When he pulls away, Karis lets him go. He stands and follows Ronan to the side of the stream. The answers come easier now. Karis doesn’t have to dig them up, question by question.
“I spent half a year in Arthur’s life. In his bed.” Ronan crouches at the riverbank and starts washing the dirt from his hands. “I got to know him pretty well, and the worst thing about him was the way he trusted people. He trusted me, his shitty friends, his shitty order. I didn’t want him to get blamed for letting me into the cathedral, so I made it clear I was betraying him.”
His hands are clean, but he doesn’t stand up. They’ve left the treeline, but the shadows still cling to him.
Karis frowns, rubbing his own hands against his trousers as if they’re dirty too. “You stabbed him as a… as a favor?”
“Fucked up, isn’t it?” Ronan laughs. He’s relaxed again—or his mask is back on. Which only makes it worse when he says, “I don’t regret stabbing Arthur. I only regret making him trust me in the first place.”
He doesn’t sound like he’s just talking about Arthur anymore.
You didn’t make me do any of this,Karis wants to say. A confession hovers at the tip of his tongue. A blood-gift in return for everything he’s forced Ronan to say just now. If Ronan knew Karis was the Voice of Vara—knew Karis first came to him at his god’s bidding, not just by happenstance—if Ronan knew why Karis was actually so desperate to help the Locksmiths—
You could tell him, Vara says gently.That choice is yours.
But in the end, Karis bites back his secrets and doesn’t say anything else. He just stands and watches the river move. Reflections flowing and breaking. He’s carved all these revelations from Ronan, but he’s too selfish and scared to share his own.
A while later, Ronan says they should get moving. Karis follows quietly. As the day wears on, the silence aches more than his scabbed-over wounds.
?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RONAN
By the time they reach Riverwatch, Karis is clearly sulking—with good reason. Ronan knows he’s being cruel, shutting him out like this.
But letting him in was crueller still. Every step of the journey from Melody only drives that home further. Karis is clearly exhausted. Ronan recognizes himself in the dark circles beneath Karis’s eyes, the cracks in his lips, the way he dozes off when they sit for longer than twenty minutes.
Karis never complains, which makes it worse. Ronan’s taken the brilliant, sharp-tongued brat and ruined him. He should have known this would happen.
The Riverwatch inn isn’t a well-established hideout, and the innkeeper isn’t a friend. Instead of entering the front door, Ronan leads Karis around back under a look-away spell. There’s a stable behind the inn, and the grooms don’t spare them a second glance. They keep busy untacking a group of very expensive horses tied in the yard. The white saddle blankets are cleaner than they should be.
Karis slows down, then hurries to Ronan’s side.
The windows of each ground floor room are covered in faded blue shutters, most closed against the autumn chill. Ronan pauses at the third window and leans in closer to confirm the mark on the lower right corner. A small X scratched into the paint, too neat to be accidental or a result of weathering. Ronan knocks a pattern against the shutters.
A few moments later, there’s the sound of the window sliding open, and the shutters part. Evain leans out the window, his hair a tousled mess over his shoulder and his shirt half-unlaced. “How delightful. It’s not every day such handsome men deliver themselves to my window.”
“Cut the talk.” Ronan gestures to Karis. “Get in.”
Evain moves out of the way, and Karis climbs in through the window too quickly for Ronan to lend him a hand. Ronan scrambles through after him, sparing a glance at the stablehands to make sure nobody’s watching. Once he’s through, Evain closes the shutters again.
The room is small but well-kept, with a single bed and an extra door to the left. Before Ronan asks, Evain confirms, “I rented the adjoining room too.” Of course, Ronan had been thinking about security concerns, not the more intimate priorities Evain explains next: “It’s more convenient if I need to top up on power.”
Karis slumps on the edge of the bed. Ronan sets down his bag but remains standing, because once he sits down, he isn’t getting up for a while. Without further preamble, he asks, “What happened in Ostaris?”
Because all of this is wrong. Coira should be the one meeting them here, not Evain. And he’s pretty sure Karis kept scrying, despite his admonitions, but never found any of them.
“We retrieved the Dravansword.” Evain’s flirtatious act falls away. “But during the transport spell—Melanne didn’t make it.”
Ronan thought he was prepared for this. He isn’t.
Karis asks sharply, “What do you mean, didn’t make it?”
“She opened the door in the flames and let us all through,” Evain says, more serious than Ronan’s ever seen him. “The Dravan dogs were nipping at our heels. Little Leth went through with the sword, then yours truly, and then the Dravans were upon us. In the last moment, instead of stepping through, Melanne closed the door.”
Ronan closes his eyes and braces himself against the swelling tide of grief and guilt. “Did you see what happened to her?”
