“I can’t believe a word you say!”
“I didn’t lie about my past!” he yells back. “I was a farmer when my village up north was invaded. I submitted myself to the Dark King because I thought my sacrifice would save my family. It did not. First, he slaughtered the sisters I was supposed to protect, and then he violated my betrothed in front of me and killed her, too!” He clears his throat roughly. “When I stood over those spoiled crops, I was reminded of everything I lost, everything I had willingly given up in the hope that—”
“What did the Dark King promise you.” My voice is cold and dead. “What is he going to give you when you present me to him.”
As Merc looks away to the fields on the far side of the pond, I’m struck by the suffering on his face. But then I harden myself.
“He said he would give it all back to you, didn’t he. The life you had lost.”
I think about what Merc himself said, about how the evil gets into people and knows their deepest desires.
“Deliver me, and you get your past.” I shake my head. “And now, we’re here. Just a couple hundred lengths from the altar of the Fulcrum. You were never going to take me to the north to protect me, you were trying to get me to the altar to be sacrificed—hisaltar.”
I think of the stupid arrangement I made with Merc in the beginning, my body in exchange for his help getting to the Outpost. He’d have followed me there anyway—damn him, why did he not just force me?
“How it started…” He shakes his head. “Is not how it is now.”
“Ended, you mean. We areover—”
“Please, Sorrel, I can protect you. I can take you up north where he has not yet come. We can live—”
“Shut. Up.”
Merc falls silent, and I try not to notice the way the sunlight clings to his body, creating an aura as if he’s not what he is. Then again, he is probably willing the effect, just to seduce me.
Something he has proven to be very good at.
“So we fight now,” I hear myself say. “You and me. You’re the enemy I’m supposed to meet at the start of the War for All Souls.”
And then I answer my own question: “You couldn’t force me to do anything because you can’t risk me killing myself or getting hurt. That’s why you were upset every time I took a risk.”
“I’m not lying to you, Sorrel.”
“You’ve always lied to me—”
“If I’m so beholden to the Dark King,” he says, “ask yourself why I would take you to the Queen who might be able to defeat him?”
I shake my head again. “Because you always knew she’d say no and I’d fail. You gave me the speech yourself when you were talking about how the King of Prosperitus would only ever take care of his own citizens. You knew eventually we’d come back here to my village, and I’d be determined to go to Prosperitus—and the route we’d have to go on would take us right by the altar at the Fulcrum. This is all perfectly falling into place for you.”
“Is that what you think this is? Falling into place?”
“Don’t play games with me. We’re well past that, you and me.”
The two of us stare across the beach at each other, and I find it poetic that it’s sand that separates us. Like what I wake up to in my mouth. Like that which makes up the Fulcrum… which apparently my mother created to imprison my father.
When Merc moves, I jump back. But he isn’t coming for me. He just gives me his back, where that symbol is burned into his skin, the scars running from his shoulders all the way down to his buttocks… what I felt when I ran my hands up his spine and was so horrified for him.
He pulls on his shirt and takes his time buttoning up. Then comes the tucking and the holstering, and lastly, the mesh and the leather surcoat. When he picks up his broadsword, I can’t hide my flinch.
“I’m not going to fight you.” Merc glances to the sun, which is getting lower by the moment. “And I’m surely not going to kill you.”
You already have, I think with despair.
He goes over and unwraps his horse’s reins from the sapling. As he mounts up, he shifts his eyes back over to me.
“I’ll give you as much time as I can, but he’s going to call me home. Go and join with Julion. That army is well-weaponized and coordinated. It willbe Anathos’s best chance. As for you, if you enter the Fulcrum, remember that not all is what it seems.”
“Oh, you mean you haven’t found things trustworthy inside there? What a crying shame.”
