“Let’s negotiate. What would it take to convince you to pull this arrow out?” Jadren finally asked.
“I want nothing from you,” she spat.
“I can get you out of House El-Adrel,” he offered.
“Lies. You’re the one who stopped me from escaping when I had the chance.”
“Incorrect. You never had the chance. I stopped you from throwing your life away. I always intended to get you out of here.” He met and held her gaze. “That’s truth.”
Stupidly, she wanted to believe him. “Then why were you so awful to me?” She really hated that her voice sounded so small, so pitiable.
He closed his eyes, looking pained, and not from the wound this time, she thought. “I thought it would be easier on you, being here, dealing with this metal-clad shit show of hideous proportions, if you hated me and saw me as your enemy.”
“You couldn’t just tell me the truth?” she demanded, not at all sure how to feel.
“Which truth?” he demanded in turn, black eyes opening, his gaze drilling into her. “You don’t understand me, by your own admission; you have no reason to trust me, to believe anything I tell you.”
“And I still don’t!” she snapped.
“Exactly!” he fired back.
She had no response to that, had in fact lost track of the argument.
“So,” he continued in a tone of weary exasperation, “would you, pretty please with cherries on top, pull out this fucking arrow so I don’t heal pinned to this bed for the servants to find us in the morning? I can promise things won’t go well in that scenario. Maman would be aggravated and we really don’t want that.”
“I’m getting tired of everyone warning me not to annoy Lady El-Adrel,” she grumbled.
“Do you doubt the validity of the advice?” he asked with a raised brow.
He had a point. She edged closer to the bed, staying out of his reach in case it was a trick, and peered at the arrow wound. Jadren obligingly tapped the bedside lamp to increase the light from the fire elemental contained within. “It is healing,” she breathed. “I can almost see the tissues knitting together.”
“Now you know my secret,” he said with grave intensity, “which makes you the fourth person in all the world. Me, Maman, my father, and now you.”
She would have accused him of lying yet again, but she couldn’t deny the evidence. “You were dead,” she realized. “After the hunter attack. I knew you couldn’t have survived that wound.”
He shrugged as much as the arrow allowed. “And yet, I did survive. I woke up later feeling like I’d rather have died, but I’ve never been given a choice in the matter. No matter how much I’d prefer not to live through some of what I’ve experienced, I still seem to. Every time.” He sounded so grim, so resigned at that last that she felt that unwelcome twinge of sympathy again.
“So you let me believe I was crazy rather than admit the truth to me.”
“In front of Lord Sammael? Absolutely.”
“Then afterward.”
“In front of Elal’s spirit spy? Absolutely.” He held her gaze, no apology in it.
“What about now?”
“What about now?” he countered, though not at all playfully.
“You knew I couldn’t kill you!” No wonder he hadn’t been afraid, feigning sleep to see what she would do. “You’d have let me shoot you through the heart or slit your throat and believe I’d murdered you.”
He cocked his head. “Would you have been sorry to think you’d succeeded?”
“No.” Yes. She didn’t know.
“You could say I was simply accommodating your goals. Satisfying your thirst for vengeance and so forth. After all, you’re totally justified in being pissed at me, in hating me.”
“So you’d just let me kill you.”
