Demial forced herself to approach the bed. She’d seen hundreds of dead bodies, torn apart with bloody wounds and with eyes gaping. She’d killed scores herself, in battle, with her magic, with weapons, even with her own bare hands, when the battle lust took her. It took all the courage she had to approach this one, but she was glad she’d forced herself to look.
Taya’s face was even paler, but she was so peaceful. The thin, pink mouth was soft and relaxed, still hinting at the smile that had brightened her face as the spell embraced her.
Demial started to pull the blanket up over her, to cover her face. Even in death, though, she couldn’t bear to weigh the fragile body down.
When she left the hut for the last time, Demial closed the door behind her gently, leaving the window open to let in the cool air. She walked back through the night, noting that most of the huts were dark now. Had it been that long, since she’d gone to her hut for the staff? Her own fire was still burning, low but bright and cheerful, in her fireplace.
She sat on the bench before the fire, and her mind went blank for a very long time. She was only roused when a voice cut through the numbness, and only then after it spoke her name twice. She roused only after she felt the warmth of an arm against her arm, a hip against her hip.
“Demial. Demial.”
She found Quinn sitting beside her, hands dangling between his knees. She wiped the dried blood off her face, trying to disguise her movements, but Quinn was looking away. He wasn’t paying attention to her.
It was very late. The fire was only a small fluttering of flames, a dying fire. Death. Dying. It wasn’t morning yet though. Quinn had left the door open, as she had, and she could see that it was still dark outside. No stars were visible in the inkiness, just darkness. Shadows. Like death.
“She’s gone,” Quinn said. His voice was quiet but strange, as if he could just barely contain his sorrow, as if he might at any moment break down and sob.
“Yes,” Demial agreed. “It was very peaceful.” She roused herself, knowing she had to gather her strength. The one thought that was clear in her mind, despite her numbness, was that she ought to tell Quinn the truth. All of it. Everything. “She said to say ‘I love you,’ and then she said, I’m ready.’ Then she died. It was what she wanted.”
Quinn sighed and turned away from her, as if the pain was going to eat him in half and he didn’t want her to witness it. “Oh, gods. .” he breathed.
She swallowed. She tried to lift her hands and put them on him, to soothe him and console him. Her arms were heavy, but she managed to lift one. She could touch him, while he would still allow it. Before she told him.
She put her hand on his broad back, feeling the strength there, the muscles moving under the skin as he shook. She liked his back. She’d always liked his back. It was broad and strong, and since she was a child, she’d dreamed of laying her face on his back, of resting her weight on him. So she did now. After a lifetime of dreaming such a thing, she let herself lie against him, resting her weight and her sorrow and her fear on his good, broad, strong back.
He sighed, and she felt the movement beneath her face, a ripple of muscles against her cheek, a rush of air into lungs, and the thump of his heartbeat.
“I killed her,” he said.
The words came to her as a shock. They were said so calmly, so easily, that she must surely have misunderstood. Perhaps he was only expressing guilt, or. . She drew in a quick, sharp breath. Surely he hadn’t guessed what she’d done! Demial drew back, and hesitated.
He shifted back on the bench, moving farther away, and his face was strange. His mouth worked, eyes bright as the embers in the fireplace and as weirdly hot.
She braced herself for his grief, his accusation, and he shocked her even further by chuckling.
“I killed her,” he repeated again, almost with glee, almost with pride. “I wished her dead, and it worked. Like magic. It worked!”
Demial shook her head, too confused to speak. Was it just that her mind was too tired, or was it that he wasn’t making any sense? “Quinn, I’m sorry. I’m so tired. Please. I don’t understand what you’re saying.” She reached out to touch him. “I know you always said your heart was with her, in the grave. . ”
The chuckle gave way to outright laughter. “Demial, don’t tease me. I know you weren’t fooled by all that. You always saw right through me.”
She gaped at him.
He covered her hand with his larger ones. “You’re joking with me, but I suppose I deserve it.” He brought her fingers up to his lips and kissed them lightly.
Her fingers were roughened from working in the mine. Just hours ago, she could have used the staff to make her skin soft and sweet again. Now all she did was stare dumbly as his lips moved on her scarred knuckles.
He sighed playfully. “All right, I can see you’re going to force me. I’ll say the words. I didn’t love Taya. I never did. I only said those things about her to keep other women interested. When you came back, I began to say them especially for you. I knew that remembering her made you jealous, and it pleased me to see the fire in your eyes when I mentioned her. Now I know. It’s always been you I loved.”
Her heart would have leaped, would have tasted the joy of her triumph, but he said it with such callous lack of emotion. “I don’t understand.”
“I was just teasing you, before, saying all that about missing her and my heart being with her. In the end, I hated her, Demial,” he said lightly. He released her hand and leaped to his feet. He quick stepped across the small space between her and the fireplace, jittering with unspent energy. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “She was my childhood friend, my perfect friend. That was long ago. I wish she’d been killed in the war. I wish I’d never had to see her like that. I wish I could have remembered her the way she was. I hate her for coming back, for making me see her that way. I wanted. . I wanted her to die quickly so that my life could go on! Oh, I stayed with her. I played the part of the true and faithful lover, the way everybody expected me to, but I hated doing it, and I hated her.
“Gods! All those hours in that horrible, little room, listening to her ravings. . I wished her dead, and now she is. I wished her dead, and it worked, and now we can be together.”
He looked at her expectantly, but Demial sat, still and stunned. Numbness was nothing compared to this. This was like being dead. Except. . her chest was still rising and falling with breath, and her back was cool from the breeze, and her shins were warm from the fire. Warmth and cold and air, did the dead feel those things?
He came to her. He went on one knee before her, leaned in, and laid his cheek against her shoulder. “So?” he asked, voice muffled against the robe that still smelled of Taya and death.
Demial didn’t move away as his breath seeped through the cloth, as it moistened her skin, sliding across her shoulder and down towards her breast and up along her neck. “So. . what?”
“I said ‘Now we can be together,’ and you’re just sitting there as if you’re paralyzed. Don’t you realize what this means? I’ve almost done what I was supposed to do, done what the whole village expected of me. Soon the mine will be finished. It’s what I’ve been waiting for, the perfect moment to cement my plan. Now they’ll follow my leadership. We’ll open the mine again and make this village better than it was before.”
Demial stared at the fire and felt a little spark, hot and orange, flare up in her breast. It was the first hint that she was going to come back to life, that she was going to be able to feel something again. It wasn’t joy that her perfect plan was within her grasp. It was laughter-cold, hard laughter.