“But we ride now to the Keep,” I said. “And there the story ends.”
There was a pause before you answered, and in that pause I understood—with piercing certainty, as if it were something I had known before and only forgotten—that I would never again see the woods where I was born, or the home of my fathers.
Whatever waited for me at Cavallon, I would not survive it. And you knew it.
But you said, in a voice like an early grave, “Yes. The story ends there.”
It is a strange thing, to ride toward your own death, like running toward a cliff with both eyes open.
I daydreamed sometimes about turning away. I could have thrown you from the horse and run back to the woods. I could have tossed the grail into the fire. I could have simply slipped away in the night, and let you carry the grail alone.
But these fantasies seemed to belong to someone else, someone braver and freer than myself. I could only trot obediently onward, like a hog to slaughter.
I would have preferred silence—even condemned men are allowed a vigil—but you chattered and nagged and pestered and wheedled at me. I answered, if only to pass the miles. You asked about my armor, so light and strong, and I told you the queen kept the maker a secret, so that no one else might have anything so fine. You asked about Hen, and I told you about the mean red colt who had crippled the farrier and maimed several grooms, but who had eaten from my palm like a lamb, as if we were old friends.
You asked about Yvanne, and I told you the truth: that she was brave and brilliant. Not a woman so much as a force that swept over the world.
You said, relieved, “You do love her.”
I didn’t answer; it would only upset you.
At night I watched your face across the fire, searching for malice or subterfuge, and found only an awful, writhing guilt, which you tried and failed to hide. But if you did not hate me, how could you lead me hooded and fettered to my death?
I suppose you’d answered that question on the first day I spoke with you:I swear to you, it was worth it,you had said. At the time I’d thought you meant the dragon’s death, or all the deaths that came before it—but really, you’d meant mine.
I would die so that Yvanne would live, and in this way even my death would serve Dominion. The thought settled over me like snow, beautiful and numbing. I had always wanted to be of use.
The weather turned as we left the hills. The wind blew hard and mercilessly, so that our fires snapped and leapt in the night, the heat whipped away before it reached us.
I listened to your teeth chattering with something glittering and sharp in my throat, like chewed glass. It galled me that you would cross to my side of the fire only for my sake, after a bad dream, but never your own.
Perhaps it was only ever pity that brought you to me. Perhaps you were simply a coward, as you had so often told me. Or perhaps you didn’t want to share a bed with the woman you were leading to the gallows.
A sudden surge of bitterness made me say, one night, “It’ll get colder, before dawn. Might even snow.”
You were shaking so hard by then you could barely nod.
“We fought the Hyllmen in winter, did you know? At night we stripped bare and slept pressed together.” It had only been Ancel and his squire, and they were occupied more with each other than me, but I wanted to make you blush.
You did. You looked at me and then away, your expression churning, almost panicked. You opened your mouth to make some excuse or apology, and I found I did not want to hear it. I wrapped my cloak tight around myself and lay down with my back turned to you.
I knew you would not come to me. Knew I would spend the night alone, hating both of us in turns—myself for inviting you, and you for refusing me.
But later—much later, when the fire was black and the stars were a clear, cruel white—I felt my cloak tugged away from my stiffened fingers.
I had your throat in my hand again before I even opened my eyes.
You gave a faint, polite cough, and I released you, swearing. “What are youdoing,boy?”
“Trying not to lose any limbs to frostbite,” you answered, somewhat testily. Then, less certainly, “I thought you’d offered to—but if you’ve changed your mind, you need o-only say so.”
I was planning to refuse you, until you stuttered over that word. Your lips must have been numb with cold.
I held up the edge of my cloak. You burrowed awkwardly beneath it, in a chivalrous and absurd effort to sleep next to me without actually touching me. I let you wriggle unhappily for a moment before I hauled you firmly against my chest. I held you, my arm across your ribs, my cheek in your curls, until the shivering eased.
Then—you were very warm and pliant in my arms but not asleep, and my lips were very near the bare back of your neck. I exhaled, and a different kind of shiver passed through you, and I knew in a sudden flush of heat that I could have you, if I wanted.
And, Savior save me, I wanted. Not with tenderness, but with a kind of fury: When you dressed for my funeral, I wanted you to see the marks I’d left on your skin; when you raised your cup in my name, I wanted the wine to sting your lips.
