“To the Painted Tower, yes.” Taran’s face shuttered with frustration. “Loyalty’s a virtue, so I can’t complain that you still feel you owe it to Wesha or…or anyone else. I just hope that you someday offer me one tenth of that loyalty after I’ve done ten times more for you than they ever did.”
He met my eyes again, and the hurt I saw made my hands ache to reach for him. The jut of his jaw was challenging but his green stare was brittle, almost vulnerable.
“Actually, that’s another lie. I want all of it,” he amended his statement. “After what I hear was a very unpleasant three hundred years for me, I finally have something to look forward to. Genna ceded me a chunk of her lands in exchange for my little misadventure in the mortal world. If you’re done with the moon-priests, let’s go there instead. I could put in an entire plumorchardfor you.”
“Oh,” I said, shoulders curving around my fist, pressed against my heart. Every time I thought he was fully absorbed in himself, I was reminded that he must have gotten very good at playing acertain role here, and I shouldn’t be completely fooled by it when I’d seen him be someone good and true. Both had to be in him. “I could…never be happy while I’m afraid that one of the Stoneborn is going to force their way past the Gates and do worse to the mortal world than Death already did.”
“Now we need to add the entire mortal world to the list of people who’ve somehow earned your loyalty? Ask for less, darling. I’m still stinging from the object lesson in minding my own business that I received the last time I meddled in the affairs of the other Stoneborn.”
“Were you meddling? Or trying to help?” I asked softly. I couldn’t imagine he’d left three hundred years of forced service to the Peace-Queen without some care for the suffering of other people.
His eyelashes brushed the austere lines of his cheekbones as he grimaced. “Well, it came to the same end, whichever it was. I failed.”
“You didn’tfailthe mortals. They’re—”
“Not my problem anymore,” he said, and cut me off with a warning look.
I shuffled my feet, helplessness churning in my stomach. I’d never disagreed with him before on what we ought to do.
“If you won’t take me to the Painted Tower, can’t you at least ask what Smenos Shipwright plans to do?”
Taran stilled, and I knew he was waiting for me to lay out terms. That was how things worked here. Mortals sacrificed to the gods when they wanted something, and I suspected he still hadn’t forgiven me for offering up myself in exchange for fulfilling Wesha’s bargain.
When I didn’t immediately bite, Taran turned from his view of the lake to examine my imploring position. He lifted one hand to the side of my neck and the other to tangle in my wet hair, both of them tilting my face up. His thumbs held me in position as he looked down, no pity in the hard, clean lines of his face.
His expression didn’t alter when he pressed warm lips to the corner of my jaw, just a flicker of his eyelashes when he looked for my objection and didn’t find it. Then another kiss, close enough for me to feel his breath on my lips but not the softness of his own.
“It’s like you’ve never had to ask for a thing in your life,” he murmured, quiet voice at odds with the tension in his words. “You’re terrible at it. No wonder you never get anything you want.”
So angry, even though he’d walked into my life all smiles and laughing deflection. I’d never seen him angry before; I’d always thought that deep down he was more sad than anything else.
Fine, Taran, stay angry. I will too. Just remember that I wasn’t the one who used you.
I peeled his hand off my face but squeezed it instead of pushing it away, interlocking my fingers with his. I spoke to him the way I always had instead of growling at him.
“I’m not asking you to do it for me. Taran, youlivehere. I know you have to be worried about what’s happening.”
“Welive here,” he immediately replied, but from his nonplussed face, he didn’t expect an appeal to his better nature. He had to have one: a heart that could open for Marit in the well or Wesha in her tower could never be completely closed.
I leaned my cheek against his hand for a moment, soaking in the play of emotions across the elegant lines of his features.
I knew he’d do it before he did.
He dramatically groaned and rolled his head back before stalking over to Marit, who was still peacefully bent over his toy serpent.
“Look alive,” Taran said, tossing a grape at his friend. “Tell the grooms to tack up the horses, we’re leaving today. We have to go all the way to the western slope of the Mountain. Smenos’s workshops.”
Marit stretched out his arms and loosened his neck muscles,looking regretfully at the water nymphs, who were beginning to wake and play in the shallows of the lake.
“Smenos? Does he want to see us?” Marit asked.
Taran tightened his face unhappily. “Not at all. You used to smash his ships for fun, and I’m fairly certain I slept with his wife.”
Both Marit and I absorbed this news, one of us with a great deal more equanimity than the other.
“Ah, well,” Marit said. “At least we’re bringing Iona. Who wouldn’t be pleased to have a musician as a guest?”
I forced myself to smile at the sea god, but I very carefully didn’t look at Taran as I went back to my room to pack, and I slid the knives he didn’t know I had into the pack right next to my kithara. I wasn’t sure which I might need to use, but I was prepared for either situation.
