Page 14 of The Coven of Ruin
“What are you doing scaling the wall? Drunkenly, might I add, and hollering so loudly that you’re bound to draw unwanted attention?”
“I had to see you, Trista. And I’m not drunk. I just had an ale or two.” His gaze flicked inside and then back to her.
“You need to leave.Now. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I can’t.” It came out as a whine. “I came here all the way from Saga. A storm is going to be here any minute. Please.”
Saga was the tavern she had been taken from for Kace’s stolen necklace. It was a forty-minute trek by foot.
Trista crossed her arms. She didn’t want to let him in, but she also didn’t want him falling from the third floor and breaking his neck, or getting caught in the storm. Thunder sounded distantly as if to confirm her thought process.
“You can stay, but you will sleep on the chaise.”
He half-stepped, half-tripped his way into her room, and she shut the window behind him. She found him a towel and tossed it his way as he sat down roughly. No words were exchanged for a long moment, but she knew it wouldn’t remain that way.
“I’m so sorry, Trista. Mother curse me, but I—“ Kace’s brows lifted, making his expression open and earnest. “What happened? When he took you outside the tavern, we came after you, but you were already gone. Did he hurt you? Did he… oh gods… I—” Trailing off, his entire demeanor practically begged for her to speak.
She didn’t want to tell him the truth,couldn’t, and so she lied. “He was a god, Kace. You stole from agod. He tossed me in a cell. In the dark.“ She left it at that—not able to share the true extent of the damage that had been done.
“I didn’t know. I swear to you.” He hesitated, his mouth working silently before he finally said, “Kirla took it off of a woman. That’s why I was so confused when he asked you for it.”
“But you lied to me. You told me it wasn’t stolen. You promised me!” Tears came suddenly and unbidden as her voice rose. She’d never been given a gift before and when Kace gave her the necklace, she made him swear it wasn’t stolen. That it was hers and hers alone. A feeling, deep and bitter, awoke within her—betrayal.
He stood up suddenly, running a hand through his damp hair. “I’m sorry!” Taking a step toward her, he reached for her, but she flinched and moved out of the way.
“I can’t… I don’t want to be touched by you.” Her words held all the resentment and emotion that she hadn’t yet explored from the events that transpired before she was taken.
He looked like she had struck him.
Kace was used to her melting. To her giving in to him. But her life was now divided into two distinct eras: pre-arena and post-arena. Before being marked by the very god that had cursed all of witchkind, and after. Kace firmly fit into the part of her life before Olympus, and she didn’t know if he could follow her any further.
“You can’t forgive me? I didn’t know he was going to take you! I would have tried to stop it or fought him orsomething.“ Now outrage was coloring his tone, and she knew she was entering dangerous territory. He acted as if it had all been a misunderstanding.
Panting, she put more distance between them. “You did a lot of damage by lying. And youhurtme, Kace. You stood there and didnothing.”
“So you’re just going to give us up?”
That hurt. Kace was her friend, heronlyfriend, really. Whereas she was given up to the Akeso, Kace was forced to survive on the streets. They had met in the woods when she had wandered from the keep as a youth. They became inseparable. He would come through her window with food from The Mark, the lawless and mystifying expanse of markets that lay outside of coven borders, and she would patch him up when thieving had gone wrong. They would talk late into the night about everything they wanted to accomplish, all the places they wanted to visit.
“After everything we’ve been through?” Kace’s voice cracked in a broken whisper.
There had been a brief period in their history where they weremorethan friends. A couple of years ago, he climbed into her window later than his usual hour. She knew something had changed before he even opened his mouth. Appearing afflicted, he had closed the distance between them and said, “I need you, Trista.”
It was without thought that she let him kiss her. As if there was no other way for them to end. As if they were inevitable.
That night seemed to change everything and nothing at all. They didn’t speak about it even as he left back through her window while she was still naked between the sheets. He showed up sometimes with that same tormented look, though. Undressing her, he would whisper passionate words with a fire that seemed to extinguish the moment it was over.
When Kirla joined his crew of thieves, everything morphed once again. She imagined the thieving witch understood and accepted him in a way she never could. Their friendship changed. It became meetings at the tavern, drinking and holding onto stolen goods for him until he came back for them. She saw him only when he needed her for something. Trista had become an afterthought. Knowing that Kirla had stolen the necklace in the first place added another layer of resentment.
Swiping the tears away, she let loose a heavy breath. “Can we talk about this later? I’m very tired, and I just want to go to sleep.”
He shrunk in on himself, his shoulders dropping. “But you promise we will talk later? You’ll talk to me again?”
“I promise.” The words snagged in her throat.
He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with the movement. “That’s all I want. I’ve missed us.”
“Me too,” she murmured, handing him a blanket and a pillow from her bed.
