, just go back upstairs. I’ll send him to you.”
Izzy? Since when did Deros call her Izzy? She made to go around him, but he caught her arm. “Deros,” she gritted out, “if you do not let go of me, I am going to start screaming bloody murder, which will bring him barreling out here looking for someone to slice in half, if it does nothing else.”
Deros glanced around him, at the milling Hesati who were already side-eyeing him. He released the queen’s arm. Isobel marched angrily toward the building, but she was stopped again, dead in her tracks, by what she heard. If Cursa Dram was inside, he was not alone. He was growling commands at someone. Isobel pressed her face to the door, and she saw, through a missing sliver of wood, exactly what Deros did not want her to see.
“On the ground. On your knees,” said Cursa Dram, and the woman with him complied. The top of her black dress was peeled down to her waist. She was on all fours in the dirt. Cursa Dram kicked at the insides of her thighs, and she spread her legs farther apart. He knelt behind her, flinging the panels of her skirt up over her back. He twisted one hand in her hair, jerking her head backward. With the other hand, he was apparently unlacing the front of his pants. The pair were positioned so that Isobel couldn’t know for sure what he was doing … until he entered the woman, roughly and bloodlessly. The woman shrieked, but Cursa Dram only continued to plunge into her, again and again. Every stroke seemed more brutal than the last, until the woman was plainly struggling to keep herself from collapsing under the motion. Cursa Dram tugged harder on the woman’s hair, and he wrapped his other hand around her throat, wrenching her upwards, until her back collided with his chest. Tears rolled down her face.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please.”
“Not yet,” replied Cursa Dram, hoarsely. “Not until I say. Don’t ask me again, or I will split you in two.”
Isobel had seen enough. It made her sick to think of entering the room, but she had to do something. But the instant she made to push open the door, Deros wrapped his arms around her and dragged her around the corner of the building. He whirled her around to face him, but he didn’t let her go. “Why are you doing this?” he said, low and animus. “He said that you knew—he said you were all right with it.”
“Deros, let me go.” Isobel struggled against the granite of his arms. “He is hurting that woman. I have to stop him; let me go!”
Deros’s face twisted in confusion. “Isobel … he is not hurting her.”
“How do you know?” she spat. “You didn’t even see them. Deros, I am telling you we have to stop him.”
“Isobel, look at me,” Deros demanded. He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Look in my eyes, and listen, and I’ll let you go.”
Isobel stopped her helpless flailing and glared at him.
“I swear to you that he is not hurting her. On Endevren’s soul,” he said somberly. “I swear it.”
Isobel shook her head, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that she didn’t believe him, not with the oath he’d just made.
“I don’t feel right, explaining it to you—I don’t think Cursa Dram would want me to, but … he will. He can explain everything later, all right?”
Isobel scowled at Deros in disbelief for just a moment longer, before she straightened her face and squared her shoulders. “He will explain nothing,” she pronounced, “because you will tell him nothing. He will not know that I saw this, and it will not be discussed again.”
Deros pressed his lips together.
“Are we understood, Deros?”
He looked at the ground, but he nodded. “Of course. You have my word.” He let go of her arms then, and she walked alone, into the woods.
52
Cursa Dram
It was late, almost dark, when Cursa Dram finally located his wife. She should have been in bed, in the keep, where it was safe. Instead, she sat inside the cottage alone, by candlelight, staring into a hearth with no fire inside it. She didn’t even bother to turn her head when he passed through the door. “I have been looking for you,” he said, calmly as he could.
“Have you?” the queen returned absently.
“Yes, of course I have. No one knew where you went; no one had seen you for hours. Why would you just run off like that?”
“I didn’t run anywhere. You said you meant for me to come here when I wished.”
“Yes, but I had generally hoped you would bring me with you, or—devils, just tell someone where you were going, at least.”
“Well. I didn’t.”
Cursa Dram tried to get a reign on his anger and couldn’t, quite. She was being so damned cold about it. He moved to stand in front of her. “Isobel. Do you have any idea of the panic you put me in? I have thought of nothing, for the past hour, except every single horrible thing that could have happened to you. I did not know if you had slipped on the rocks by the stream and finally broken your foolish little neck. I didn’t know if someone had taken you, a baron, or a mercenary, to some place I couldn’t hope to discover. I even accused Thrache of carting you off. I kept waiting, every moment, every corner I turned, to find your lifeless fucking corpse at my feet. And now that I have found you, alive, you have the nerve to treat me with contempt? Why, Izzy? I want to know why. Are you punishing me for something? What have I done?”
“You have done nothing,” she answered. “Not to me.”
Cursa Dram sighed. What had he expected? It had never been likely that marrying her was going to make her less intractable. “Look, I realize I lost my temper this morning. I know that I was barking at everyone, and telling them how things were going to go … but you know, don’t you, that I’m not trying to tell you what to do? They all say I’m the king now, but I don’t see it that way. I never will. To me, you’re the queen, and I’m still just … your subject. I know I can’t stop you; I’ve never been able to stop you doing anything, even before you were queen. Just please, try to understand what it does to me to think of you going back there—to think of either of us being back there. One day, I know you’ll have to, but I’m just not ready for it, not yet.”
Isobel’s eyes betrayed a sorrow he knew he could never make whole. “I know. I know all that. And I would never hold it against you, just as I will never condemn you, Cursa Dram, for being what you are.”
He shook his head. “You say that, but it’s obvious that you’re upset. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong,” replied the queen, turning her eyes back to the empty hearth. “But I do have a request for you, if you don’t mind—two requests, really.”
It seemed such a strange thing for her to say, he nearly laughed. As if she didn’t know he’d slit his own throat, if she asked. But, of course, he didn’t say that. All he said was, “Anything.”
“If you’re going to bed other women,” she began, instantly propelling bile into his throat, “I would ask that you do so indoors from now on, or in a tent, at least. I see no reason to leave yourself out in the open, where anyone could happen on you.”
Therin could barely hear her over the pounding of his own heart. The world was upside down, and he struggled in vain to put it to rights again. What had happened, and how could he undo it? There had to be a way to undo it.
“Secondly,” Isobel continued calmly, “whatever women you do engage with, I really must insist that you not abuse them in any way. If you were to harm someone, I’m afraid I should feel responsible for it.”
“Why are you saying this?” he said roughly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am your wife, and if another woman is going to be kind enough to perform my duties to you, in my place, I will not have her suffer for it.”
Suffer for it? “Isobel. Someone has said something awful to you, and you will tell me who it was.”
“Don’t be stupid. No one has said anything to me.”
“Give me a name,” he fumed. “Now. Was it Deros?”
“No, it wasn’t Deros, you ass. Deros tried to stop me.”
“What do you mean, Deros tried to stop you? Stop you doing what?”
“From seeing,” she said, finally meeting his gaze again. “I saw you. In the stables, with … whoever that was. In any case, she does not deserve to be treated that way, and I won’t have it, Therin. Do you understand me? I will not have it.”
It seemed an impossible task, but Cursa Dram knew he was going to have to form some kind of a response, and soon. He wracked his memory, trying to make sense of his wife’s words. He thought of Lanna, the woman he’d fucked that afternoon. He’d hardly mistreated her. As he recalled, she’d come at least half a dozen times and was still blissfully speechless and trembling when he’d left her.
“Saura Mae,” he began softly, “did we not agree that I would lie with other women? Was I mistaken in that?”
“No,” answered Isobel, emotionless. “You are not mistaken. That is not the issue.”
Careful. Be careful. “Then, the issue is … that you think I have hurt someone?”
“I don’t think, Therin. I saw.”
It didn’t make sense. It just didn’t. “Izzy, I know you have seen me hurt people. You have seen me cut apart more people than I care to think about. But there is a great deal of difference between a person who would kill me, or you, or both of us, and a woman who has done me no harm—let alone one who has been willing to give me her body, and her trust. I would sooner die than respond to that with violence. You believe that, don’t you? I need you to believe that.”
“How can you say that?” said Isobel, suddenly visibly distressed, “She was begging you to stop. You were strangling her.”
Cursa Dram blinked. One day, this woman was going to say something that wrecked his mind completely, and it was never going to start back up again. “She wasn’t begging me to stop, Isobel—she was begging me to …” He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t say the words. He crouched down in front of her chair. “Saura Mae, listen to me. Please. Look at me. I do not know how it was, between you and Devin, and the stars know I don’t want to—but I think … No, I know that the Hesati see things differently. We do things differently from your people. Most Hesati women—not all of them, but most of them ... what you think you saw … The woman I was with today, Izzy, what we were doing—that’s what she likes. It was what she wanted.”
Isobel silently stared at him, unreadable. He took one of her hands. “If it bothers you,” he said, “I won’t see her anymore. I won’t see anyone anymore, I swear.” Just please stop looking at me like that. I’m not a monster. I’m your friend. I’m your best friend.
Isobel slid her hand out of his grasp. “Why would it bother me?” she said quietly, all passion suddenly evaporated again, into nothingness.
Therin stood. Did she even know what she was doing, how easily she cut him, when she was like this? Couldn’t she see? Of course she could. She meant to. “I don’t know, Isobel, maybe because I’m your husband? Maybe because I’m the only person, in thirteen years, who’s bothered to give a shit about you? Because I make you feel things you don’t want to admit that you feel, and because you and I …”
“What?” she challenged, rising from her chair and wrapping her arms around herself. “Because you and I what?”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “Damn it, Izzy, do you even know what it’s like?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You are not making sense.”
“I am talking about being wherever you are, all day every day, you heartless little demon. I am talking about seeing you, looking at you, hour after miserable hour. Watching you move, and lean over to put something down on a table, and sleeping right fucking next to you every night.” He strode closer to her, lowering his voice, as he went on. “Watching this piece of hair—this one exact piece of hair, fall over your chest a hundred times a day, watching it brush against this skin …” She was going to slap him any minute, thought Cursa Dram, as he grazed one finger along the edge of her gown, the exposed inner curve of her breast. She said nothing. He realized she’d stopped breathing. He withdrew his hand, and he walked away, giving her space—the space to hate him, if she needed it.
“But … you’ve never tried … You’ve never even said…"
“Because you are terrified of it!” He hadn’t meant to shout. He thought of the one time they’d gotten close, when he’d kissed her in his cell, the way she froze, solid as ice. “You are terrified,” he repeated miserably, “and I swore that I wouldn’t. I swore to you that I would not touch you, and I meant it. I still mean it. But I need you to understand, mad as it may be—I wouldn’t bother with other women at all, if it weren’t so hard—if I weren’t trying so hard, all the time, to keep that promise. But I will stop, Izzy. If it grieves you at all, I will stop.”
“I don’t expect that,” she said. “I don’t expect that from you.” And there she stood. Unmovable, and untouchable. The queen of ghosts and bones. The queen of his ghost and his bones, he thought wretchedly. How many days did he have left before she laid him in the ground?
He held out his hand. “Let me take you home,” he entreated. “It’s getting dark.”
Her face softened. She took his hand, and she went with him. They rode back to the fort, the excruciating warmth of her against his chest. He saw her safely to her rooms, and he told her gently that he would sleep in his own, just for the night. She said she understood. He closed her door, and he listened to make sure that she’d locked it. He then walked out of the keep, mounted his horse again, and rode, as fast as he could, away from his wife.
53
Isobel
Rain sluiced down outside, just as it had done the whole bleeding day. Above the steady drone of it, Isobel heard a little thumping noise across the hall. She got out of bed and ambled, barefoot, out of her room. To her surprise, she heard Deros’s voice on the other side of Therin’s door, which stood slightly ajar.
“I apologize, if I was wrong. I just thought you would want someone to stay here, at night—until you got back.”
There was a short pause, before she heard Therin respond. “Of course. Of course I would. Thank you.”
Deros gave Isobel a weak smile as they passed by each other, and she closed the door behind her, just as Therin peeled off a very wet shirt and cast it onto a pile on the floor, apparently made up of his dripping boots and armor. He dropped, defeatedly, into a chair.
“Now who’s running off without telling anyone?” Isobel chided.
“I’m sorry if I woke you,” Therin answered. “I’ll try not to make any more noise.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”
He turned a mordant gaze in her direction. “What would you like me to say, Isobel?”
“You were gone for two days.”
“Yes. I was.”
“Where did you go?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. I was just gone.”
“Did you fuck anyone?”
“Isobel, no.” Therin grimaced, rubbing at his forehead. “What is wrong with you?”
She shrugged. “It’s relevant information.”
“Relevant information.”
“Yes.”
“Well, do you think we could discuss whatever the hell that means in the morning? I’m tired.”
