Page 69 of Trial of Bronze and Blood
She takes one more long pull of her own, deciding not to bite her tongue this time.
“Sometimes, you don’t think enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Are they finally going to have it out, here, in an underground tabernae in Anziano, about the last time they saw each other? Another swig of wine and more of her inhibitions fall away, leaving nothing but anger and resentment and—stellae help her—yearning.
“It means you left so many of us behind when you pretended to defect. People who cared about you. I thought you’d betrayed the Faithless, betrayedme. You were the best of us, and you left us there to pick up the pieces of you on our own.”
She gestures at Cato. “When here you’ve been all this time, protecting the king of Anziano inside a seaside palace with unending food and drink, with soft beds and good people. While I’ve been barely surviving with Ovi in the worst places in the Imperium.”
He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Her vision grows fuzzy again, her body feeling as if it’s been left too long in the sun. It only makes her bolder. She’s not truly jealous of his time here—well,perhaps a little—but she’s not done making him feel guilty. Marcus needs to know her truth, or at least part of it.
“After everything you and I went through—everything I confessed to you—you justleft, Marcus.” She looks away and back at him again. “And I never got over it.”
He swallows hard, sadness and remorse filling his gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She ignores the apology. “What didn’t you know? That you let the rest of us think you were a coward for leaving? Or that not a day goes by where I haven’t thought of you—haven’t wondered where you were or if you were even alive?”
“She’s right, Marcus. That was a shit thing to do,” Cato says after a moment, before turning his attention to Dru. She should’ve known he’d be eavesdropping. “However, tonight, we must let those things go which weigh us down. For it may very well be our last night among the living.”
His words do nothing to persuade her, resentment boiling over in her blood. She avoids looking at Marcus, though his attention lingers on her. Maybe she shouldn’t have confessed anything, but here, now, she’s glad of it.
Cato downs the rest of his drink and claps his hands. “Jove! A song, if you please.”
The bard sways in his seat. “Only if Dru will sing with me.”
“I don’t sing,” Dru answers automatically, finishing the last of her wine.
“Everyone can sing; some people simply sing poorly. I’m not asking you to singwell.”
But Icansing well.She glances at Marcus, though for confirmation or condemnation, she’s not sure. His face blurs slightly. Despite her dressing-down, she can’t help noticing how close his knee is to hers, marking the distance between his hand beneath the table and her exposed thigh.
Some part of her feels desperate to prove herself to him. To showhim she’s been doing fine without him all this time—that she never has and never will need him.
But there’s no amount of wine in the world that could convince her to sing.
She regards the bard. “No, thank you.”
Disappointment drops his shoulders. “At least tell me what song you want to hear?”
A fair compromise.She wracks her intoxicated brain for a song from Anziano that she knows has been translated from the ancient Durevolian tongue into Phaedran.
“Con Amore.”
He smiles loosely. “As good as any.”
The bard saunters up to the stool set in the back of the room, taking a seat and setting his fingers in place.
Plucking the first few notes, the crowd quiets. The attention of those who can spare it focus on him alone. The bard taps his foot on the floor in rhythm. She closes her eyes, almost wishing she’d gone up there, embraced her indulgences like Cato suggested. But she hasn’t sung a single note since her mother passed, and doing so now, when she’s not herself, would be an insult to her mother’s memory.
Once he comes to the part where she would’ve joined in with the first verse, though, she finds herself humming along.
“In the dark, I’ve been waiting for you to find me.
In the past, is where I lost you, and you lost me, my love.”
Another few strums, and her humming grows louder. She closes her eyes, swaying back and forth in her seat, the wine and the song overtaking her. Even the table feels as if it’s quivering beneath her arms. She senses when Marcus turns toward her; she doesn’t dare look at him. The music fills her with longing, the lyrics her mother once sang to her carved deep into her heart.
