Page 127 of A Weave of Lies
How could he disregard so coldly his own life? Her hands would come back, diminished, but they would. His life wouldn’t.
Estevan turned away. “Monetary provisions have always been prepared for my retinue in case of my untimely demise. None of them are appraised of my plan in its entirety, so they will not be implicated, and with that money, they will be set for life once I am condemned. My only regret …” He glanced at her over his shoulder, then said, “… is you. You did not ask to play the role I forced upon you. My reasons were righteous, yet my actions were wrong. I bear that responsibility.”
Semras sneered coldly. “Oh, you do. And you will pay for it.This,” she said, looking down at her hands, “is your doing. Once I’m healed, I will carve your heart out.”
A smile lifted the corners of his lips, but it held no mirth within—just a feverish hope muddied by fatalism. “Do it. It is yours to take. I have no use for the wretched thing, and if it will make you forgive me after my odious—”
“It willnotmake me,” Semras replied. She couldn’t. She didn’t even want to ponder if she wished to. “‘Odious’ is too kind a word for what you made me endure. I do not forgive you now, and I may never. What I amwillingto do, however, is remain cordial enough with you until we’ve fixed this Crone-forsaken mess. Then we will part ways and never see each other again.”
“I cannot demand more of you,” he said quietly. “I have taken too much already.”
“Glad to hear some humility in your voice for once, Inquisitor.” She paused, then furrowed her brow pensively. “You are quite right. You took me from my home, but what I can’t understand is why. If you meant to be arrested all along, why didn’t you simply surrender yourself? Why go through the trouble of making me accuse you?”
Estevan sighed. “With no motive, a shaky timeline at best, and the inhuman punishment awaiting the culprit of such a high-profile murder? Who would have believed it? It was better to create a plausible accusation against me first. I planned on beingarrested and then confessing to framing a witch for my ‘crime.’ That meant I needed you to denounce me, and for that, I needed you to sincerely believe I could have done it.”
“It worked,” she muttered. “I did believe it, thanks to howodiousyou were.”
Sorrow brightened the inquisitor’s eyes. “I am so, so sorry … I needed your despair to lend credibility to your plea. I asked Maraz’Miri to give you an escape opportunity, and I awaited Cael’s visit, hoping you would meet with him and tell him everything. With his stellar reputation, he could vouch for your word, and the tribunals would have had to believe you. And all along, I desperately searched for a suspect other than a witch, for another possibility that did not include you remembering me as a monster.”
Semras looked down at her hands, thinking of all the times she had called him one in the privacy of her mind. “I thought you were a monster when you confessed to the murder. Now that I’ve learned of what you meant to make me do … I can say you truly are one.”
“I know.”
Her gaze snapped toward him. “Do you truly? Your world is made of violence, Estevan, and it turned you into a killer. You think everyone is as capable as you of condemning another to death? Of living on, knowing someone’s life had hung by their words? You never thought of what that guilt would do to me, did you?”
The inquisitor gawked at her. “… I—”
“Shut up, you bastard! You have no idea of how cruel—!” Her voice quivered too much to continue. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, Semras tried to compose herself.
“It was cruel,” Estevan said. “Iwas cruel, I know. I have been appallingly horrible to you, antagonizing and scaring you on purpose. But I wanted to make it easy for you to—”
She glared at him. “Hating you wouldn’t have changed anything. I would still have borne the guilt of being your killer, you bastard! You would have ruined my life either way!” Her face twisted with hate and resentment. “You ruined me!”
“I know …” he breathed. “Our lives have turned into a nightmare by my own design, and I should be the only one to pay for it. I shall not ask for a forgiveness I do not deserve. There was no other choice, no other option. I had not expected …” He paused.
“Expected what?”
“… Just how much I would enjoy our verbal sparring.” Hands held behind his back, Estevan walked a few steps away to look through the window. “So few people dare look me in the eye, but not you. You stood up to me and never backed down. I gave you the worst of me, and yet it did not impress you even a little.”
Semras stared silently at his back.
“I enjoyed your company, your quips, your spirit …” He chuckled wistfully. “I wish my decisions hadn’t fated our acquaintance to be so brief. I wish we had met before. In other circumstances, without the threat of war looming over us. In another time, perhaps, when we would not each be standing on opposing sides …”
The raw longing in Estevan’s voice transfixed her. With his secrets unravelled at long last, she couldn’t detach herself from the fascinating sight of the man lying beneath them. Of the vulnerability he bared for her, and her only.
“… or in another world,” he said, “one where I would have been free to wipe your tears away.”
Cruel words spoken by a cruel man. They wrapped around her heart and tried to smother her pain and rage. They succeeded, and she hated him for it.
Semras had to force air down her tightening throat. It felt too raw to breathe, too painful to speak. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.
No one would wipe them for her. Not in this world.
Estevan took a deep breath, gaze still fixed outside the window. “Well. I have said it all.”
The evening sun had long since died and been replaced by a moon hanging low in the skies. Its light hit the inquisitor’s silhouette, throwing its pale hue over him.
He turned, and the orange light of gas sconces hit the other side of his profile. “Now all that remains is for you to sneak out of the house, go to Cael, and tell him I am the culprit.”
