Chapter Eight
She won’t even look at me.
Daen stared at Aelys’s back as she paused in the stableyard of their overnight stopping point and stretched. Romik, who’d spent most of the day walking with her, said something that made her smile up at him, and a fist of anger and jealousy clenched Daen’s insides.
“Just talked with the wagonmaster.” Vil’s voice cut through the dark cloud wreathing Daen’s thoughts and pulled him around to focus on his brother’s words. “He says we’ll stay here the night. They’ve got a guard rotation already set for the oxen and the carts, so we’re free to watch over Aelys. He said the tavern on the other side of the stable has rooms to rent, though not very many. He thought our Bella might prefer a bed tonight, since we’re likely to sleep rough the rest of the way down to Cievers.”
Daen grunted, which made Vil narrow his eyes and peer closer.
“You like that plan?” Vil asked, a hint of challenge in his words. “Or do you propose something else?”
“It’s fine. You go get the rooms and I’ll let Romik know.”
“And Aelys,” Vil said, his eyes glinting with something Daen didn’t want to examine. “She deserves to know the plan, too.”
“She’s right there. She’ll hear me.” Daen had time to see Vil’s eyebrows raise before he turned and stalked over to where Romik smiled down at the woman who inhabited Daen’s thoughts and tormented his soul.
“Wagonmaster says we’re stopping here for the night,” Daen said, his voice clipped. Despite what he’d told Vil, he angled his body so that he didn’t have to look directly at Aelys. He wasn’t sure what he would do if she looked at him with those big, sad blue eyes of hers.
“Are we making camp?” Romik asked. “I noticed the drovers pulled the oxen out into the meadow behind this livery stable.”
“They’ll camp there. Vil says they’ve already got a guard rotation set up. They don’t need us, so he’s gone to see about rooms from the tavern there.” He pointed. “He thought the Bella might appreciate a bed, apparently.”
“That’s very kind of him,” Aelys said, her voice soft and tentative. “I must express my appreciation.”
Daen stiffened. His fingers twitched with the need to touch her, and so he curled them into fists.
“He’s in the meadow, talking with the drovers,” Romik said, and Daen could see his eyes flicking from Aelys to him and back again. “We could walk over there while we wait for Vil to make arrangements.”
“Is…that all right with you, Daen?” Aelys asked. Daen ground his teeth together before turning his head to speak over his shoulder to her.
“I don’t care what you do,” he said. “So long as Romik is with you to keep you alive.”
Romik’s thick brows slammed together in a frown, but Daen turned away and began walking toward the meadow with the carts and the beginnings of a rudimentary camp.
He heard Romik murmur a reassurance to Aelys and heard their footsteps crunching on the gravel behind him, so he knew they followed. He didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.
Green Lady’s rot, he thought savagely. I can’t escape her. She haunts my every thought! She rejected me…rejected us…and I can’t rutting get her out of my head! What in seven hells am I supposed to do now?
Daen stayed lost in this maelstrom of rage and hurt all the way up to the wagonmaster, who greeted them with a friendly smile. He heard Aelys expressing her gratitude for the man’s consideration and gritted his teeth as the man himself blushed under her compliments. In the back of his mind, Daen knew it was ridiculous to envy the wagonmaster. The man was sixty years old if he was a day, and probably had grandchildren close to Aelys’s age. But he still had to suppress a growl when Aelys laid one of her long, slender hands gently on the wagonmaster’s sleeve as she thanked him. Daen swallowed back the vitriol rising in his throat and turned away to see Vil approaching from the back door of the tavern.
Gratitude for an impending reprieve drained away as he got a look at Vil’s face, however. As usual, Vil kept his expression carefully blank, but something in his eyes told Daen that he was concerned about something. He glanced at Romik and then took a single step to meet their thief brother.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Tavern no good?”
“Not exactly,” Vil said. “It’s fine…but there’s only one room available. The barkeep said there are two beds, but it’s still going to be tight for all four of us.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Romik’s voice rumbled up from behind Daen. He refused to turn and look, lest he meet Aelys’s gaze. “We all shared a tent on the way to Brionne.”
“We did,” Vil said, his voice neutral. But his eyes tracked up to meet Daen’s, and the question in them shone clear: Can you handle being that close to her?
“I don’t want to cause trouble—” Aelys said softly, and something deep inside Daen snapped. He whirled around as the anger ignited beneath his skin.
“Funny, since that’s all you seem to do,” he snarled. Next to her, Romik reeled backward, surprise and consternation creasing his face.
“Daen—” Vil said, warning clear in his tone. But Aelys held up a hand and squared her shoulders in her habitual gesture before doing something that scared her.
“No, Vil, it’s all right,” she said. Her words were clear, even if they carried a tiny tremor. “Daen is entitled to his opinion. I was going to say that I don’t need special treatment. I appreciate that our fine wagonmaster here”—she inclined her head toward the man who still stood next to her, watching the interplay with wary eyes—“was good enough to think of my comfort, but I’ve slept rough before, as you all know. I can bed down with the wagons and the three of you may do as you like.”
“No,” Vil said, his voice like cold iron. “The wagonmaster is right. I’ve already engaged the room.”
“Good man,” the wagonmaster said, with a nod to Vil. He reached out and clapped Romik on the shoulder. “I’ve work to see to, and so I’ll let you four settle your own arrangements. Any of you are welcome in our camp, of course, but it’s right the lady have a bed.”
“Thank you,” Romik said, and smiled as the man walked away.
“Vil, I don’t need—” Aelys said quietly once the wagonmaster was out of earshot.
“It’s done, Bella. The room is ours for the night. You’ll sleep there, under our protection as your Ageons.”
“We’re not her Ageons!” The words exploded out of Daen before he could stop them. “She broke the bond, remember?”
“I set you free—”
“Free to do what, Bella? Free to think about you every moment, wondering what we did that was so terrible that you rejected the love we tried to give you? Free to follow after you and watch you smile at other men? Free to spill our blood to protect you knowing that you don’t think we’re good enough to be yours?”
Aelys’s eyes went wide, and the blood drained from her face, leaving her pale in the late afternoon sunlight. “I—” she whispered. “No. That’s not what happened—”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Daen snarled, leaning in to put his face close to hers. He felt Romik shift closer, and he knew that if he dared to touch Aelys with this anger, his warrior brother would intervene. “We—all of us—we chose you and you rejected us. You threw us away!”
“Daen, I didn’t! What you felt wasn’t real, it was the geas—”
Daen leaned in closer and bared his teeth at her. “That’s right, Aelys,” he growled. “Blame everything on the geas. Divines forbid you should take responsibility for your choices.”
She gasped as if he’d struck her, and he whirled away. “I need a fucking drink,” he growled to no one and everyone and stalked toward the tavern’s back door, shoulder-checking Vil as he went.
Stay and coddle her, he thought savagely to his brothers. It won’t make a difference. No matter what we do, we’ll never be good enough for her. She’s made that crystal fucking clear.
The rage carried him all the way into the small tavern and to a seat at the long, scarred wooden bar that ran along one wall. The barkeep—a burly man with a scar through his milky left eye—took one look at him and poured a measure of liquor from a small, flat bottle.
“Leave the bottle,” Daen said curtly.
“Be a Muni.”
“Rutting highway robbery,” Daen groused, but he slammed the coin down on the bar and threw back the first measure, relishing the burn that exploded on the inside of his mouth and down his throat. It didn’t ease the inferno of pain and anger that raged inside of him…but at least it was a different kind of heat.
Four more shots and half a mug of ale later, Daen felt Vil slide onto the stool next to him. He didn’t speak. But he poured another shot and slid it over to him.
“You drunk?” Vil asked, his soft voice nearly lost under the dull roar of conversation and dining noise. Small the tavern may be, but it was apparently a popular place along this road.
“Working on it,” Daen said.
“We leave at first light.”
“That’s tomorrow Daen’s problem.”
“And tonight Daen?”
Daen huffed a laugh and lifted his mug of ale, taking a deep drink. “He’s got enough problems.”
“She cried.”
He didn’t mean to, but he flinched, closing his eyes briefly before setting his mug down. She left us. Rejected us. Protected us.
“She’s a woman. They cry.” He managed to sound unconcerned as he opened his eyes and reached for the shot Vil hadn’t touched. His brother’s hand struck out like a viper and wrapped around Daen’s wrist, squeezing tightly enough to grind the bones together.
“If you were anyone else, I’d gut you alive, Daen.”
“Why?” Daen asked.
“You know why.”
Daen let out a ragged laugh, and finally, he could hear the liquor-induced burr in his voice. “You’re a fool, Vil. She doesn’t want you, either. You know that, right? She doesn’t want any of us.”
“You’re wrong,” Vil said. “She not only wants us, she needs us. All of us.”
“Then why did she—”
“She told you why.”
“The geas? That’s always her excuse.”
“You’re an idiot.” Vil let go of Daen’s arm, disgust threading through his tone. “It’s not an excuse, it’s literally what happened. And you’re wrong about her taking responsibility. That’s why she broke the geas in the first place. It wasn’t about rejecting us, it was her way of taking responsibility for her actions. We couldn’t really choose with the geas in place, Daen. You remember how it was. We couldn’t think of anything but her—”
“I still can’t.”
This muttered confession dropped between them like a stone into still water. Vil went preternaturally still, in the way he sometimes did, and Daen very carefully looked only at his near-empty mug.
“I know. Neither can I.”
Daen nodded. He’d known that, too. For better or for worse, Aelys had gotten under their skins. All of them.
It was never just the geas.
But she left us.
Rejected us.
Protected us.
“You can’t keep punishing her,” Vil said softly.
“I’m not trying to punish her,” Daen murmured. “I’m just trying not to get hurt again.”
“But all you’re doing is hurting yourself. And her.”
Daen slumped, feeling his shoulders curl inward the way Aelys’s so often did. Left. Rejected. Protected.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Vil,” Daen whispered. “I don’t know if I can let it go.”
“Then we’re lost. She needs us all, Daen. That hasn’t changed.”
“Vil—”
Vil slid off his stool and turned to face Daen, his dark blue eyes hard and intense.
“No. Enough. I can’t argue you out of your self-pity, and I’m not wasting any more of my time in trying.” He reached out his right hand—the one that bore the triple crescent mark of the three Divines who’d witnessed their brotherhood oath—and clasped it to Daen’s similarly marked palm. “As your brother, let me tell you the naked truth. Romik is her sword, you’re her arrow, I’m her knife in the dark. She’s cut off from her family. Her incredibly powerful aunt wants her powerless, and now we have this Gadren fellow on the board. Aelys needs us if she’s going to survive this. All of us.”
“I said I’d protect her,” Daen said. “I made that choice when we left Brionne, you remember.”
“I do,” Vil said. “But brother mine, that’s not enough. When we were her Ageons, we made her more powerful. When she pulled power through us…well. You know as well as I what she could do. She needs that power.”
“But she broke the geas. We’re not her Ageons. She can’t pull power through us anymore.”
“No,” Vil said. “She can’t. Not unless she makes us her Ageons again.”
Daen blinked, feeling his body go still as this new thought slammed into his alcohol-fogged mind.
“She could…”
“Why not? She did it once. She could do it again. If…”
“If what, Vil?”
Vil smiled slowly. “If we can convince her that we choose her, that we choose the bond freely, being in full possession of our faculties. If we can make her see—”
“That we love her,” Daen finished. Vil’s smile deepened, taking on a sardonic cast. “That’s…Divines, Vil, how are we going to do that? She rejected us—”
“She rejected us because she didn’t think we could actually freely choose her. She blamed her magic for what we felt.”
“If we couldn’t convince her that we truly loved her before, how are we going to do it now?”
“I don’t know,” Vil said. “But I do know one thing. She doesn’t think she deserves our love, and your temper tantrums haven’t helped.”
“She hurt me, Vil!”
“She hurt us all, Daen. But what’s more important? Your past hurt? Or your future joy?”
Daen closed his mouth with a snap and stared at his brother. Vil smiled sardonically and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t get so drunk you can’t make it up to our room, Daen. Romik will never let you live it down if you do.”
And with that, Vil gathered his cloak around himself and slipped into the shadows along the far wall, where their rented room waited behind a thick wooden door.