He let go, and I swept it away over the opposite shoulder. Even braided for sleep, my hair hung past my hips, and Taran’s prior fascination with it was not something I could tolerate now.
When I still didn’t speak, he continued humming. Trying to get the melody right. Good luck—I had been the first of Wesha’s priests to master it with less than two decades of practice.
“Where’s Marit?” I asked when I couldn’t take the sour notes anymore.
“Sleeping it off in the plaza. I left a lamp burning, so he shouldn’t panic if he wakes up before morning.”
Such tender care, when Taran had pointed a knife at the sea god’s heart an hour earlier.
“Would you really have done it if I’d told you to?” I wasn’t sure which offense would have been the worst. Would he have killed his friend again? Would he have let me drown?
“Yes,” Taran immediately said, unbothered. He crossed his feet in front of him, noticed that the leather of his boots was soaked, and reached down to pull them off.
Liar. He was terrible at lying to me. How had he gotten away with it for three years?
I shoved his shoulder with both palms, hard enough that he should have toppled over. Instead, I was the one knocked back.
“Stop lying to me!” I cried, scrambling to stay on the furniture.
“Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to,” Taran said, quirking one eyebrow at my disarray.
“What would you have done, then?”
He smiled at me, his gaze dipping to appreciate the color of my new dress. “I would have broken the window and tossed him out into the yard. This happens at least once a week.”
“Oh,” I said, now feeling stupid. I could have thought of that. I curled on my side, wishing Marit had left his magical wine carafe behind.
“I haveonepriestess. Everyone would call me extremely careless if I let anything happen to you,” Taran added, which he no doubt considered reassuring.
“You don’t have me.”
His thick, dark eyelashes shaded the brilliance of his eyes as he gave me a slow blink of wordless disagreement.Keep telling yourself that,his look said. As my cheeks burned, Taran stretched out an arm along the cushion behind me.
“Anyway, I’d be interested in learning that song.” It was very carefully couched so as not to be a request or a command. One more test, to see how I’d react.
“Wesha could teach you better than I could. If you took me to the Painted Tower,” I said, but then I regretted the words. I was tired of every sentence being a parry or riposte with him. He used to bring me flowers in winter. He used to ask me for lullabies at the end of the day. Fighting my instinct to give him everything he asked for, fighting my expectation that he would do the same for me—it was exhausting me.
I rubbed my face. “I probably can’t,” I amended my statement. “I’m not a good teacher, and it took me my entire life to learn.”
“We have your entire life. Lifetimes, in fact. Till the end of eternity.”
That was how long he was planning to keep me here. No doubt assuming I’d break down and agree to serve him at some point.
“What’s so objectionable about being my priestess, anyway?” he asked, laying the charm on thick. “You were willing to be Wesha’s, and Wesha’s a terrible patron. What would her vows have been?” He began counting on his fingers. “Obedience? Well, if you’re afraid of that, I could be more specific. Poverty? Ha! Wesha and I both like nice things, and unlike her, I share. Celibacy?” He tilted his chin, shot me a heated look that made his green eyes sparkle. “Not really my guiding value.”
I couldn’t manage more than a soft groan in response. “Please. I told you it was a mistake to come here. Let me go home.”
He didn’t bother to reject me out loud, just looked with renewed interest at the fall of my braid on the green dress.
“I don’t know why you’re so eager to go back to the mortal world. From what I’ve heard, it’s an awful place. You get a few decades of hard work and then you die. Don’t you think it’s possible that Wesha wanted something better for her last priest? And your lover too?”
He was trying to be convincing, but I knew it was a load of bullshit. Wesha didn’t care about me. Neither did he.
“I could have been very happy in the mortal world, except that Death killed everyone I loved, and now he’shere,” I pointed out, eyes narrowed.
Taran hummed thoughtfully. “What if I proved that you’re perfectly safe here, free to enjoy your reward for mortal devotion? Would you teach me that song?” he asked after a moment.
I pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, fuming.
