Page 22 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two

I forced myself to stop and listen carefully before I went tearing down the passage, trying to pick out the sound of footsteps or voices over the pounding of my heart. The passage took a turn up ahead, and if there were pursuers around the bend, I’d run straight into them and there’d be no escape. But I heard nothing.

Muttering a quick prayer to Madeia—as though the goddess had ever listened to me—I took off back the way we’d come, passing the door into the temporary throne room and going beyond it, my feet flying with my fear. Had the druthi seen us enter the servant’s passage, or had they all been busy bleeding?

I found another door further down. When I inched it open to peer through, I found the gallery just outside the room we’d been attacked in. Pushing it open a little wider, I strained my eyes along the wall to see my attendants waiting, sitting on chairs or leaning against pillars, chatting to one another and fluttering fans. And maybe Madeia had been listening after all, because the one closest to me was Leela. She stood apart from the others, frowning at a painting on the wall. I hissed her name, slowly closing the door when one of the other ladies looked in my direction, before opening it and trying again. This time, her head turned, and I stuck my hand out through the crack in the door, ushering her over. She glanced left to right, then slowly strolled over to me, leaning casually against the wall.

‘What’re you doing in there?’ she asked quietly.

‘I need your help,’ I whispered back. ‘You have to follow me.’

She shot me a concerned look, then glanced around again before slipping through the door. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked as soon as it was closed again.

‘We were attacked,’ I said quickly, keep my voice just a breath of sound. ‘Draven’s hurt. I need you to help me hide him.’

Leela touched her fingers to her mouth. The shadow of the past few weeks hung between us, blood and war and secrets, and for a moment I thought she’d turn and run.

‘Please, Leela,’ I begged. She inhaled sharply and snapped into action.

‘Show me,’ she said.

I led her back through the passage, expecting at any moment to be accosted by a wild-eyed Dovegni, but if they were looking for us, then they were looking in the wrong place. Still, I was relieved to find Draven where I left him. He blinked up at me as I placed a hand on his arm, and his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He didn’t resist when I pulled him to his feet, but he was unsteady, swaying slightly as though the room was spinning.

Leela looked around the room, seeming to assess it. ‘There’s a rest room not far from here,’ she said, ushering us forward as she opened the room’s main door and peered around the corner, then raced off ahead. I tried to keep up with her, but Draven’s footsteps were becoming more and more staggered. ‘The guards sometimes use it to take breaks when they’re on a double shift, but it’s normally empty.’ She fished a ring of keys out of her skirts and jabbed one into the lock, before opening the door to reveal a small, sparsely furnished room set up as a bedroom of sorts.

I almost dragged Draven over the threshold. I could feel his body trembling. Leela hurried over to help me lower him onto the small cot. She knelt by the bed and examined the crude bandage on his arm.

‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ she asked him softly.

He shook his head, closing his eyes. ‘No place you can see. It’s going to get worse.’

She looked at me, but I could only turn up my hands helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen any other physical injuries, but I think the druthi did something to him.’

She frowned down at him, hesitating a moment, before she reached out to rest her fingers gingerly on his forehead. ‘He’s burning up. Here.’ Rising, she crossed to a small armoire and began rifling around in the drawers, producing a handkerchief, which she dipped inside a mostly empty pitcher of water. She handed it to me and I stared at it. ‘Use it to cool his skin. His forehead and neck,’ she prompted. I took hold of it and did as instructed, my movements stiff. ‘I’m going to go and fetch more water and blankets. I’ll lock the door behind me and tell the watch captain the room has a rat infestation so they’ll need to use another. I won’t be long. Will you be alright?’

I nodded, and she quickly slipped out the door. It only occurred to me then that she could decide to betray me, that she might even now be running off to do just that. But I quickly dismissed the thought.

Staring down at Draven, it was clear he was getting sicker. His cheeks were flushed and his breathing was rapid and shallow. I chewed my lip, considering my options.

‘You need a physician,’ I said as I dabbed at his brow with the handkerchief. But who could I trust? I had no idea who else might be tangled up in Dovegni’s web. It was a risk to involve anyone else, but was it a greater risk not to?

His hand clamped around my wrist as his eyes flickered open, wild and bright with fever.

‘No others.’ His voice was barely a croak.

‘But I don’t know what’s wrong with you! You might die if I don’t get help.’

His grip on my wrist was surprisingly strong, stronger than his voice. His skin was unnaturally hot. ‘Doesn’t make a difference.’

I pursed my lips as I looked into those eyes, trying to decide if he was in his right mind enough to know what he was asking. ‘What about Lester?’

He brushed his thumb against my skin so softly, a contrast to his grip. ‘I only want you.’

‘Then you’re in more trouble than I thought,’ I said, the words strangled by a strange tightness in my throat and a sudden desire to run from that room, to run from the palace and never look back. He was definitely not in his right mind.

‘Rhiandra.’ He said my name with so much tenderness that it felt like a kick to the chest. Because he was sick and it wasn’t real. ‘Just you.’

‘Alright. But I’m no nurse. Whatever happens will be on your own head.’

His grip loosened as he seemed to relax, sinking back down onto the bed. His eyes closed again.

The time waiting for Leela to return was tense. Draven’s face shone with sweat and his eyelids twitched as he jerked his head from side to side, muttering something incomprehensible. I dabbed at his skin with the handkerchief, my teeth gritted and my shoulders tense with anxiety as I stooped over him. The handkerchief dried out and I kept on dabbing, because I had no other way of helping, and if I didn’t do something , I was going to go mad.

My eyes snapped to the door when I finally heard the lock click and Leela slipped through, carrying a tray.

‘Where have you been?’ I demanded, my voice high-pitched. ‘You said you wouldn’t be long!’

‘I’ve been trying not to draw attention to myself.’ She placed the tray on the floor and knelt beside me, offering a fresh cloth. ‘And I’ve some whisperings for you.’

I took the cloth and resumed mopping Draven’s face and neck. ‘That can wait. Look at him, Leela. What’s wrong with him?’

She touched her fingers to his head again, knitting her brow. ‘This fever has come on fast. I know few illnesses that work like this.’

‘And the ones that do?’

She shot me a grim look, and I swallowed down any further questions about those. Together, we undressed him down to his shirt and removed his boots, and she untied my crude bandage to wash the blood from his arm, revealing vicious red welts snaking all over his skin where the cord had touched before re-wrapping it in clean white cloth. It didn’t seem to make a difference, though. His eyes remained closed, his skin scalding hot when I touched it.

‘It might be best not to move him,’ she said when she was done. ‘Do you want me to find a physician?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell no one. He’s going to have to make do with me.’ Then after a pause, I asked in a voice far less confident, ‘What do I do?’

‘What you’ve already been doing. Cool cloths, plenty of water. I can bring you some willow bark, and that might help, but for the most part you’ll just have to wait for the fever to break.’ She frowned down at Draven, who had begun muttering again. ‘The fever could be the worst of it, but since we don’t know the cause, there could be more to come.’

I let out a slow, shuddering breath. ‘Then I need you to act as though everything is normal. Tell anyone who comes looking that I’ve taken to bed with a headache. Make whatever excuses you have to, but don’t let anyone into my apartments.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe it’s best if I stay.’

I offered her a wan smile then shook my head. ‘There’s too much upheaval at the moment. It’s more important to pretend everything is normal than it is to keep me company. I’ll be alright.’ She rose to her feet, but I caught at her skirt before she could leave. ‘Come and check in, though. If you can sneak away.’

‘Of course,’ she said, patting my hand. She lingered, seeming to consider something. ‘Those whispers I mentioned,’ she said finally. ‘There’s talk Misarnee Keep has locked its gates, that the druthi have woven a barricade, like they’re preparing for a siege.’ She studied me closely, as though she was awaiting my reaction. But my numbness, my blank expression, must have offered her little, because she probed further. ‘It must just be rumours though, mustn’t it? They wouldn’t be doing such a thing, even if they expected an invasion. They’d fortify the city walls first.’

Still, I said nothing. I should have found some platitude to offer her, but I kept watching blood spray through the air in my mind’s eye, and I couldn’t think of anything comforting or dismissive to say.

‘Unless they’re expecting to go to war within the city,’ she added, like she was trying to unravel a piece of embroidery, picking at the stitches one by one. But I couldn’t be worrying about all that now. Whatever Dovegni was planning and doing had to wait until Draven could face it with me. Especially now that I’d so clearly picked a side.

‘Just be careful,’ I finally managed to choke out. She watched me for a moment longer, before nodding.

‘You too,’ she said, her expression still tense with uncertainty, before she slipped back through the door.

I picked up my cloth again and dipped it back into the bowl. ‘This is your mess,’ I said as I wrung it out. ‘Don’t you dare leave me to clean it up alone.’

But he didn’t show any sign he’d heard me, staying with whatever dream had him by the throat. I was on my own for now.

I nursed him as best I could through the evening, fumbling and cursing my way through it with ill grace and poor patience. I hated sickness. And having never been nurtured much myself, I didn’t really know what sincere caregiving looked like. But even if I did know, I didn’t think I’d take to it.

Leela returned with fresh water and a mat for me to rest on, and a tiny bottle of willow bark she thought might ease the fever. She helped me administer it, then left me alone again in that stuffy room, where I felt like the spectre of death was lurking just outside the door, waiting to come in.

In the darkest hours of the night, I tried to sleep. I lay stiffly on the mat, listening to Draven’s halting breaths and wishing I’d asked Leela to stay after all. What if he got worse? He wouldn’t die. Surely, he couldn’t die. The thought hollowed me out, made me feel small and alone, and I sat up again to check his face, to touch my fingers to his forehead, still shiny with sweat as he twitched and shuddered his way through a fever dream.

I wouldn’t let him die. Whatever he was to me, however much I wanted to kill him myself on occasion, he wouldn’t go like this. Not lying defenceless and sick in bed.

On impulse, I leaned in and pressed my lips to the corner of his mouth, before smoothing his hair away from his face. I began to sing, softly, my voice nudging the silence. Just scraps of songs, bits and pieces woven together, things I’d heard over the years from street dancers and the girls at the Nymph. I began the chorus of a song I remembered in Senafae’s voice, until the lyrics began to register as a love song, and the words died away, my chest aching.

I touched Draven’s forehead again. Maybe his breathing evened out slightly, or maybe I hoped it had, but I thought he looked like he rested a tiny bit easier, like a little of the tension had gone from his mouth. With a sigh, I settled back down on the mat and closed my eyes.

The door slammed open. Dovegni stormed in, his eyes blazing, followed by a line of soldiers that poured into the room in a never-ending stream. I tried to scream, to wake Draven, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t open my mouth. The Grand Weaver sneered down at me and stretched out his hands, which burst into flames. Panic burned through me.

‘Please,’ he said, his voice strangely small and frightened.

Then he touched his burning hands to my throat.

I woke with a jolt, my eyes snapping open, my hands going immediately to my neck, where my pulse thundered against my fingers. The room was empty, the door still shut. A dream. Just a dream. But the strange, small voice had followed me to the waking world.

‘Let me go. Please, just let me go.’

It took me a few moments to realise I knew that voice, that it wasn’t some scared stranger crouching in a corner of the room. Rubbing at my stinging eyes, I sat up and took up the cloth in the bowl.

‘Shh,’ I whispered as I wrung it out and tried to dab at Draven’s head. He was thrashing about, his eyelids fluttering, and he flinched away from my touch.

‘It’s alright,’ I said stupidly, like I was talking to a child. But he did seem a little like a child in that moment, whimpering like that. It was terrifying.

‘Just kill me,’ he groaned. ‘Kill me. I’m already dead.’

I tried to take his hand, but the moment I touched it he jerked it away, his eyes flying open for a moment as he hissed.

‘I’ll destroy you one day,’ he swore. ‘If you don’t kill me now, I’ll make you regret it.’

I was frozen above him, lashed by the words that were so venomous, spoken with so much hatred. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring into space, seeing something that wasn’t there. Speaking to a ghost .

‘Shh,’ I soothed again when I could move, brushing damp hair away from his forehead. He closed his eyes and shuddered at the touch, but after a few moments he seemed to relax back into sleep.

I just sat staring at him for a long time. He was always so in control, almost invulnerable. Seeing him like this was… unsettling. It made me feel things I didn’t want to name. And who had he seen, when he’d vowed vengeance? For him to have spoken with such hatred... had it been more than just a spectre conjured by a dream? What sort of demons did he have in his past that tormented him in that moment? Had he been dreaming of his father? The one he’d killed?

I had no answers. And eventually, I was exhausted with asking questions that wouldn’t get them. I finally fell back to sleep. This time, I didn’t dream.

~*~

I woke slowly and blinked open my eyes, rubbing the grit from them as I stretched my aching body, protesting the night spent on the floor. A slight rustle drew my attention, to where Draven stood dressing.

‘You’re awake,’ I said, pushing myself into a sitting position. The relief was bright, sweet. Smothered quickly when I realised how fixated he was on his buttons.

‘Yes,’ was all he said in reply.

‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Good.’ The words were small and hard and hit me like little pebbles.

‘I thought you were going to die.’ Climbing to my feet, I crossed the room to stand before him with folded arms, unsure of what to do while he dressed. I was wracked with the desire to touch him, to make sure he really was alright, to test that his skin was cool instead of hot and sticky, to hear the steady rise and fall of his breath. Why did it feel so strange to reach out and touch him now? ‘What happened to you?’

‘Magic fever.’

I waited for him to say more, but the silence stretched. His hands were shaking, I realised. That’s why his coat was taking him so long. ‘What’re we going to do about Dovegni?’ I asked, which was a question that felt safer than why won’t you look at me?

‘Nothing.’ He finally finished with his buttons and met my eyes. His expression was blank, carefully arranged like a fine dinner setting, and I found myself missing the helpless, fever-gripped pleas of hours ago. ‘His play failed. He’ll be expecting us to retaliate now.’

‘He’s barricaded Misarnee Keep. He’s not planning to just sit in there forever and let us go on with our lives.’ I wanted to break that mask. I hated it. It reminded me too much of the cool, collected man I’d known in the beginning, when I’d thought I couldn’t rattle him, when he hadn’t seemed human. ‘He’ll strike back.’

‘Siege warfare is long and tiring. If we push him now, we’ll be locked in a stalemate for what could be months. We have to pick the right moment to strike.’

A silence settled between us, then, an awkward, bloated thing that felt loaded with unspoken words as we watched each other. Everything about him was guarded. His tight posture, his closed expression, his folded arms. Siege warfare, indeed.

‘Well, since you seem to be feeling healthier, I’d better go and see if the kingdom has fallen apart while I’ve been locked up in here with you,’ I said flippantly, but the words were so clearly bruised, blue-grey and tender as they met the air, my hurt on full display. And I hated that, too.

I drew back my shoulders, breezed past him to head for the door, to flee him and this hideously twisted intimacy that was all regretted vulnerability and new, prickly defences.

His hand landed on my arm, halting me. His face was turned towards the floor, his jaw set, gullies creasing his brow as he frowned down at the slate. ‘I heard you singing.’

I said nothing. Was he going to mock me?

‘Thank you,’ he murmured. I waited for more, but he said nothing else. I didn’t know what I wanted to hear. Just more.

The door rattled, and the moment shattered. A fist pounded on the wood as I sprang away from him.

‘Open the door. It’s me.’ Lester’s voice.

Slowly, I went to the door, and when Draven didn’t object, I unlocked it. Lester slipped inside, closing it behind him, then he paused to take stock of the room, his gaze flicking back and forth between us.

‘What the fuck is going on in here?’ he asked finally.

‘The Guild made a move,’ Draven said. His hands, I noticed, were pushed deep into his pockets.

‘I fucking know that. What did you expect when you attacked Oceatold? We were supposed to wait until we’d promoted more of our people in the army and were surer of loyalties. But to then go and lock yourself up with her—’ he jabbed a finger at me ‘—and leave me to find out from a bloody lieutenant that you were missing was something else.’

‘How did you find us?’ I demanded, bristling at the way he’d said her.

‘Your woman had been telling people this room is condemned or something. I connected the dots,’ he said, sparing me a brief glance before he looked back at Draven. ‘So I ask again, what the fuck is going on?’

‘Dovegni used blood dust and tried to bind me. Then I overstepped my limits. Wound up fever stuck’

Lester blanched pale. ‘Then why didn’t you bloody send for me?’

Draven’s eyes met mine. His jaw ticked.

‘Aether’s balls,’ Lester muttered, scrubbing his face with his hands. ‘Don’t tell me this is about her too.’

‘It’s not.’

‘You said you had this under control.’

‘I do.’

‘Can you stop talking about me as though I’m not here?’ I snapped, drawing the attention of both men to me. ‘What does he mean, have this under control? Is he talking about me?’

‘Of course that’s what you’d assume,’ Draven replied.

‘What else am I supposed to think?’

‘I thought I already told you that I’m much more interested in the opposite where you’re concerned,’ Draven said, a flicker of his smirk returning to his face.

Lester groaned, dragging our attention back to him. ‘Oh don’t mind me,’ he said, waving his hand. ‘You go right ahead. I’ll just pretend I’m not here.’

‘Lez,’ Draven said, ‘fuck off. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

‘Fine. But only because I don’t want to lose my breakfast.’ With one last narrow-eyed look in my direction, Lester slipped back out the door. The air seemed to quiver with the silence that fell the moment he stepped out of sight, leaving us eying each other across a distance that felt both impossibly wide and far too cramped.

‘What am I supposed to do when we go out there?’ I asked finally. ‘Just go on as though everything is normal?’

‘Exactly.’ He picked up the pitcher of water and took a mouthful, revealing that his hands were still trembling as a bead of water rolled down his throat. He wiped his mouth, put the pitcher back down. When he looked back at me, I saw the moment he’d let the druthi capture him, the moment he’d opened his hand and dropped the blade.

‘You promised this marriage would be fun,’ I said quietly.

He held my gaze. ‘I think we both know this isn’t about fun anymore.’

I reached out, touched my fingers to his cheek. He leaned slightly into my touch. ‘Don’t scare me like that again,’ I said.

Then I dropped my hand back to my side and left him there. Lester eyed me suspiciously as I walked back down the corridor, still choking on a tide of words left unspoken, words I didn’t know how to say. Perhaps I’d never say them. Perhaps we’d be doomed to this dance for as long as we had together, whirling around each other, coming together and springing apart. But the song was going to come to a close. I could hear it beginning, the warning bars of a crescendo heralding the end, and what would become of us when we could no longer pretend we’d just been following the steps?