about yourself?”
Cyrus stood, and looked down on the dark elf, who kept his head low, his lips a thin, drawn line, near- purple. “If you’re the sort who would abandon your loyalties the moment any trouble came your way, then I will send you with Mendicant right now, today, when he goes to ask Alaric for more aid. He can decide what’s to be done with you-but as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see you exiled from Sanctuary if that’s the sort of loyalty you carry.”
“I’m … no … traitor,” Terian said, and he bent his face upward toward Cyrus, contorted in fury. “I would have had my revenge on you and been done with it and quietly, so no one would ever have to know.”
“Well then, it seems you’re in a state of dissonance, Terian,” Cyrus said, and stared down at him, “because you want to maintain loyal ties to Sanctuary and all that entails, but you want to kill a man who upheld the ideals you at least pretend you hold to. Faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty-these aren’t just things we pay lip service to-”
“I … never … just paid lip service to what we do,” Terian said. “I was there in the Mountains of Nartanis, in Enterra, remember? I’ve been there, in the places where we’ve spilled blood, and I never took the craven’s way out, not once. You can call me a lot of things, Cyrus, and I am a lot of things, but I’m not a-”
“Coward?” Cyrus said. “You’re not an … Orion, only in it for yourself?”
A look of loathing came over the dark knight’s features and he leaned forward. “Say that again … and give me another reason to want to kill you.”
“Why wouldn’t I say it? You were there when he betrayed me, tried to kill me-like you did.” Terian struggled against the bonds that held him as though he could break the chains. After a moment, the rattling stopped, the sound of him fighting against the inevitable. “But I tell you what. I’ll give you a chance to prove yourself a loyal guildmate and not a treacherous killer.”
“Oh, this should be good.” The rage broke over Terian’s features and he shook his head. “What would you have of me? To run suicidally into the open jaws of those beasts?”
“I would have you stand at the front of our army and help to lead them, help to hold the line, like you said you would when Alaric allowed you back to our guild,” Cyrus said. “I’m leaving to summon help. We need more of it here. Make a choice, Terian. You can either go back to Sanctuary with Mendicant when he goes to request aid and go wherever the wind and your will takes you after that, or you can stay here, help the Sanctuary army, and try to prove that you still do have some honor-some loyalty-left. That you’re not just some shadow of your father’s, trying to strike a last blow out of an empty sense of revenge that will cost you all that you have left.”
There was a shuffle to Cyrus’s left, and he saw Aisling not far away. She made just enough noise that he knew it was intentional, trying to gather his interest. “Think it over, Terian,” Cyrus said. “Either way, once I’m gone, you’ll be on your way-either back to Sanctuary or turned loose here. Decide what you want to be, dark knight. A defender of those who need it or the avenger of someone who you loathed so much in life that you couldn’t bring yourself to be anything like him or even serve the same master as he.”
“And what are you?” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the clinking of chains as Terian willed himself up, dragged himself to his feet with perfect balance and hard effort. “Some champion of the downtrodden, ready to fight your way to the death to impress a woman who doesn’t want you? Do you think she’ll still be yours if you die here trying to save these people? Do you think it’ll undo all the damage you did, if you just fight for them a little harder? What do you believe in, Cyrus? Protecting people? Rushing headlong into things, hoping to do good? Because it seems like your best intentions are doing more harm than good of late. Maybe you should stop trying to help people.”
“Go back to Sanctuary,” Cyrus said with a wave, and began to walk away. “Go back to them and listen while Mendicant tells them what a coward you were, if Ryin hasn’t already. Be on your way, dark knight. For all your talk, you don’t believe in anything but petty, shallow revenge-”
“You don’t know a damned thing, Cyrus Davidon!” Terian’s roar was loud, and he came at Cyrus in a charge, shoulder tucked low. Cyrus parried and kicked Terian’s legs from underneath him, and the dark knight fell to his face in the dirt, the long grass sticking up all around him like towers hanging over him, the little lines of their shadows stretching across his dark armor as they waved in the breeze. “Of course you wouldn’t, you don’t even know what it’s like to have a father-”
Cyrus landed a kick on Terian’s ribs without even realizing he was going to do it, the white-hot blinding flash of rage subsiding after he heard the grunt of pain from the dark elf. “Now who’s talking about something they know nothing of?” Cyrus asked, taking long, slow breaths. “Make your choice, Terian. I don’t care which it is, but figure out who you want to be.”
“I’ll stay,” Terian said, looking up from the dirt, cradling his arm against his side where Cyrus kicked him. “I’ll help. I’ll help protect the people. But I want you to know-”
“We’re not done,” Cyrus said. “I’m well aware that you’ve still got your axe to grind-though I suppose it’s a sword, now.” He turned to face Mendicant. “Pass the word that when I’m gone later tonight, he can be freed. Until then …” Cyrus knelt down and grabbed the stone off the ground along with the gag, “… back to blessed silence.” Terian glared at him but opened his mouth, accepting the stone, and then Cyrus tied off the gag behind him. The eyes watched Cyrus, though, the hatred burned, and he felt it, it coursed through his veins like a poison as he stared into the eyes of his friend-and gagged him so tightly he couldn’t make a sound.
Chapter 68
“That was awkward,” Aisling said as he slipped past her, not bothering to conceal his motions. The sun was creeping lower in the sky, now afternoon, and the wind was steady out of the north, not intermittent as it had been. “Are you sure letting him loose is the best of ideas? What if he follows you?”
“You know we’re going, right?” He watched her, taking long steps over a sleeping body to stand beside her. She nodded, and he realized he was standing closer to her now than he had ever before in camp. “He’ll be of use to them. Let him have his chance to redeem himself.”
“And if he doesn’t?” She played with her hair as he watched, twisting it around her finger, the white blending with the dark blue, a bright contrast, as though both were painted, so different from his own skin and hair. “If he tracks you, and kills you?”
“That’s why I’m taking you with me,” Cyrus said with an easy smile that he felt not at all. He was getting better at it, he realized with only a slight discomfort. “This way, you’ll be there to watch my back. If you’re not too busy with my front, that is …” He leaned toward her, let his armor rest against her, and then took a long, slow kiss, right there in front of the entire camp.
She pulled away from him leisurely, opening her eyes slowly after the kiss. “You realize you just did that in front of …”
“Everyone, yes,” Cyrus said and kissed her again. “I don’t care who knows, who sees. I’ve seen some of them do it as well, the soldiers. They crawl into their bedrolls together at night and everyone pretends to give them the illusion of privacy, like a silent law we all follow. Well, I want it too, to stop hiding, to stop worrying about it, to have you when I want you instead of always worrying I’ll be found out.” His hand slipped around her hip and pulled her waist close to him. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I just want to have you whenever I want.”
She watched him cannily, with a slight smile. “That might prove awkward in the midst of a battle.”
“Try to pretend you wouldn’t find it incredibly arousing.”
She took a moment of slow inhale to pretend as though she were thinking about it. “Perhaps. But as we are not presently in a battle, there’s no need to consider it. If you want to have me as a soldier has his lover, you need only lay out a bedroll and crawl in it with me and let the rest take its course. There’s no danger but the idea that others will see their General having an immensely good time.”
He let himself smile again, fake but with a foundation in the grim reality that he wanted to unburden himself, to claim that relief she gave him. “Well, there is another danger,” he said, as he slid a hand around her waist to lead her off to where his pack lay, near his saddle, across the camp, “… after all, you do tend to bite when you’re overly excited …”
She slapped him in mock offense as he led her away, and they put down the bedroll on the ground and climbed into it. Everyone saw, but no one watched, and they remained beneath it until they were both well and truly sated.
