Page 99 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘I think I have to start before Lidello,’ he said quietly. He sighed and leaned forward on his knees, putting the empty bowl on the floor and scrubbing a hand through his hair. ‘I’ve told you before I was born in Yaakandale. My mother was a Yoxvese woman called Lyrel and she was bound and sold into the harem of King Garnoc.’

I blinked. Frowned. ‘Your father was the fallen king of Yaakandale?’

Draven nodded. ‘He had this obsession with selecting his strongest son to be his heir. He used to put us through trials, make us fight each other, that sort of thing. Which it turns out I was pretty good at. Hatred is a good motivator, and Ihatedhim.’ He was glaring into the flames again, and I studied his profile, the way the flickers of firelight picked out the edges of his sharp jaw, his straight nose, his sea-tousled hair. ‘Beating the shit out of his favourites was a satisfying revenge for what he put my mother through. She died when I was twelve. Wasted away in that place where they all despised her. I don’t… I don’t think she knew what gifting her magic would do to me.’ His eyes dropped to the floor, brow rippling with remembered pain. And I was beset with the urge to move closer, to take his hand. I didn’t, though. I didn’t know how to.

‘Wait,’ I said, something suddenly occurring to me. ‘How does Lester fit into this?’

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘Everyone needs allies. Lez is a good one. He knows when to call himself beaten and doesn’t get sulky about it. I broke a lot of his bones before we became friends, though.’

‘Seems a solid basis for a friendship,’ I muttered. Something Lester had said once came back to me.All of his relationships come at a knife’s edge.It seemed he had been speaking about their own as much as anything else. ‘It still doesn’t explain Lidello, though.’

He heaved a deep, shuddering sigh and held his hands to the fire, warming them. ‘Garnoc grew sick of me winning against his preferred sons, so I was sold to Lidello.’

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. There was something dangerous rising in my chest and if I opened my mouth I was afraid it would spill out.

‘To the Brimordian Guild first,’ he continued, his voice so flat and blunt. Almost vacant. ‘AndDovegni. He got a little overexcited by the prospect of learning exactly how I’d come to wield magic in the first place, but the puritans of the Brimordian Sanctum wouldn’t approve any research in that field. Thought it was treading too close to sacrilege. Hence, Port Howl.’ He twirled a finger in the air, gesturing to the city somewhere above our heads.

‘I’m sorry,’ I found myself saying. ‘For your own father to do that…’ The words were hushed, almost a whisper. But he must have heard them, because he flicked his gaze to me and offered a sardonic smile.

‘He paid for it when I found my way back to Yaakandale.’

‘I thought King Garnoc was killed in the rebellion.’

‘He was.’

Realisation sunk through me. ‘So you’ve done this all before,’ I said, my voice hushed. I remembered news of the Yaakandale rebellion, of the king being handed to crowds of rabid, angry civilians, their rage so incendiary that they tore him apart. I studied the dark, dangerous man across from me and considered anew the horror of his magic. He could stir a crowd to tear their king limb from limb. In a flash, I remembered the burn of magic in my veins, the flashes of lightning, and then the terrifying sense of someone in my head, someone else’s will clamping down on my own, forcing me to comply. Tostop.

And then I’d struck him. He wasn’t the only one who could be terrifying. Perhaps we were more alike than I’d ever wanted to admit.

‘So you went to the Living Valley and then to Baba Yaga, and ever since you’ve been, what, systematically destroying everyone who was ever involved in what happened to you? Will you be satisfied when Brimordia and Oceatold have torn each other apart and everything is in ruins? What comes after that?’

He clenched his jaw, and I wondered if he even knew the answer. Wondered at the extent of what Lidello had done to him when he’d tried to strip the magic from him. Wondered at the level of horror and pain he must have suffered to believe this, the war, the death, the levelling of kingdoms, was necessary.

‘I’ve never thought there was an after that,’ he said softly.

I felt a burst of sorrow I didn’t know how to swallow down. I kept tracing the lines of his face with my gaze the way I wanted to do with my hands, my fingers, wanting to smooth away the terrors of memory I could see tightening the edges of his eyes as I nursed a question I was no longer sure I wanted to know the answer to.

‘Why did you come looking for me in the Winking Nymph that night?

He seemed to sag, like his bones were weary, and his head dropped. ‘Baba Yaga told me my fate would hinge on you,’ he said finally, resignation weighing down every syllable. ‘That we were bound to each other, and you would decide whether I would succeed or fail. She told me where to look. That I’d know you as soon as I saw you. And I did. The second I laid eyes on you waving goodbye to that animal who’d grabbed you by the hair, all lit up with triumph. I justknew.’

‘And then? You’re missing out the most important part.’

He stared down at his hands, studying them like he wasn’t sure if they were his. ‘She told me you’d be attacked. And about the scars. I thought she was offering me the chance to have you in my power so you couldn’t rise against me. I never even considered warning you or trying to stop them.’

I blew out a breath as the pain of betrayal punched me in the gut all over again. Oh Madeia, it hurt to hear him admit it. To fully own it. To know finally, once and for all, that when he’d sat in the booth watching me the night I’d met him, it had been because he was waiting for the moment that would completely remake my life, the moment that would make me desperate enough to take his deal, with all its loose ends and undefined parameters.

‘So why this?’ I flicked a hand between us. ‘Why this hideous thing between us? A game gone wrong?’

He finally looked at me when he answered. ‘More like an inevitability.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Falling for you.’ In the pause he allowed, the words sank all the way through me, settling into the marrow of my bones in a way I wished they wouldn’t. ‘It was a tragedy in slow motion. I’d already made the mistakes that would doom us at the start. And I still couldn’t stop myself.’ A shadow of a smile. ‘You seem like you’ve been designed to get under my skin. First you intrigued me, then you provoked me, then I would’ve given anything to have you for my own. Maybe it’s some kind of punishment for all the wrongs I’ve done. But I can’t bring myself to regret you, either.’

Now I turned my own gaze to my hands, unable to look at him any longer with all those admissions burning me up. Aninevitability. It was absurd. The moments I’d tried to charm him had been few and far between. He’d seen the very worst of me, when I was at my hardest, my angriest, my most cunning, my darkest. We sat in silence for a long time, two people tangled together in a web of wrongs and regrets and cruelties, our broken fragments sharp enough to cut each other to pieces as we struggled against each other. And never before had I wished so deeply and dearly that things could have been different. Thatwecould have been different. I ached with it.

But this conversation had changed nothing. It didn’t undo what had been done.

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