The indirect moonlight from the single window was so faint, for many races the cell would be in total darkness, but his eyes were especially suited to the night. He saw her gesture to the cell door that stood wide open. “These bars. I want one of them with the dampening spell still on it so I can stab her with it.”
His eyebrows rose as he considered that. “That’s actually an awesome idea,” he said. “Unfortunately, the cells are so well constructed that I don’t think it’s feasible. We’d need a blacksmith, and by the time the smith separated one of the bars, probably the dampening spell would be broken.”
“A girl can dream, you know,” she said. She had sounded bad before, and now she sounded utterly exhausted. “Give me that bottle again.”
He passed it over to her. “So, who do you love?”
She drank from the bottle and wiped her mouth. “Excuse me?”
“Name somebody you love.”
“Why?” She sounded baffled.
Impulse was driving him, and he didn’t want to try to explain it. “Just because,” he said. “You’re friends with Niniane. Do you love her?”
“Ye-es.” Now she sounded cautious.
“Suppose Niniane was in trouble, and it was bad.” She nudged his arm with the bottle and, surprised she offered, he took it and drank. “Suppose,” he said, “someone Powerful that you didn’t know had threatened her.”
“Are you telling me that you know some plot against Niniane?” she asked suspiciously. “And you’re only just now bringing it up?”
“No! I’m creating a hypothetical scenario.”
“I’m back to ‘why’ again.” She wrapped the tablecloth around her shoulders and lay down. “But go on.”
He felt filthy and the cat in him was offended, but there was nothing to be done about it for the moment. He put the folded tablecloth he’d kept for himself on the floor to use as padding for his naked back. Then he lay down on it beside Aryal and stared at the ceiling.
“Suppose,” he whispered, “you tried to help your friend by trapping the person who threatened her. And suppose your plan backfired, and you ended up hurting both of them. What would you do?”
She coughed out a chuckle. “Feel bad. Is this about what happened when you decided to mend the error of your ways and gave up smuggling?”
The stone floor made a wretched bed. The only way he could be more uncomfortable was if he were still bleeding. He said, “Yep.”
Aside from the quiet sounds of the Elves settling to sleep, silence pressed down on them. Aryal whispered, “What did you do, Quentin?”
He closed his eyes. “When Dragos went after Pia last year, and the Elves shot him with the poisoned arrow, did you know that Pia had been staying at my house at Folly Beach?” She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even appear to be breathing. He continued, “I traded the information to Urien in exchange for his promise to let Pia go. Urien didn’t keep his end of the bargain.”
After a moment, she said, “Why the fuck did you tell me that now, when I’m so tired I can hardly breathe?”
Aside from exasperation, she also sounded genuinely mystified. He muttered, “I figured that would be a good thing. Less opportunity for you to go ballistic before you had a chance to think.”
More time passed. She whispered, “You manipulative bastard. Why did you tell me at all? You didn’t have to. Nobody is bothering to ask questions about that anymore. You got away with it.”
“Nobody else knew about it. That doesn’t mean I got away with anything.” He rested a forearm over his eyes.
She turned onto her side until she was facing him. “It’s been eating away at you all this time.”
“Kinda,” he muttered.
She smacked him on the shoulder with the back of her hand, and he jumped. “What the hell, Quentin?” she said between her teeth. “Did I not just get done telling you the other day that I would go after your ass if you did anything to hurt anyone I cared about? Did you really make the very best decision you could have made after hearing someone say something like that to you?”
He couldn’t help himself and started to smile. “What are you going to do about it?”
She smacked him again. “I don’t know. I can’t believe you made me mad at you after being so—so nice to me today. What is wrong with you?”
“There’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I mean that literally. You figure out what’s wrong with me, and I’ll pay you sixty-four thousand dollars.” He rolled onto his side to face her. She jerked her tablecloth closer around her shoulders, muttering under her breath. He stroked her hair, and she froze. Somehow the darkness made it easier for him to admit, “It sickens me to think I hurt Pia the way I did, and I still don’t like Dragos, but I’m growing to respect him. I’m sorry I did it.”
She reached up to pull his hand away from her hair, and then she didn’t let go of it. “You still haven’t said why you told me.”
“Beats the hell out of me,” he said, in a tone of confession.
She lifted up her head. She accused, “You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
“And that was prevarication.” She sounded more betrayed at that than when he had told her what he’d done.
“Was it?”
“You suck!” She pinched him hard in the bicep. “Give me a straight answer, or I swear somehow I’ll find the energy to kick your ass right now.”
“Ouch!” He knocked her hand away and leaned forward so that they were nose to nose. “Maybe,” he whispered, “working with you is starting to feel like a partnership, and maybe I’m shocked at how good that feels. I mean you, for God’s sake, are the last person on the planet I would have ever expected to feel that way about. Six days ago we were trying to kill each other in the Tower.”
“Gods, has it only been six days?” she muttered. “It feels like forever.”
He decided to ignore that. “So maybe I told you the truth because I don’t trust how this feels. And maybe I told you the truth because that’s what real partners do—at least that’s what I’ve heard they do anyway. Maybe real partners know how to say to each other, ‘yeah, you fucked up and now it’s okay to move on,’ and maybe I would like to hear somebody say that to me just once, sometime in my life. So now it’s up to you, sunshine. Polish your vendetta if that’s what you really want. Just keep in mind, you need me to take down that witch. Let me know what comes after that.”
As aggressive sounding as the words were, saying them still left him feeling raw and wide open. Man, he had a gods-given talent for self-destruction. He rolled away, putting his back to her, and rubbed his chest where that burning pain had settled.
Aryal said, sounding exceedingly aggrieved, “You’re like some kind of high-maintenance girlfriend. I have one of the worst days of my life. Hell, I might be crippled. I might never fly again. That’s beyond my worst nightmare. I don’t know if I can live with it, and yet somehow tonight has become all about you. What about what I need?”
“What do you need?” he whispered.
She said tiredly, “I could use a hug. And you’re the only person around who can give me one. So put out, will you?”
It shocked him immensely, that she would be so open and frank enough to say it. It shocked him even further to discover he could really use a hug too.
He rolled back and reached for her, and she came into his arms, hugging him back. “I’m sorry about the bad timing,” he whispered. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Shut up,” she said. “I’m so mad at you I can hardly think straight.”
“Of course you are.” He sighed. Even their conversations were twisted. “You’re not crippled. You’re just not healed yet.”
Her chest convulsed silently. He never would have known if he hadn’t been holding her. “The joint is crushed. I felt it.”