she supposed to do? She tried to persuade me, it didn’t work. I didn’t give her what she wanted, I offered her an alternative that she decided to avail herself of.”
“Which involves following in your wake for the next few months,” Terian said, shaking his head, “being in perfect striking distance-I mean, she already has a knife. You should at least take that from her.”
“I think not,” Cyrus said. “If I were a woman in the middle of a foreign army, with the upbringing she’s had, married to the monster she was, I’d carry ten swords, three spears and a battleaxe just so I could feel safe. I remain unconcerned about her dagger.”
Terian’s hand went to his throat, fingers playing in a line across it. “Something you might learn-and I hope you don’t-there’s an old quote from my people. ‘A woman can slit a throat as easily as a man.’”
Cyrus looked at Terian with undisguised amusement. “Are all your people’s sayings that dark?”
Terian stared at him blankly. “Perhaps you’re mistaking darkness for truth. It’s a hard, bitter, and cruel world, and the people you think you can trust aren’t always what they seem.”
Cyrus raised an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you the guy who once told me that you can’t stand people who aren’t what they appear to be?”
Terian blinked, bewildered. “I … what? I said that?”
“When we were about to kill Kalam, the black dragon. You were talking about the Alliance and why you hated them.” Cyrus smiled. “It always stuck with me because it was the first time any of you officers had bothered to explain why you detested the Alliance. And of course,” he said grimly, “about a week later, you left Sanctuary. You know, to ‘roam the world’ or whatever.” Cyrus cocked his head in curiosity. “You know, you never did tell us what you did while you were ‘roaming.’”
Terian’s eyes, dark purple, had been focused on him until the last. The dark knight seemed to lean back in his saddle, and Cyrus watched him swallow hard. “You know what I was doing.”
“No, I don’t,” Cyrus said. “We may have this easy familiarity, but you’re not exactly the easiest guy to get to know on a deeper level, Terian. The Gatekeeper suggested you were doing things that wouldn’t make any of us proud, but I don’t know what you were up to. You could have been dancing in an all-male revue in Saekaj, for all I know.” Terian’s eyes narrowed and Cyrus shrugged, a smile on his face. “Well, that wouldn’t exactly make me proud of you, but hey, we all hit rough times …”
“I think I liked you better when you were moping and brooding over the loss of your blond elf-princess,” Terian said with a note of bitterness.
Cyrus felt a stab of pain within. “Yeah, well … I’m sure I’ll be back to my old self any day now. I doubt that I can shed the pain of her easily, like a snake shedding its skin.”
“How do you know if it’s easy for a snake to shed its skin?” Terian stared ahead, looking at the road in front of them as he spoke. “Just because it happens often? It could be painful as all hell, trying to leave behind something you’ve lived your life in like that. It could be as tough as leaving behind family, upbringing … anything you’ve carried with you.”
Cyrus turned to look at the dark knight. “Is that like you, then? A dark knight in the service of Sanctuary, trying to shed the wicked parts of your training?”
“Probably.” Terian turned his head and the mask was there, visible for Cyrus to see, nothing underneath it, no lines on the dark elf’s face. “I was raised to serve Yartraak, the Lord of All Dark. At seventeen, in my eighth year of training with the Legion of Darkness, I, along with all the other budding dark knights, was expected to seal that oath of loyalty with a soul sacrifice.” He let that hang in the air between them.
“What’s a soul sacrifice?” Cyrus stared at Terian, who kept his eyes ahead.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.” Terian turned his head, and Cyrus caught a glimpse behind the mask-a cool, calculating look lay on the face of Terian, something Cyrus hadn’t seen from him before. “They might scare you, after all, shake your pretty little worldview and crush all your ideas about honor and virtue and nobility in the world.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to,” Cyrus said, feeling the irritation rise within him. “I’m not Alaric.”
Terian let out a low chuckle. “I suppose not-stabbing your enemies in their guts and letting them squirm to death, taking their wives away before they’re even dead? You know, I would have had a whole new level of respect for you if you’d told me you had slept with her.” Cyrus turned to look at Terian in disgust. “I know,” the dark knight said, “it’d be low, I’ll admit, but let’s face it, she’s pretty and you’re … well … I hesitate to say you’re not a man in your urges, but … I mean … come on, Cyrus, it’s been since before I met you, hasn’t it? Do you just feel nothing down there?” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you a eunuch?”
Cyrus gave him the hard glare, and Terian shrugged. “Just asking. Most men who hack and slash with a sword for all the days of their life tend to be fairly free with the other sword as well, if you take my meaning. So is it something to do with the God of War?” Terian cracked a smile. “Did Bellarum order his initiates to keep armor between them and women folk at all times, or something? Was there a command to avoid sex at all costs, even when offered to you by beautiful women of varying races and species?”
“No!” Cyrus shouted his answer then looked around, drawing the curious stares of others. He ignored Martaina’s giggles behind him, and when Curatio caught his eye, the healer looked away as did Odellan. “It’s not that,” Cyrus said.
“Please tell me you weren’t holding out for Vara,” Terian said. “Because that would be … actually, that would be comically amusing.” The dark elf snickered, then straightened out his expression. “Though not for you, I suppose.”
“I was.” Cyrus let the words out, scarcely believing them. “I actually was.”
“Oh dear gods,” Terian said. “You don’t mean you’re a … I mean, you never? Not even with your wife?”
“What?” Cyrus stared at him, uncomprehending. “No, of course I did with Imina-my wife,” he said, when he caught the confused gaze from Terian. “But she was the …” he lowered his voice. “The first … and the last.”
Terian let out a sharp laugh, like a bark, then cut it off. “Sorry. The first and the last? What the hells, man? You’ve been divorced since before I’ve known you. And not before? What, did you marry when you were sixteen?”
“I … no, I didn’t even meet Imina until I was nineteen or so.” Cyrus caught his breath. “I don’t know. After her, I was focused on building my guild, and there wasn’t really much chance to-” He flushed. “You’ve seen where we lived when we were in the Kings of Reikonos. I didn’t want a public exhibition, and frankly, it’s not as though I met many women. Every now and again, I’d see my ex-wife, and we’d … well, you know. But that was it.”
“Yeah, but again, you’ve been with Sanctuary for … what? Over three years now?” Terian looked at him with guarded disbelief. “You’ve been an officer for most of that time, and I hate to break this to you, but the women say you’re easy on the old eyeballs, so I think you’d have had an offer or two. I’m saying if you really wanted to-”
“I came close once,” he said. “With Nyad.” He looked around and didn’t see the wizard in the formation with them. He caught sight of crimson robes further down the column. “When we were out on the recruiting mission. I mean, I had started to come out of the melancholy I was in after Narstron died, but, well, we were close to it, and she-” he flushed again, “-she found out about how I felt about Vara and stopped me.”
“Ouch.” Terian grimaced. “Nyad never stops anybody.” He looked behind them. “Guess there had to be a first time, but I’m a little shocked it was you. But since then, there have been offers, right?” He looked around again. “That ranger, Aisling? Hasn’t she been on your trail for a while?”
“Yes,” Cyrus said. “But Vara … I don’t know. I always … held out this hope in the back of my mind that Vara and I could … you know. It seemed like we were right there-she told me she felt the same way about me, and …” He sighed. “Everything … just completely fell apart.”
“What did she say to you that night?” Terian looked at him, and Cyrus could see the curiosity, curiosity and something else. “The last night in Sanctuary, before you came downstairs and offered to go with Longwell?”
Cyrus felt the tension run through him, felt his muscles ache, smelled the fresh air and the outdoors. “She said …”
“She said that it would never work between us.” Cyrus heard the words echo in his mind, heard the quiet around them, felt the seeping darkness of her quarters as she had said them. “That she would outlive me by so long, that her pain would be so great that it wasn’t worth it to her.”
“Ouch.” Terian let out a low whistle. “She knows how to drive the dagger deep, doesn’t she? I mean, you’d
