by A. F. Dery
He flung open the door without breaking stride and walked directly up to the side of the bed, his eyes fixed on the floor just before him until he came to a halt. From the corner of his eye, he saw the servant who was evidently looking after her jump to her feet from a chair by the fireplace, and he impatiently waved her away with his hand. He heard her scramble from the room, then the click of the door as she pulled it shut behind her.
He braced himself for the worst, and forced himself to look at her. He wasn’t sure what exactly he expected, but after Graunt’s dire words, he was afraid.
Kesara laid in the bed, perfectly still. Her once-tan skin was white as chalk, the smudges under her eyes as dark as new bruises. In the past week, she’d shed a fair amount of weight she couldn’t really afford to lose, her bones now sticking out sharply, her clavicle casting shadow where it peeked out over the neckline of the plain white shift she was wearing.
But her eyes were wide open and fixed on his face, utterly unreadable.
“Kes,” he said quietly, and then closed his mouth, unsure of how to proceed.
“You came back,” she said, her voice barely audible. Even so, he couldn’t fail to notice the faint surprise in her tone, and it stabbed at him.
“I made a mistake to leave you in the first place,” he admitted, and to his horror, his voice broke. He took, and released, a deep breath to steady himself, then added, “I never meant to make you suffer more than you already were. I wanted to respect your choice, and ended up making it for you instead. I’m sorry, Kes.”
She started to weep quietly, her shaking hands going to her face, and he stood looking down at her helplessly, anxiety surging through him as he realized he had no idea what to do. Whatever reaction he had expected from her, if in fact he had expected anything, it wasn’t this.
“Oh Kes, please don’t cry,” he said. He sat very gingerly on the edge of the bed, facing her, and gave her leg a tentative pat.
“Y-you did the r-right thing to go,” Kesara sobbed weakly. “I should have just k-killed myself in Ytar, b-but I was too much of a c-coward. Now because of me, y-your choices were taken away, too.”
He blinked at her in astonishment. “Gods, Kes, don’t say that! It just isn’t true.”
“It IS true!” She dropped her hands to her lap, her fingers twitching at the blanket covering her in agitation. Her blue eyes pleaded with him. “If you think I’m some good, selfless person because I helped you that day, you’re wrong. The truly good thing would have been to just leave you alone instead of putting you in this position, but I did what I wanted and just hoped it would all work out! Well, it didn’t, did it? You have nothing to be sorry for, I have no one to blame for this but me. I tried to run away from myself, and big surprise that I didn’t succeed! The only mistake you’ve made with me, Lord Eladria, is that you stopped at that cave when you took me to see Graunt when you ought to have kept on walking and pitched me over the side of this damned mountain!”
“Get control of yourself, woman,” Thane barked sharply. She cringed back against the pillow and he ignored the twist of guilt in his gut as he continued in a quiet, firm tone, “This is ridiculous, these things you are saying. Self pity is disgusting, and believe me, I would know. I’ve spent enough time this past week wallowing in my own over causing you to suffer in my stead, like some kind of a monster instead of a man. I certainly didn’t come down here tonight to sit and listen to you wallow in yours. We all make our choices, and we have to live with them. There’s no point in stewing over what could have happened or what you should have done. There’s no evil I can see in a young woman wanting to live awhile longer, but it’s a terrible thing, suicide. There is the true cowardice, Kes: to take the knife of your own making instead of the knife of the true foe, to escape the battle. It’s not fighting on while staring your death in the eyes. There is no shame in falling to the one enemy no man will ever conquer, and all the better if you can make the bastard sweat for his kill, if you ask me. And as far as ‘the position I’m in,’ I’ll thank you to know it is no more your fault than mine. I could have sent you away at any time. I could have asked more questions about what you were. Hell, I could have stayed in the tower tonight instead of coming down here now. How can I blame you for wanting to live? I want to live, too, when anyone with two eyes can tell you it probably would have been kinder for the midwife to have smothered my first cries!”
“Then why did you leave me!” she cried, stiffening her shoulders. “If you really don’t blame me, then why would you throw away my only chance to stay alive a little while longer? One moment, you were asking me to complete the bond, and the next, you were leaving me to die and telling me I’m better off that way!”
“I know...I just...” Thane sighed, deflated. He rubbed his face with his hands. “I can’t imagine anything weaker or more cowardly, than to make an innocent woman bear the pain that is rightfully mine. I would rather suffer a hundred more of my headaches and die from them than know I am making you suffer for them. Telling me you are ‘made’ for this, like Graunt would, even that you need it to survive, doesn’t change the fact that I’m every bit the monster I appear to be, every bit the monster of that pig who abducted you, if I would go along with something so shameful.”
“Did I look like I was suffering to you? It was not more than I could bear, Thane, or I never would have kept doing it after the first time! Can’t you see? What was able to bring a man like you to his knees did not even slow my steps! My life was not less for it. I was not writhing in my bed at night or sobbing away my days. The monster is the one who would delight in knowing what torments he could cause me. Who would throw himself willingly in harm’s way just to punish me for my sins, real or imaginary. I’ve seen it happen, Thane. I know that’s not you.” Her eyes were intent on his. “It would never be you.”
Thane didn’t know what to say. She was right, at least that he’d never seen her actually suffering. He’d never even suspected that she was feeling what he would have been feeling. She’d seemed fine, and he couldn’t really imagine that she was that good of an actor, given the level of pain involved in his headaches alone.
“Doesn’t it..hurt you?” he asked softly. A ghost of a smile curved Kesara’s lips.
“Of course. It’s hardly pleasant. But I feel...lost without it. Empty. I know it’s sick, to feel that way, but I can’t help it. It was the hardest part of leaving Ytar for me, having to learn to live without it if I meant to hide what I was.” Kesara’s smile wavered, her lower lip trembled. “Now I can’t stop myself from feeling it, the pain all around me, but for the first time in my life, I still feel so alone, even with it.”
She looked away and he did, too, afraid that she was crying again. I did this, he thought miserably. Whatever my fears, I must fix it. Trying to run from it now is every bit the cowardice I was just lecturing her about.
“Kes, I can’t say I’m comfortable with...all this,” Thane said quietly. “But I don’t want you to die, and I never wanted you to suffer like this. I thought to spare you and instead made things worse, and whether you want to hear it or not, I am sorry for that. I panicked and I behaved...badly. Thoughtlessly. I know I have no right to ask this of you and I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you told me to go to hell, but if we can go back to the way things were, I would do that. For you.”
“Why?” she asked bluntly.
Thane shrugged uncomfortably, his face heating. “You’re not intolerable,” he said shortly. He looked at her again to see her raised eyebrow. He sighed. “And maybe you’re not the only one who’d been feeling alone,” he added, grudgingly. When she remained silent, he sighed again and looked back at his hands. “Let me make it plain to you, shall I? I don’t expect ever to marry, Kes. And I don’t take lovers. The closest friend I ever had stabbed me in the back, and Graunt is the nearest thing I have to any family left. Even so, as much as I care for her, she has her own agenda at times. Clearly. I would never tie anyone to me if they had any other choice,
but you don’t. As it turns out, you don’t have the monopoly on being selfish, if that’s what you want to call it. It’s been... nice...to have someone around who can tolerate my company and behave as though I’m just like anyone else, minus a ‘my lord’ or two. I think what I could give you in return would be just recompense.”
“So you would put aside your disgust of what I am for my...company?” She sounded skeptical and admittedly, phrased like that, he couldn’t really fault her for it.
“Company, as in companionship,” he said distinctly, meeting her eyes. “Not...you know...company, as described in the fine literature of our times.”
He was pleased to see a little color return to her face.
“And I’m not disgusted at you. More like ashamed of me. But as it’s too late to reverse what’s been done now...and gods, Kes, breaking mirrors is something one would expect of someone with a face like mine. I never thought to do so literally.”
Again, she smiled a little, and he felt his heart lift. “That’s not funny,” she said without conviction. “But still, Thane...it’s too late for me now. I couldn’t re-instate a temporary bond again, not in the condition I’m in now.”
Thane frowned, as again, his heart sank. “But what of the other? The permanent one? Is it too late for that as well?”
Kesara hesitated, obviously debating her answer with herself. Finally she said, “It might still be possible. But I can’t do that, Thane. It’s one thing to put aside your feelings about this for a few days or weeks or months, and quite another to expect you to do so for the rest of your life. Besides which, one of the reasons I left...perhaps, in all honesty, the most compelling to me...is that I truly don’t believe I’m a suitable candidate to be bonded to anyone like that.”
“Well, why not?” he asked bluntly.
“I can hurt people,” Kesara said with equal bluntness. “Mirrors are supposed to reflect pain, but not to other people. We take it ourselves, like a glass mirror takes your image when you look into it. It doesn’t project that image somewhere else.”
Thane blinked. “So you can...reflect pain other places?”
Kesara nodded slowly. “Anything I’ve felt, I can send somewhere else- to someone else. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of concentration. I can’t always manage it. It’s not something I think I could do on the spur of the moment, as it were.”
“And other Mirrors can’t do this?”
“Not usually. When I was still in Ytar, at the school, I read about the occasional Mirror who could.” Kesara frowned a little. “There hasn’t been one born who could do it in over a hundred years. The ones who did, in the past...they were evil, Thane. Or what I would call evil. They usually ended up having to be killed to end their reigns of pointless cruelty.”
“I don’t think you’re the pointlessly cruel type,” Thane said, trying not to smile.
“No,” she agreed. “But then, I do my best not to use it. Not that I haven’t cheated,” she added in an undertone.
He caught it though. “Is that what happened to Fred? I did wonder what exactly you did to him to invite such abuse on your person.”
“Fred? I never did anything to Fred,” Kesara said, perplexed.
“I mean the man who was guarding the tower the day you brought my tea tray,” Thane lost the battle to his grin when he saw her roll her eyes.
“That wasn’t Fred,” she huffed. “You can’t tell me all Eladrians look the same to you.”
“Don’t try to distract me,” Thane said. “I can cut you down any time I please, and you’d never see it coming, I promise. If you can still trust me enough to go through with the bonding, then I will return your trust.”
“It’s not that simple...it’s wrong, to be this way, to be able to do this...it’s like a defect. It’s not supposed to happen, and it always turns out badly, historically speaking. I don’t know what they would have done , those who kept me, if they’d known about it.”
“That must have been a difficult secret to keep, especially around the likes of that pig,” Thane commented.
“I was more afraid of what would happen to me if I got caught doing it than afraid of what he could do to me. Though that day he took me from the hall, I would have tried, I just couldn’t manage it then,” Kesara admitted, dropping her eyes.
Thane studied her a moment. “I think you are imagining impediments that don’t really exist. Are you sure it’s not just that you’d really rather not have to spend that long- possibly years, realistically speaking- with me?”
“No, of course not,” Kesara said, raising her eyes again in obvious surprise. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Then just don’t use this evil reflecting you speak of, and there’s no problem. What you don’t use can’t be corrupting you, I shouldn’t think.”
“And if that ‘evil reflecting’ was the only thing between yourself and an enemy? Between one of your people and an enemy? You wouldn’t ask it of me?”
“Of course I would. Be reasonable, Kes. My duty is to my people first, and that includes considering all possible resources, however cold that may sound to you. But you could always say no. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, bond or no bond. You have my word, I would not try to force you, or allow anyone else to do so on my behalf.” Thane leaned towards her. “You’re not my slave. You never will be.”
Kesara bit her lip. Her eyes were still troubled. “I don’t think it’s wise to risk this,” she whispered. “I’m afraid.”
“There are worse things than me in this world,” Thane said. He held out his hands to her, palms up. She stared at them a moment, almost as if they’d bite her, but she placed her hands in his. He curved his fingers around them, stilling their tremors, and she let out a shaky sigh.
“There’s no going back after this, Thane,” she said softly. “Not for me, anyway. You’re sure?”
“On my honor and that of Eladria, Kes, I am,” he answered, keeping the words slow and deliberate so she’d be certain to understand him clearly.
“Then hold me.”
Thane tensed momentarily, surprised by the request, but then leaned across the bed to gather her in his arms bridal-style and quickly settle her on his lap. She felt cool against his bare arms and chest, and a shiver ran through him. Kesara shifted to face him then, rising up briefly to seat herself kneeling with a leg tucked to each side of him, and he felt his face, and more, burn, thoroughly incapable of tearing his eyes away from hers, feeling utterly frozen in place as she gently took his hands and placed them on her lower back. They trembled there as she reached forward, placing her palms softly on his cheeks and gently urging his face towards her until they were near enough that he could feel her warm breath on his skin.
She began to murmur something in a low chant, in a language he couldn’t comprehend, but it didn’t matter. Her eyes were so blue, staring into them he felt like he was falling into the sky. He couldn’t think of anything but her, and struggled to focus on that vivid blueness rather than the shape and warmth and weight of her that was calling to all the rest of him…
Then suddenly he felt a surge of heat through his body, as though he had plunged headfirst and all at once into a warm bath, and he felt the incredibly strange sensation of warm skin against his own, suddenly cool, skin; he saw his own eyes looking back at him with such a look of naked wonder he was amazed; he felt strong arms around him, and a strong wordless ache somewhere inside that made him involuntarily arch against her…him?
He felt his own pain, the old remembered aches and injuries, and pain utterly alien to him that made him gasp. Mixed with it all was hunger and relief, longing and rapture…
And then, abruptly, he was himself again, looking deeply into her vivid blue eyes. She was pressed against him so closely now that he could feel her heartbeat against his chest, her head thrown back to maintain eye contact. His hands were gripping her hips now, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember ever moving them, and he couldn’t remember now h
ow to let them go. It took every ounce of his self control not to lower his face the bare inch it would take to meet her lips, and he didn’t dare draw another breath for fear that with the slightest movement, all would be lost…
A loud knock sounded at the door. Then it sounded again, with such insistence, it sounded as though it could have been going on for quite a while. The raw need inside him hammered at his senses, in time with the pounding at the door, and her heartbeat, and his…
The door rattled in its frame. Slowly, slowly, and with obvious reluctance, Kesara pulled away from him. Her lips were parted, she was breathing through them, and he did his best not to look at them.
“Lord Eladria,” a voice called urgently from the other side of the door.
He shook his head mutely, not trusting his voice as Kesara sat back on her heels.
“Y-you should answer that,” she said unsteadily. “It’s done. Can you feel me?”
He could have laughed. All he could feel, at the moment, was her, and every inch of her that was in contact with himself. Instead, he gave a single, slow nod, still not quite able to look away.
“Are you all right, Thane?” she asked then, those lips curving downward in a slight frown. He felt anxiety suddenly tugging at him, as if from a distance. It was an odd feeling.
“Lord Eladria?” the voice came again, rising at the end in concern. A strong feeling of disappointment, a strange sense of cold, washed over him as Kesara carefully climbed from his lap, modestly tugging down her shift around her legs as she did so. She sat down heavily next to him, and he longed fiercely for her to lean against him, but she didn’t.
“One moment,” he called, more than loudly enough to be heard over the pounding and rattling and increasingly vocal anxiety. He turned his head to look at Kesara, to find she was already looking up at him. “You’re all right?” he asked in a quieter tone.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Is…did that happen like…I mean, that was normal?” His voice was suddenly rough, and he immediately regretted having asked, but knew his pride needed the answer, just the same.