“Don’t stand in front of me,” he grits out, eyes squinting open, looking at me from his peripheral.
I stop in my tracks. The last time he warned me against something, it turned out to be true, so I’m in no hurry to test him. Still, I ask, “Why?”
“I—I don’t know what would happen if you did. No one has ever been here while I’ve done this.”
“And what is this?” I ask, and as I expect to be met with silence, I’m not disappointed. Instead, I sit beside him, a smirk planting itself on my lips. He hasn’t agreed to bond with me, and in the event he refuses, the plan is to at least make some kind of positive emotional connection. “Am I mistaken, or are you concerned for my well-being?”
He holds the tension in his body for another few moments, eyes squeezed tight, fists clenched. My pulse hammers in my throat as I wait for him to answer. I’m about to open my mouth to ask him again if he’s all right when he sighs, his head falling back. My skin prickles as my eyes wander the length of his throat.
Zhoric breathes in and out a few times before his eyes slit open, dark and glassy. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. I desire to feel nothing at all.”
His answer surprises me a little. I would think someone whose aim is to have ultimate control and power would want feel something as equally all encompassing. “Is that what you truly wish? To feel nothing at all?”
Zhoric ignores my pointed question. “Did you know the gods do not feel? Not in their realm, at least. If they ever stepped foot in this one, though, feelings would consume them and make them want it all without remorse orcare of whom it hurt. They would love until it suffocated the life out of you. They would eat grief like ripe fruit and get drunk on pain.” He swallows, the apple of his throat bobbing slowly. “When you feel so much, you sometimes wish to not feel it at all for fear of what it can do.”
“Or for what it has already done?” The words come unbidden, but with everything Ozias and Atlanta have told me, from what I overhead, and what Zhoric has told me himself, this is a man who carries at least a modicum of guilt for his actions. For what exactly, or to what degree I don’t know. It shouldn’t matter, but I’ll pretend that it does for the sake of endearing myself to him. All while I quietly convince myself that it doesn’t.
When he doesn’t answer, I sigh and resolve to give him a little of myself. “I’m sitting here, pretending I don’t know what you mean. When you marked me undesirable, and I wasn’t chosen, my mother’s ire ran deep. I couldn’t think around my desire to change her attitude towards me, and yet my relief and jealousy were at war with each other. All those feelings, all those desires, it tore me apart. So I can understand. In those days, I often wished I didn’t feel any of it.” I lower my gaze. I expect to feel unsettled after sharing a truth of mine, but I don’t. Instead, I feel free, a gentle weight lifting from my shoulders. “Sometimes, I think I feel too much, too deeply,” I admit. It’s why I love Ninon so much. Her quiet calm to my riotous mind soothes me. When I feel like I’m drifting too far, she’s my rein. I sometimes feel like I could destroy more than I’d help if left untethered.
When I meet Zhoric’s gaze, his eyes shine like moss in the sunlight. As he looks at me, it reminds me of the way Ninon sees me when she looks at me. It reminds me of the empathy my sister carries. There’s something more, too. Something I can’t name, or am afraid to. He shuts his eyes, stealing the green away. His breathing picks up again, rapid, shallow puffs of air moving his chest. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he admits, teeth clenching tight. “Back then, I had no design for you, other than to keep you away. Then Alixor—” His words cut off, his bodygoing rigid.
Confusion and concern whip through me as quick as a dust storm. “Why did you let him choose me, then? If you didn’t want me near, why not refuse him?”
After another moment, he sighs, tension slipping from his muscles. “I didn’t have any reason I could give to refuse.”
“You marked me as undesirable,” I remind him, not that he needs it. It’s me who needs to understand.
“It doesn’t matter. Alixor saw your power through the haze I put over you at your selection ceremony when others couldn’t. He could have outed me for concealing you from them, but Alixor was ambitious. He didn’t want another claiming you when he could simply have you himself. He made the connection I’d done it to others before you and he held that information over my head. If the elites knew I was concealing the strongest of you…” he trails off and blinks, as if he finally realized he’d been speaking aloud.
Breath sticking in my chest, I have to work to get the words out. “You’re saying you were concealing the more powerful of us?”
He lowers his head in a singular nod.
My hope is a running mare, swift and fast and sure. “Ninon?” If she’s strong, if she has an elahi that hasn’t yet manifested, then perhaps…
“No. Not her. Not all of them.”
Losing that hope is an arrow to my chest.“Why?”
“For some, like Ninon, a match would never work. Her heart isn’t made to love a man and so breeding wouldn’t have come to fruition. To keep her and others with similar hearts safe from the entitlement of the draconem, I mark them undesirable. That’s what the draconem believe the distinction means. For the others, like you, it’s to ensure the elites powers didn’t get too out of hand. So they wouldn’t think to use you in more ways they already were.”
How much worse could it be? “In what way?”
He’s silent for a time, but when he answers, his response is barely a whisper. “Forcing bonds on you.” The very thing I’m tempting him with.
I swallow hard and search for a lie written on his stoic features, but I don’t find it. “If Alixor was a threat, that means…killing him did you a favor?”
“In some regards.” A hiss escapes from between his teeth as his fingers dig more tightly into his palms. “And not in others.” His ribs expand and contract and a light sheen of sweat coats his skin. The dark scale glistens like the night reflecting on the sea. He draws in a ragged breath.
“Is there anything…” I stop, unsure of what to offer. “Can I help?”
His head jerks. “Go. Please.”
I clench my teeth and shake my head. “No.”
“Kaisa…” he breathes, and the anguish in my name as he says it breaks something inside me. Then his body bows forward and his broad hands slap the stone floor to brace himself. I jolt upright, hands hovering over his shoulders as if they could do something. With immense effort, he lifts his head, his eyes blazing black as he focuses on the dim light of gods eyes out in the obsidian sky. His shoulders heave. Sweat rolls down his temples, dripping off his jaw.
It reminds me of Kalixta giving birth. There is pain here, a sense of some great power happening in front of my eyes. I wished I could lend Kalixta my strength during her struggle and I find myself wanting to lend him strength, too. It’s the bond, the thing connecting us, speaking to me. It must be. Even if right now, in this moment, I can’t sense the truth of my feelings beneath it. But here, the lie of the bond will help me in my task. And so I lean into it. I feel moisture on my cheek before I even register the prick of my tears. I lay a hand on his shoulder, though I know he cannot feel it.
