Tyse squints his eyes at me, like he’s reading something on my face. And immediately he bends down, placing his hands on my knees. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re lying. We don’t have to?—”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I’m thinking about Finn.”
He almost stands up again, but I put my hands over his to make him reconsider. Which he does. But he also spells it out for me. “I don’t wanna compete with that guy.”
“You’re not. He’s not even here.”
He taps a finger to my head. “I mean, in there. I don’t wanna compete with him in there.”
“Trust me, he’s not in there.”
“Then why are you thinking about him right now?”
“Because I just remembered that he was…” But I suddenly can’t say it out loud. Because I hadn’t even admitted this to myself before this very second, and it’s so hard to believe that I start to wonder if I just got it wrong.
Except I didn’t get it wrong and my eyes are filling up with tears, because I got it exactly right, and my heart is broken over this new awareness.
“He was what, Clara?”
“He wasmeanto me.”
“Mean to you how?”
Then I’m crying, and I feel stupid, and I don’t know what to say.
“Mean to you how, Clara?”
“He treated me like I was some down-city tavern whore. He wanted things… things I had never done before. But I did it. And still he didn’t save me. And he said things…” I let out a breath. “Forget it. The important part is that when I walked through thetower door, I hated him.” I look up and meet Tyse’s eyes. “I told him I would hate him ’till the end of time. He was someone else. Something happened to him after his father died.”
“When did his father die?”
“The day the bells rang for Haryet.”
“And you went in the day after Haryet.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s all pretty stressful. Maybe he?—”
“No.” I stop Tyse right there. Before he can defend Finn. Because it’s not true and I don’t want to hear it. “That’s not why. Yes, it was stressful. But the change in Finn was something else. It wasn’t stress, Tyse. It wasn’t. It was somethingelse.”
Tyse stands back up and this time I don’t stop him. Then he takes off his jacket, hangs it up, then removes his weapon belt, draping it over the chair in the kitchen. And then takes off his shirt and walks over to the chair to take off his boots.
It’s a pattern with him that I’ve come to recognize.
I lean over, take off my boots too, and then grab a nightgown out of my little chest of drawers. It’s a lot like the one I wore last night. White. Cotton. Soft. Girly instead of sexy. And I feel very young in this moment. Like… immature. Which is not how I felt in the Maiden Tower. There, I always felt so grown up.
But I think it was an illusion. I don’t think I ever grew up. Not until I came here.
When I turn, Tyse has already taken his pants off and is standing in his boxers. But this is just how we sleep so I don’t know if we’re going to keep going, or this is just… sleep.
