Page 19 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Nineteen

I found Lester in the barracks attached to the castle walls. He was sitting at a long table with his legs kicked out before him, nursing a mug as he squinted at me through his too-long fringe.

‘Well, well, fancy seeing you here, queenie,’ he said. Down the other end of the table, a handful of other soldiers had stood and bowed as I entered. He saw me glance at them. ‘Would you like me to bend the knee for you too, your greatness?’

‘Perhaps, but not here. Somewhere private.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Private, hey? I must have been on better form that night at the King’s Arms than I thought.’

‘Save the jokes. This is important.’

‘Of course it is.’ He sighed, knocked back whatever remained in his mug and rose to his feet. ‘Alright, come on then.’

I followed him down a corridor and into some kind of office. It was meticulously neat, except for a trio of old mugs clustered on the desk top, and sparse to a fault. Very military. Lester dropped into a chair and swung his feet up onto the desk, grinning at me as he did.

‘So, what’s so important?’ he asked, lacing his fingers behind his head. I crossed the room and slapped my palms down on the desk, leaning over him.

‘You’re going to tell me about the attack on Oceatold.’

‘Hang on, you’re going to have to take me back a step. I’m a little sleepy this morning. Attack?’

‘On Oceatold,’ I repeated. ‘Draven sanctioned an attack on a garrison by the border. Why’d he do it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, queenie.’ The humour had fallen from his face, right after the brief jolt of surprise had widened his eyes. ‘I’m just a lowly old soldier. What do I know about the grand plans of kings?’

‘And here I thought you were high lord of the shit jobs.’ I sized him up with a raised brow. ‘Surely even you should be able to answer such a simple a question.’

‘I take back what I said about talking straight. I think I actually liked it better when you were trying to charm me,’ he muttered. ‘I had no bloody idea about an attack.’

‘You didn’t?’ I straightened up, surprised. ‘But what about your band of outcasts, or whatever Draven wants to call you?’

‘So you know about that now, too.’ He dragged a hand over his face, swung his feet back onto the floor. ‘Look, I told you last time. I’m loyal. I’m not going to tell you anything he hasn’t.’

‘Even if he’s acting without consulting you?’ I asked slyly. ‘I guess he doesn’t trust you as much as I thought.’

He stood. Probably because it was the only way he could make himself feel bigger than me. ‘I knew there would be an attack, I just didn’t expect it now,’ he said irritably. ‘If we haven’t got wind of it down here, then I’m guessing it’s still fresh as fresh can be. He’ll explain it to me, and he’ll have a good reason.’

‘But why the attack in any case? Why are you trying to provoke the king of Oceatold?’ I pressed.

‘No.’ He waved his hands, as though to shoo me out the door. ‘No, no, no. You go beat someone else for information.’ Then he paused, seemed to consider me. ‘But before you do, how does Draven seem to you?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, baffled at the sudden change of subject.

‘You know, how’s he acting? Does he seem normal?’

‘Normal isn’t a word I’d use to describe him.’

‘But is he acting sort of… erratic? More than usual?’

I just stared at him with raised eyebrows.

‘What good are you, then?’ he muttered. ‘You’d think sharing a bed with someone would give you a bit more of a clue.’

‘You’d think sharing blood would do that too.’

He began trying to wave me towards the door again. ‘Alright, time to go.’

‘Wait.’ I stood my ground, licked my lips. ‘Look, I think we could help each other.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘You seem to know less about what’s going on with your brother than you’d like,’ I said, scrambling to get my thoughts together. Right now, he seemed a softer target than Draven. If I could disarm him a little, I was sure I’d have him singing like a canary. ‘You said at the tavern that he’d stopped listening to you, and now he’s making decisions that are taking you by surprise.’

‘So?’

‘We could trade information.’ I measured his reaction, noted the wrinkling of his nose. ‘You could at least try to hide your disgust. You may as well shout your thoughts out loud.’

‘Well, I don’t trust you, queenie. And I’m not sleeping with you, so I’m not likely to trust you any time soon.’

‘I think you could come to trust me,’ I urged. ‘Ask me something. See how cooperative I can be.’

He frowned, seemed to think for a moment as he scratched his nose. ‘Alright,’ he said finally. ‘Why don’t you tell me what those animals in Sentinel’s Tower are to you?’

I felt the blood drain out of my face as my expression stiffened.

‘Ah, so you do know what I’m talking about,’ he said with a satisfied nod. ‘I bloody knew they had something to do with you.’

I didn’t know what to say. The part of me that was crafty and could lie with ease vanished. I was the helpless woman held over a campfire by beasts who were right in this very palace. I wasn’t about to share the story of the worst, most vulnerable moment of my life with the man in front of me. I didn’t want to share that story with anyone.

‘And it’s something bad,’ he said, studying me intently.

‘They hurt me once,’ I muttered.

‘Going to need a bit more than that if you want to prove that you’ll cooperate with me.’

I tried to find words, any words at all, that could answer his question. A vague explanation, a lie, something that mixed the two together. But all that came to my head was the unflinching truth. They tried to rape me, and when I wouldn’t cooperate, they held me down over a campfire and burned half my face off and I’m only standing here now because someone chased them away before they could do worse. I couldn’t say that. I wouldn’t admit to that.

‘So much for sharing information,’ Lester said after I stood in silence for too long. ‘Now, as much as I enjoy our chats, some of us have work to do.’ He crossed the room and opened the door, sweeping his arm to usher me through it.

Glaring at the ground, I made for it, my face hot with shame. Draven’s words came back to me. Run like you ran yesterday.

‘Let me give you some advice,’ Lester said as I passed him.

I paused in the doorway. ‘Advice?’ I repeated with an incredulous bite to my tone.

‘Yes, advice. I’ve been kicking around royal courts long enough to have some worth following.’ He leaned in closer, lowering his voice. ‘Get out of here while you can. You’re in over your head.’ Before I had a chance to reply, he shut the door in my face. A moment later, he opened it a slither. ‘And call off your woman. I don’t like being tailed,’ he added, before it clicked shut again.

I stared at it for a few moments as the heat of shame turned caustic, bubbling and corroding away at my good sense. I was used to being underestimated, but this was beyond the pale. I was being treated like a silly, spineless girl who could be controlled and kept in the dark. Hadn’t I won myself a crown? Hadn’t I poisoned a king and abducted a princess to get here? I was a queen, wasn’t I?

But I could feel the ghost of the street nipping at my heels, of gnawing hunger and a bed in an alley and a coin for a knock against a wall. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I had come so far from being that girl, so why did I feel like her again? Is that why Draven had brought the binders here? To prove to me that, for all my threats and bluster, I couldn’t follow through? That I was still just as helpless, still just as weak, despite the crown and the palace and the mirage of authority that glittered around me?

If that’s what he thought, he was wrong. I would prove it. I wasn’t the girl that could be dragged off into the trees and assaulted and burned as though I was nothing , as though my life meant nothing. And no one had the right to make me feel like I was that helpless and insignificant again. Not Lester, and certainly not Draven.

You could be the one to fear, he’d said.

Yes, I could be.

I would be.

The guard had been dozing in his chair, and he startled to attention at my entrance, scrabbling for the pike leaning against the wall as he jumped to his feet. He performed a mongrel of a greeting that was half way between a bow and a salute, before hurtling back to standing as straight as a board. He’d probably never even seen me before, holed up away in the tower as he was, and he’d no doubt never expected to see me here .

‘My queen,’ he stammered.

‘There have been three new additions to your inmates in the last day or so, soldier. Where are they being kept?’

He jumped into action without asking for anymore explanation than that, leading me down a winding corridor of cells, some occupied, but most empty. He shot wide-eyed glances at me periodically as he did, clearly stunned by my sudden appearance. He was young, with tufts of hair as fine as floss clinging to his round chin, and long lashes around soft brown eyes. In the back of my mind, I considered whether his tall and broad stature could intercept me, before dismissing the idea. He looked the sort who wouldn’t stand up to a mouse, let alone a queen.

‘Here, ma’am,’ he said, stopping before a cell and mangling another bow.

I stared into the gloom of the cell, down at the gaunt, filthy monsters wallowing there, my blood pounding in my ears so loudly that I could scarcely think. There was one lying on a bench, two sitting leaning against the wall. Only one of them looked up, squinting into my face like I was as bright as the sun.

‘Unlock the door,’ I ordered.

There was a moment of tense silence. ‘Ma’am, are you—’

I yanked my gaze away from the prisoner and tried to ignore the small spike of relief I felt at having an excuse to look elsewhere. The guard’s brown eyes were wide with nerves. ‘Are you deaf or stupid?’ I barked. ‘I gave you an order.’

He lurched into action, stuttering apologies as he fumbled with his keys. The screech of metal on metal dragged down my spine as the door swung open. I jabbed a finger at the one who was looking at me.

‘Take that one and bring him out here,’ I said.

The guard immediately stepped into the cell. He yanked the prisoner to his feet by a set of manacles on a chain. He came willingly and stepped into the light of the corridor. The guard’s round face was lined with anxiety as he stood before me, like he was waiting to be told he’d done well. But I wasn’t looking at him anymore.

The prisoner squinted at me through locks of long, greasy hair, so dirty that it looked more muddy brown than blond. There was nothing in his face that suggested recognition, no shock, no flaring of his eyes or rising brows. But through the grime coating his skin, beneath his left eye, I could see a strange, circular scar. Different from the long slash on the face of the one Draven had tormented earlier. Different because I’d put this scar there. I remembered the taste of blood in my mouth as I bit his cheek, the feeling of hands around my throat, what he’d said to me as he dragged me to the campfire. Whores don’t do so well without a pretty face.

The rushing in my ears grew louder as something corrosive burned through me, all rage and fear and vengeance and the force of a long-ago scream that demanded to turn back time and undo what he’d done to me.

But the past couldn’t be undone.

I held out my hand to the guard. ‘Give me your dagger.’

He didn’t even hesitate, fumbling with the dagger at his belt and handing it to me hilt-first. Without a moment more preamble I stepped in close to the prisoner, gritted my teeth, grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back.

He spluttered a half cry, but I already had the blade at his neck, steel slicing along his skin. His throat split, coming apart so easily to reveal a welling tide of dark red that bubbled out and down the blade, onto my hand, gushing to the floor as his cry became a gurgle. The sight of the blood on my hand made me flinch, releasing him to slump to his knees as the guard finally woke from whatever stupor of shock had immobilised him. I dimly registered that he was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over the pounding in my head. I stared at my hands, now trembling so violently that I dropped the knife and it clattered to the floor.

Just past my fingers, I saw the moment the blond prisoner collapsed, his chains rattling as he struggled to reach for his neck, his blood forming little rivers in the cracks of the stone floor, unfurling around him like a spindly flower greeting the sun. Bile surged up my throat and the next moment I was doubled over, violently heaving up the contents of my stomach, one hand against the cold wall to steady myself. That guard was still yammering, his words a constant stream of dim background noise, his hands flopping about the prisoner.

When there was nothing left in my stomach, I spat the acid from my mouth and leaned my forehead next to my hand, grateful for the cool stone against my skin. Then my legs were giving way and I was sliding down the wall, my skirts cushioning my knees as they hit the floor. Black spots danced in my vision as I stared at a little tally carved into the stone at the base of the wall. A group of five slashes. Counting the score in a game? Days worked? Years of a life spent in this tower?

The pound of footsteps behind me let me know that there were more guards arriving at the scene, more eyes to witness their queen kneeling in a pool of her own vomit. Engaging every shred of willpower and poise I had, I wiped my mouth with the back my hand, picked up the dropped dagger and forced myself to my feet on legs so unsteady I could have collapsed with the slightest flicker in my focus.

Other prisoners were shouting now, banging on the bars of their cells, the sound rebounding off the walls and inflaming the pounding in my head. At least I could barely make out the gasping gurgle of the body on the floor. And the guard didn’t even look at me as I stepped through the door of the cell, too busy trying to staunch the blood flow to see that I was about to finish what I’d started.

The two remaining prisoners were easier. I didn’t have to get so close to them. Just struck them from above, one in the side of the neck, the other in the back. And those hands that had stretched me over the campfire stilled, those mouths that had laughed as I burned went silent.

I don’t think any of the guards realised I was still there as I left the cell. Perhaps they thought I’d already fled. The sight of all the blood in the walkway was distracting enough that they didn’t even look my way. I barely registered where I was going as I left the scene behind, only knew that my feet were moving, my hand dragging against the wall for support as I stumbled away from the blood and the gasping and the noise. Down the corridor that had led me into that damned place. Up a flight of stairs. There was an open door, a quiet room beyond, with a tiny window letting in a spill of sunlight that drew me towards it. By the time I’d closed the door behind me, I realised my breaths were coming fast and harsh, dragging in and out of my lungs until I was lightheaded and ready to collapse again.

I dropped the dagger without realising it and it clattered to the floor. There was a chair. I slumped into it, relieved to release my determination to remain standing. The sunlight fell across my hands and I stared at them, at the blood drying to a crusty brown, sticky and dark around the creases in my skin. I wanted to wash my hands. But not enough to get back to my feet .

Time bent and stretched as I stared at my hands and waited for them to stop trembling. Someone came to the door, but by the time I dragged my eyes up they had already fled.

The light slowly crept away from me and the shadows grew thicker. Footsteps approached again, but this time I didn’t bother looking up. I knew who it was.

He brushed his fingers down the back of my neck and I shivered, clenching my hands into fists.

‘You said it would take away the fear.’ My voice was monotone.

‘It can,’ Draven said, his voice a soft caress, his words a noose tightening. ‘But you’ve got to want it. And not only that—enjoy it. Enjoy the taste of their horror, the sight of their life leaking out at your feet.’

‘I don’t want to enjoy it.’

He moved away briefly, before returning to kneel at my side and placing a bowl at my feet. He gathered one of my clenched and trembling hands. ‘Do you think they deserved to die?’

I watched as he began to wipe at my hand with a damp cloth, staining the white cotton with the remnants of what I’d done as my skin was made clean. ‘Yes.’

A silence settled over us as he gently cleaned first one hand, then the other, before dipping the cloth back in the bowl and staining the water a rusty red. He looked up at me, tilted his head, his face shadowed. 'You look like a warrior.'

‘I don’t think they even knew why I was killing them,’ I said, my voice small, more like a child than a warrior. ‘The one whose throat I slit. I got so close to him, and it was like… he didn’t even recognise me. Even with the glamour, I thought he would. He’s haunted my nightmares, and he didn’t even know who I was.’

‘Then your technique is the problem. Warm up to the moment. Savour it. Make him feel your fury, make him understand why justice has finally caught him.’

I inhaled a shaky breath and studied his expression. He was so still and cool, watching me with an intensity that bordered on excitement. It unnerved me. I’d just slit a man’s throat and he was treating it like it was a skill to perfect rather than a horror.

He reached out and tucked a lock of damp hair behind my ear. ‘I want you to know that bringing them here was never about distracting you. It was only ever about giving you the chance to take the blood they owed you. I would have taken care of them for you if that’s what you needed.’

‘Their death doesn’t change what they did to me.’

He rose to his feet and looked down at me for a long moment, before he took a few steps back, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. ‘The first person I ever killed was my own father,’ he said. ‘Believe me when I say I know the feelings afterwards are complicated.’

Some of the numbness seeped away as my hungry desire to solve the puzzle of who he was stirred. I stared at him, waiting.

‘We weren’t close,’ he added casually.

‘Why?’

‘He was a cruel son-of-a-bitch.’

‘But why did you kill him?’

‘Because the steps to power are paved with blood, my dear. It’s a slippery climb, but worth it when you reach the top.’

He seemed to be waiting for my reaction as he leaned against the wall, affecting a carelessness that was so convincing I almost believed it. But I was beginning to know him better now. He was unusually still, his eyes locked on me, and I knew this moment was important.

‘I didn’t enjoy it,’ I said slowly, ‘but I don’t regret it.’ I’d meant it as a line to lure him out, but as I spoke the words, I knew them to be true. There was an angry, red-raw part of me that felt vindicated, pleased but not sated at the memory of the blood on the stones, even as another wave of revulsion kicked me in the guts. They’d deserved to die.

He nodded. ‘Good. Guilt will suck the strength from you, make you weak and ineffective. When you act, be decisive and don’t waste time wondering whether it was the right thing to do. If it needed to be done, then that’s enough.’

‘Is that why you killed your father? Because it needed to be done?’ I almost held my breath as I waited to see if he would answer, expecting him to brush me off, to turn away. The silence felt baited, like a trap about to snap shut.

‘He was the one who taught me to fight violence with violence,’ he said finally, his words a low murmur skating over the stillness. ‘He might have been proud of me for what I did to him, if he hadn’t hated me so intensely. It was the moment all his training proved effective, after all.’ He let out a low, bitter laugh that didn’t possess a trace of humour.

My curiosity burned, flaring hotter as he fed it. ‘Why did he hate you?’

Hi tilted his head to the side, his attention wandering to his sleeve. ‘I think he suspected I wasn’t his. Wrong colouring.’ He spread his fingers wide and turned his hand this way and that, as though examining it. ‘I’m lucky for it, though. I met fear young. Now it’s an old friend.’ As he spoke the words, he closed his fingers into a fist, then looked back up at me. ‘Weakness can be driven out. Your greatest fears can be mined to fuel your strength.’

There was something about the way he looked at me, his gaze roaming my face, that made me suddenly feel conscious of the fact that he knew what hid beneath the glamour of my beauty. A chill ran down my spine and I shivered.

‘You don’t sound lucky,’ I found myself saying. ‘You sound like someone trying to convince themselves that they suffered for a reason.’

‘You don’t think the things you’ve been through have made you stronger?’

‘I think I could have been strong without them.’ I turned my hands over, rubbed at a spot of blood he’d missed. ‘There’s no reason for the terrible things that happen to people and it doesn’t make me feel any better pretending that there is.’

When I returned my gaze to him, I was surprised to see that he was staring intently at the ground with demons scored across his face in deep lines. And it was like everything shifted. Suddenly I could see him from a different angle, one I’d been pretending wasn’t there. I saw the things he’d done to gain power, the times he’d manipulated me and the times he’d infuriated me, and they fell into a different alignment in my head. Maybe he wasn’t some dark creature sitting opposite me at a game board, but someone with a past he’d fought hard to strangle. Someone who had to climb to the top of the heap because he knew he’d be crushed at the bottom.

Someone like me.

‘Something is haunting you too, isn’t it?’ I asked quietly. For a moment, I really thought he’d answer the question .

‘There’s something haunting everyone,’ he muttered. His face cleared, and he pushed off the wall and offered me a hand. ‘You’ve hidden in here for long enough,’ he said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

I accepted the hand with no comment, and a strange calm settled over me as he helped me to my feet. If a wave of furious councillors or guards or citizens bore down on me, demanding retribution for what I’d done, I felt that Draven would be the wall between me and the tide. I still didn’t trust him, still knew he kept secrets from me, but for some reason this moment felt real. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he really was trying to help me.

I followed him out of the tower, and every flight of stairs put more stone between me and the body I’d left twitching on the floor, and I managed to convince myself that I did feel a little stronger, more dangerous, and not at all afraid of taking stock of the road I’d trodden since I’d entered the palace all those months ago. I wanted to be formidable, didn’t I?

Was it enough yet?

Was I the sort of person none would ever dare to cross?

If those men had met me in the street now, would they have run the other way instead of dragging me to their camp? Could they have seen, just from looking at me, that I would be their end?

Was I safe?

We passed down a long hallway full of shadows and the echoes of our footsteps. The wall was notched with little alcoves housing dim clusters of light weaves, and as we approached one I stopped.

‘What’s wrong?’ Draven asked, halting mid stride. I didn’t think, didn’t question, only reached for him, slamming my mind into silence as I kissed him. There was no protest in him. He obliged immediately, winding his arms around my waist and pulling me tight against him, holding me up as I melted into him, lost myself in the warmth of him, wrapping my hands around the back of his neck and dipping my tongue between his lips. My breathing was a rush, my heart a heavy thud against his, and his hands slipped down my waist, over my hips, to cup my thighs. I gasped as he lifted me from my feet, spinning us into the little alcove, where he pinned me against the cold stone and drew his lips from my mouth to my jaw.

‘How much of this is real?’ My question was a breathless plea.

He fisted my hair, tilting my head to the side, trailing whispered words down my neck, each touch muddling my thoughts and stoking my longing. ‘All of it. None of it. What does it matter?’

‘You’re doing something to me.’ My breasts felt heavy and constrained against his chest. I wanted to tear myself out of my dress, out of my skin, but I settled for finding my way to his, gripping him so tightly my fingernails would leave little crescent moons over his back. ‘Using your magic. Enchanting me.’

He pressed his forehead to mine, his breathing hard. ‘Tell yourself that. Does it make it any easier to swallow?’ His colourless eyes bored into me as he picked up my hand, turned it, kissed my palm. ‘I’m the only one who knows you, who sees you as you are, who can hold your self-interest, your ambition, your fear. I’m the only one who can look past the mask you wear and see your true intentions. How can you possibly say that this is not real?’

In that moment, I didn’t care either way, because my hand was slipping down his stomach and stretching past his waistband, finding that petal-soft skin of his shaft, wrapping my fingers around him. I chased the quickening gasps of his breath, the stillness that followed the right stroke of my fingers, the strain to hold fast and not let go of the feeling I could sense riding his thighs, his stomach, the tendons of his neck. He caught my mouth, swallowed my cries, consumed them, left me breathless and hollow and aching. When he bundled my skirts, found skin, then the slippery embrace of the desire between my thighs, he stroked me tenderly as I freed his cock from his trousers, and he pushed into me without removing a single piece of clothing, filling me, fucking me with that frenzied intimacy of a stolen moment with the threat of being caught just around the corner. The desperation of it stole every thought from my head, every word from my mouth. Until all I could say was More.

Now.

Faster.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And my climax was obliteration, a perfect, pure second of pleasure annihilating everything I had done, everything I had become, in a crescendo quivering, of clenching, of a wordless cry against the heat of his mouth. He gripped my hair at the roots, pounded me hard against the wall in a way that was almost, almost, violent. Until he ground into me, groaned my name against the curve of my neck in a sound of such sweet agony that made me feel like I owned his release, owned the gush of heat and the sharp jut of his hips, and it made me want to do it all over again.

But we held still, clinging to each other as our breathing slowed.

The flood of my warm breath rebounded on his skin and carried the smell of him back to me, and I ran the tip of my nose back and forth across him, my eyes squeezed tightly shut, pretending, just for one more moment, that it was alright to find so much comfort in that smell. Pretending that there was any refuge in his arms.

Sometimes, I found myself forgetting who we were and what we might do to each other. Sometimes he was not the man who tricked me into murder, and I was not the woman who told him a lie. I forgot the threats and the magic and the secrets and the scars and the death and the fate of kingdoms that hung in the balance, suspended above this game between us. Sometimes I was just Rhiandra and he was just Draven.

Sometimes we were just two people reaching for each other in the dark.