Page 22 of The Hollow King

“You have my absolute word on the matter.”

I swallowed as I stared at the black claws that had sliced through my skin so easily.

“You do not have to decide now,” he said, trying to smile.

It looked uncomfortable with those razor-sharp teeth.

Something loosened in my chest.

He began to tell me what he remembered about Morana. His voice was low and soft. The more he talked about her, the more expressive he became.

Borin came and left.

I ate and he continued to talk.

He remained seated on the floor. He kept his distance and did not make sudden movements when he shifted on the hard floor.

He had once been a king and now a beast. Yet here he was seated beneath me.

But beneath it all, I was not certain if I could trust him. I was unable to trust anyone after my mother passed.

Chapter 13

Varga

Weeks had passed since I had last raised my claws against anyone in anger, and still I found new things each day to be astonished by. This morning it was the sight of Borin, mid-lament, his forehead an inch from the stone wall of the great hall, frozen there by nothing more than the sound of Iona's voice.

“Borin. Look at me.”

He turned, slow and reluctant, one hand still pressed flat against the wall as though he needed its permission to stop.

“Bad Borin,” he mumbled. “Borin dropped the good plate. The one with the blue flowers.”

“It is a plate, Borin. Not a person.” She crossed the hall toward him, her skirts brushing against the flagstones, and crouched until she was near enough his height to look him properly in his one good eye. “No one is punishing you for a plate.”

“Master used to.”

I said nothing from where I stood in the doorway, because it was true, and there was no defending it. I had punished him for far less than a broken plate, in years I preferred not to count anymore.

“I am not your Master,” Iona said, and something in her voice softened the word into something gentler than a correction. "You may call me whatever pleases you, but I will never ask you to bash your head against my walls for my satisfaction."

Borin's chin trembled. “Mistress is kind to Borin.”

“I try to be.” She reached up and patted the least deformed side of his skull, the way she had taken to doing since the second week, and I watched the tension drain out of him as though her hand carried some small sorcery of its own. Perhaps it did. I no longer trusted myself to know the difference between magic and simple kindness. I had gone hundreds of years without encountering much of either.

“Go and fetch your tonic before the midday bell,” I said, and he startled, having apparently forgotten I stood there at all. “The new batch sits stronger than the last. It should ease the ringing in your skull, if nothing else does.”

“Yes, Master.” He bowed, twice, out of old habit more than necessity now, and shuffled off toward the kitchens, humming something tuneless under his breath.

It had taken me the better part of two months to perfect a tonic that did not merely numb him, but mended what could still be mended. His body, like everything else within these walls, had begun answering to time again in ways it had not for centuries.

The castle's stones held less cold in the mornings. The garden, long since strangled by weeds and neglect, had begun, against all sense, to put out new growth in patches where nothing should have survived the season. Even Borin's wounds closed faster now, though they still closed crooked.

Iona rose from her crouch and looked across the hall to where I stood, and she smiled.

It was not a large smile. It rarely was, with her, a small private thing that touched her eyes before it ever reached her mouth. But my breath caught all the same, the way it had every single time these past weeks, and I still had not grown accustomed to it. I doubted I ever would.

“You spoil him,” she said.