The Blinding Knife
Page 143

“Something embarrassing while you were mudged on poppy? Like about seeing me naked? No.”
She closed her eyes. “You’re lucky it hurts to move, or I’d beat you bloody, Gavin Guile.”
“Dazen,” Gavin said quietly. That one word was the whole reason he’d come here. The whole reason he’d waited until Karris was lucid, but after all the buildup, he was still surprised to hear the word.
A bruised and swollen face and two black eyes and a split lip were not the easiest canvas on which to read emotions, and Gavin saw nothing. Karris’s eyes were closed. Like she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d passed out again.
A solitary tear leaked from the corner of one closed eye and tracked down her cheek.
The door’s open. Nothing for it but to charge through now. Gavin said, “Corvan Danavis and I came up with the plan a month before the Battle of Sundered Rock. We’d made so many bargains with so many devils that even though I thought my original cause was just, I knew a victory would be disastrous for the Seven Satrapies. Corvan gave me a scar to match Gavin’s, and a spy gave us the details of his battle dress.” Gavin heaved a breath. “My mother knew it was me instantly, of course, but she didn’t want to lose her last son so she coached me how to be Gavin. I thought if I could keep my disguise for even a few months that I would be able to stop most of the damage to the Seven Satrapies. I didn’t realize how hard it would be with you. I didn’t know how to even talk with you. I thought you loved Gavin. Marrying you—as him?—it was one betrayal too many, Karris. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But maybe what I did was worse.”
The broken betrothal hadn’t turned out so well. She’d disappeared, humiliated, financially ruined, and he’d thought he would never see her again. Part of him had been glad, the part that wanted to live. Surely Karris would be the one to see through his masquerade. The year she’d been gone had given him time to solidify his mask, to become Gavin Guile.
“Tell me,” she said. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, and she made no motion to clear away her tears. “Tell me everything.”
Her tone gave him nothing. It was cold, flat, lifeless.
She already knew enough to get him killed, so he didn’t know why it should be hard. In for a den, in for a danar, right? But the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t about life and death. Somehow, those were paltry things. This was about disgusting a woman who meant more to him than anything he’d ever known.
He drew a deep breath. Leaned back in his chair, leaned forward. Seven years, seven impossible goals. He’d failed at this goal every year for the past sixteen. If she killed him for this, at least he would have done something right.
So he talked. He told her about the fire at her family’s house, how he’d found he could split light that night, and how he’d been wild with rage, thinking she’d betrayed him. He told of fleeing in shame. Of being pursued. Of having an army coalesce around him he wasn’t even sure he wanted to have. And then of Gavin rebuffing his offers to surrender. He told her how he’d finally started fighting with his whole heart. Of putting Corvan Danavis in charge of his armies. Of fighting across the length of Atash, of promises from several Parian clans. Of how they’d needed those Parian reinforcements so badly they’d fled to meet them all the way into Tyrea—where they finally found out they’d been betrayed. The Parian clans weren’t coming.
He said little about the final battle. He’d killed a lot of men that day, some of them brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of men and women he’d come to admire since.
Then he talked about the years since. How he’d faced the challenges of learning to be Gavin, and how he’d tried to right the wrongs that so few of the other members of the Spectrum cared to try to redress.
He spoke for more than an hour. And as he spoke, he could feel her softening, warming toward him, her expression opening. And finally, he’d reached the Battle of Garriston and its aftermath and how she’d slapped him and said she knew his secret, and how he was afraid she’d known the full truth. Quietly, he shared how he’d had to decide whether he should tell her the truth, or kill her.
Any warmth that had been gathering was dissipated like he’d thrown his windows open in winter. He saw the muscle in her jaw twitch. You were going to kill me, you asshole? it said.
“You wanted the truth,” Gavin said. “Telling you means you could kill me.”
“It makes sense, you bastard, just don’t expect it to warm the cockles of my heart.”
He had nothing to say. He realized he’d ground the little brown grain of opium to dust between his fingers.
“I am who I am, Karris,” he said. Then he realized how ridiculous saying that was right now. “I mean, I am the Prism, so…”
“I know what you meant. So. Is that it?”
He hesitated. “No. That’s not it, Karris. I killed Gavin last night.”
“You mean metaphorically?” she asked.
So he told her. Then he backed up and told her about Ana, and he told her the truth.
“But the Blackguards… they said she jumped.”
“They lied to save me, Karris. I didn’t ask them to. I swear. Ana said some pretty foul things about you, and I knew I’d lost you forever. I threw her out onto my balcony—I, I don’t think I was trying to murder her, but she hit the railing and tumbled right over. I went to the roof to try to balance. I can’t anymore. So I went down to let Gavin out, to let him kill me.” He couldn’t look at her. Even with her battered face, he could read horror easily enough.
Finally, after telling her about Gavin, he said, “I didn’t know what he did to you, back then. How he… humbled you. I should have figured it out, but I’ve been so worried about myself that I couldn’t see even the most obvious things about those around me. I’m sorry, Karris, and I know I haven’t acted like it, but I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you can ever forgive me.”
The silence was deep enough to drown in.
“Infuriating. Incorrigible. Inelegant. Inefficient. Incredible in both senses. But not, in the end, insincere, are you, Dazen Guile?”
“Huh?”
“Kiss me,” Karris said.
“Pardon?”
“It wasn’t a request.”
He stood up from his chair and sat on the edge of her bed. She grunted with pain as his movement jostled her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Maybe—”
“Not a request.”
“But your lips are cracked and—”
“Not a request.”
“Ah.”
He kissed her with the gentleness of a man kissing an invalid.
She pulled back, peering at him through swollenness-slitted eyes, disapproving. “That was horrible, Dazen Guile. That was not the kiss I’ve been waiting sixteen years for.”
“Second chance?” he asked.
She looked unconvinced. “Hm. You don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t,” he said seriously.
“You don’t,” she said gravely, “but then, if you and I aren’t about second chances, I don’t know who is.” She grinned a bit, though.