“Or perhaps not,” Pally said warily. He held up both hands. “Not that. There’s not much I can deny Iwoulddo—my history always makes a liar—but that, Ididn’tdo.”
“Talk.” Madoc walked away from Waring. Anger could make him cruel, and he needed Waring to trust them enough for the gauntlet of speech at some point. He made himself inhale, his lungs ached as they expanded, and let it out again. “Quickly, Solomon.”
Maybe Pally had forgotten that Madoc was one of the few who still remembered that name. He flinched as though it had stung him and clenched his jaw. They glared at each other as they remembered who they had both been, once.
It was Pally who backed down first, or at least, unclenched his jaw.
“Took thought you were the one who kidnapped him,” he spat out. If it was revenge for Madoc’s use of that raw, old name, it worked well. Something hollow opened inside Madoc and sucked everything into it—anger and smoke and any words that could have cut Pally back. Was this what heartbreak felt like, he wondered idly. Every other time he’d lost someone he had anger to feed the pain into, something to stoke and let consume him.
This just felt empty.
“You lie,” he tried out on his tongue.
For a second, Pally looked thickly delighted with his cruelty. Then he scrubbed Solomon away with a pass of his hand and plastered on regret. Madoc wondered with a flicker of malice, before he was sucked down into the emptiness, if Pally knew which emotion was the real one.
“I don’t think hebelievedit,” Pally said carefully. “Even ‘thought it’ was just my cruelty, but he feared it. How could he not, Madoc? When you fear betrayal, you don’t care if it was a stranger.”
“My first lovefearedI was a monster,” Madoc rasped out. “Everyone knew what I was, but when people in our town sickened and died, it was Gwynn who whispered to people about how I went out late at night. He told the priest how I’d seduced him. He told them where to find me.”
It seemed only fair, after all, to give Pally a secret for a secret. Although he looked as though he’d rather not hear this one.
“Madoc, I—”
“Don’t be sorry. He paid the price,” Madoc spat. “After they’d done with me, they burned my poor stupid love alive, just in case. A lot more people died after that.”
It turned out that Madoc had been wrong. The anger was still there. It just needed a moment to regroup. He welcomed the taste of burned apples in the back of his throat and thought about all the times he’d imagined what he’d have done to Gwynn if the mob hadn’t turned on him next.
In the back of his mind, he remembered how often he’d thought he’d have forgiven the stupid bastard anything if he’d just been there.
“There’s a difference,” Pally said quietly.
“Really?” Madoc sneered. “What? That Luke at least knows how to end me properly.”
Pally looked at him as though he were an idiot. “That someone he knew sold Luke to a monster that tortured him for a year. That he can’t even use his own name anymore, because that’s who it happened to. He can’t even trust his own memories, never mind anyone else. Yet he was still brave enough to even think he could trust you? Trustanyfucker? When you still chew over a centuries-old betrayal as if some inbred Welsh farm boy had any idea what he’d cost you both with his fear? You weak bastard.”
That wasn’t the gentle justification that Madoc expected. He spluttered at Pally for a second.
“He was the baker’s son,” he said stiffly.
“All the fucking difference, then,” Pally said with a sneer. It was disconcerting to hear him swear so casually. He usually chose his words carefully, a mannered facade between him and the coarse-tongued Solomon. “Do what you want, Madoc. Remind everyone that no one can stop you from being a fucking bastard. Prove to Took that he was goddamn right not to trust you. There will be plenty of people willing to pick up his pieces.”
“Like you?” Madoc asked harshly. “You were never his type.”
The sharp, hard-edged grin was all Solomon. “I can be fucking convincing when I put my mind to it, Madoc. He might be worth the effort.”
He slapped the lid of the laptop down before Madoc could snarl a reply. Madoc was left with the scratch of the idea that Pally might have a point, and a ball of rage in his chest that he couldn’t unleash on anyone with a clean conscience. Sometimes he missed being Elizabeth’s collared bastard. There had never been any end of people to work his anger out on.
How many of them had deserved it, a quiet voice in the back of his head asked.
The answer was “not many.” Madoc already knew that, but it didn’t help quell the sick heat in the pit of his stomach.
“Fuck you too, Paladin,” Madoc snarled in frustration as he threw his phone at the ground. It shattered against the carpet-sheathed metal, bits of glass and plastic ricocheted across the floor and embedded in the soft leather of the seats. It was too petty of a tantrum to actually spend any of the dark, sullen energy that settled in his muscles, but it would have to do.
He locked his hands behind his head to thwart the urge to break anything and flexed his fingers against the back of his neck until he felt the ache of tender skin where Elizabeth’s fangs had dug deep. When had Paladin… hadSolomon, of all people… grown a fucking heart?
“Damn it,” he breathed out. Then he pulled a face at the shape of the words on his tongue. “Damn me, then. Fair enough.”
He kicked the broken phone with his foot, cracked glass splintered under his sole, and he stalked back down the plane. As he passed Waring, the boy leaned warily away from him. Madoc stopped and looked down at him.
