“We knew he possessed seagifts. You don’t sink Calbernan vessels or drown Calbernan crew without magic strong enough to counteract our own, but I didn’t begin to suspect he was from the Isles until after you were taken. As we tracked his ship down, it became clear he was using powerful seagifts, not some purchased spell or weaker form of water magic.”
“So, since you know the Shark is Calbernan, you wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that he’s a magic eater, too. Would you?”
Dilys flinched, and that was answer enough.
“Are all Calbernans magic eaters?”
His head shot up, his eyes wide and shocked. “No! By Numahao, we are not! A Calbernan—and I mean a true son of the Isles, not that thrice-damned, rotten-souledkrillowho calls himself the Shark—are nothing like those scum.”
“But you all eat the magic of your wives, and especially yourimlaniwomen, to power your own. You’ve admitted as much. The ‘symbiosis’ you were telling me about.”
“There’s a difference, Gabriella. Magic eaterstakewhat they want. Calbernans accept only that which is freely given, and we give back whatever our women need in return.” He drew himself up. “Is this why you don’t want me touching you? Because you think I would eat your magic the way Mur Balat did?”
“Wouldn’t you?” she challenged.
His head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “Have I ever done so? Even once?” Then his eyes narrowed. “But you know that. You’re just trying to push me away again. I thought we’d gotten past that.”
She hated that he was so adept at avoiding her every attempt to control their conversations, hated that he was so good at seeing through her lies and misdirections. “Between the two of them, I’d rather have my magic consumed by Mur Balat than the Shark any day. Balat drained me without laying so much as his little finger on me.”
His expression went blank. The sort of blank that told her great and terrible violence was simmering just below the surface. He couldn’t hide it completely. It rumbled in his voice as he said, “And the Shark? Did he lay a finger on you?”
“He took great pleasure in laying all manner of parts on me. And no,” she added before he could ask again, “to answer the question that has you turning that post into toothpicks, he didn’t rape me. Neither of them did. Royal virgins are apparently not as valuable once they’ve been... used.”
He drew in a sharp breath, a muscle ticking at the hinge of his sharply clenched jaw. He glanced at the long furrows of splintered wood his claws had dug out of the support post and put his hands to his sides. “Gabriella.”
She turned back towards the dressing-table mirror, grasped a thick hunk of her hair and began working the brush though the tangle. “It’s funny,” she said. Her voice cracked a little, and she had to stop, take a breath, and swallow past the lump in her throat. “It’s funny, I always thought at heart I was a strong person.”
“You are, Gabriella. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
She laughed hollowly. “Then you must know some pretty spineless and pathetic women.”
“I have known such women, yes, but you’re not one of them. Not even when you were doing your best to pretend to be milked tea.”
“Aren’t I? You give me too much credit. The pirates, the Shark, Mur Balat—none of them did anything to truly harm me. In fact, there are those who could reasonably argue that I was actually pampered by my abductors. I was too valuable a commodity for them to damage. They kept me restrained, of course, but Balat had these women aboard who spent hours working to beautify me. Massaging lotions and creams into my skin, tending my hair, my nails. Trying to make his product as close to perfection as possible before the sale.”
The brush had stuck on the tangle. She gripped her hair in a tight fist and forced the bristles through, hearing the rip as strands of hair broke. Dilys made a sound of protest, as if the damage she was doing to her poor hair hurt him more than it did her.
“I’ve never been a thing before,” she continued as she pulled the clumps of hair from the brush and attacked the knot from a different angle. “That was a strange feeling. I’ve never been truly helpless, either. There’s nothing like being dehumanized and made completely helpless to strip away all the lies and masks and self-delusions a person hides behind and show them what they’re really made of. Even though I spent my life keeping my magic bottled up, I always knew it was there. That gave me a certain bravery. I told myself I would never willingly use that power, but it turns out that’s not true. It never has been. When it comes down to it, I will choose to kill whoever hurts me. I will kill them and take pleasure in it, and I won’t care who else gets hurt in the process.” She dragged the brush though the tangle again, tearing more hair free.
“Gabriella, stop. Give me that brush before you rip all your hair out.” Not waiting for her permission he crossed the floor and reached for the brush.
She thought about fighting him for it, but the instant his skin brushed against her, longing surged up with the force of an erupting volcano. She released the hairbrush as if it burned and snatched her hand back into her lap.
Dilys scowled, his eyes flaring bright gold as he clearly misinterpreted her flinch. But instead of calling her out on it, he gripped the brush, drew the moisture out of her still-damp hair, and went to work on the tangle at the back of her neck. He was much more patient and gentle with it than she had been—much more patient and gentle than she deserved—carefully unraveling the knotted strands a little at a time, pushing them aside to get at the core of the knot underneath.
“You say none of your captors raped you? The Shark did. When a Calbernan turns his back on every tenet of honor that we hold dear and choses to become a magic eater, as the Shark did, he becomes the worst, most despicable kind of magic eater there is. He takes sick joy in draining his victims against their will, and he doesn’t just take power when he feeds. He takes little bits of his victim’s soul. The Shark—may Numahao curse him for all eternity—he might not have raped your body,moa leia,but he raped your soul.” Tears welled in his eyes. “He did that to you, and I wasn’t there to stop it. I will never forgive myself for not being there to stop it.”
“Dilys—”
“You think that because you’re willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive that somehow you’re unworthy of happiness?” he asked softly. “You think because you want to hurt the people who hurt you that somehowyou’rethe monster? Gabriella, every living creature has a right to defend itself.”
“I did more than defend myself. There were innocent people aboard the ship that I destroyed. Servants. Slaves. I didn’t spare a single thought for any of them before I Shouted that ship and everyone aboard it to pieces. How was that defending myself?”
“Would you rather still be a prisoner sailing towards a lifetime of being treated as an owned thing?”
“You’re missing my point. I killed them. I killed every one of them. And Iwantedto. That’s how I managed to do it. I kept fantasizing about killing them over and over and over again, in the worst ways possible, until not even Mur Balat’s collar could keep that part of me contained. I hungered for their blood, their deaths. Irelishedthe thought of killing them.”
Dilys had reached the stubborn knot at the tangle’s core. He set down the brush and let his battle claws emerge just enough that he could pick apart the individual strands of the tangled knot.
