11: NOT A LOVE STORY
(Therin’s story) Twenty-four days earlier …
When Therin woke, he lay in a bed covered with pale green silk sheets in an irregular room with no windows and with walls made from cob, carved with trees, leaves, and summer flowers. The air smelled fresh and verdant. The softest pink glow, emanating from small crystals hanging from the ceiling, lit the room around him. Where was he? Not the D’Mon palace. Possibly not even in Quur.
He felt weak and ravenously hungry, both signs of serious injuries healed magically. He pulled himself up, pleased at being strong enough to accomplish that much.
Miya—Miya, who was so beautiful that after twenty-five years his breath still caught in his throat every time he saw her—sat on the edge of the bed, next to him. A tray of food rested next to her, ample evidence his awakening wasn’t unexpected. Therin didn’t recognize the dishes.
Miya smiled and touched his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
Panic finally overtook him. “Wait, what happened? Where—?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Her hand pressed against his shoulder, a strong suggestion to stay in bed.
Therin didn’t try to fight her. Everything was hazy, with scenes of unspeakable violence presenting themselves in lightning flashes and then dissolving before comprehension could thunder home, but he remembered …
Gadrith. He remembered Gadrith and Xaltorath and his son Kihrin’s body lying on an altar, a gaping wound where his son’s heart should have been. He remembered rage and pain and the knowledge he had been betrayed.
“Did we lose?” he asked.
“I suppose that would depend on one’s definitions,” Miya admitted after a long beat. “If you mean the Capital is naught but a smoking ruin and the D’Mons are … gone … then yes, we lost.”
His breath shuddered in his chest as he fought to wrestle with grief and anger and all the rage of a lifetime. “Everyone? The entire family?”
“Your daughters were absent,” Miya said, “so there is no reason to think them dead. I do not know what happened to your…” She paused. “I do not know what happened to Darzin, if someone dealt with him or not. I thought it best to remove you from the city; this is the second D’Mon attempt at a coup in twenty-five years, and this one started a Hellmarch. I doubt the council would ignore that.”1
Therin’s heart was twisting into pieces. He didn’t remember … but he remembered enough. More than enough. The guilt was crippling. Kihrin had tried to warn him, hadn’t he? And he hadn’t listened. How many people had his pride killed?
“Gadrith?” he finally asked.
“Emperor,” Miya answered in a voice so cold and flat it made him shiver. “But,” she added, “emperor for how long? That I do not know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at your wrist.”
He didn’t understand what she meant at first. Then he realized what he wasn’t seeing around his wrist: Miya’s gaesh, a small silver tree medallion. He felt a moment’s confusion, wondered if someone might have stolen it or if it had somehow been lost in the fighting. In all the years he’d known Miya, the talisman holding a piece of her soul had never once left his wrist. She couldn’t have removed it herself; the gaesh prevented it.
“How…?” Therin couldn’t put his thoughts into words. “Who took it?”
“Not stolen,” Miya said. “Destroyed. It disintegrated. I am not gaeshed anymore—the missing fragment of my soul returned. Someone destroyed the Stone of Shackles. How, I do not know. I cannot imagine Gadrith doing so, so perhaps someone has finally slain the villain. Of course, this is conjecture. I cannot know for certain.”
Therin’s stomach knotted. “Why am I here?”
Miya frowned. “I explained—”
Therin almost picked up her hand, but stopped himself at the last second. “No, I mean, not just why did you bring me here? Why bring me anywhere? If you’re not gaeshed anymore, why wouldn’t you leave me to face the High Council’s anger? Why are you still here with me? Why rescue me from the council at all? You weren’t with me of your own free will. That can’t be so easy to forgive.”
Miya stared at him, open-mouthed. Then she looked away and laughed, light and sweet, the most beautiful ringing of crystal bells.
“Don’t misunderstand,” Therin said, “I’m glad you’re here, but—”
She shifted the tray over to the bedside. “You need to regain your strength. You should eat.”
“Miya—”
She stared straight into his eyes. “I am not bound to answer your questions anymore. So eat, or I will be cross with you.”
Bemused, Therin reached down toward a dish. Fruit of some kind. It tasted like a ripe tart berry, although the flesh more closely resembled mango. Next to that, something like sugar floss, tasting sweet and creamy, with a hint of vanilla. The banana was more recognizable, except it tasted like lime. The only meat dish consisted of dense lobsterlike flesh, covered in a savory brown mushroom sauce. He almost asked her what the last dish was, but decided against it. It was delicious, he needed the protein, and he’d do himself no favors if its provenance made him squeamish.2
He reached for the goblet and discovered it too contained fruit, this time juice, coconut-like in taste.
Sag bread for eating was absent, just a spoon and a slender, delicate fork, four-pronged and distinctive. He’d have taken it as a sign they were in Kirpis, but the food …
“This is the Manol?”
“Yes.”
Therin took a deep breath and concentrated on eating. The Manol. The heart and home of the vané people, unwelcoming to foreigners. Especially unwelcoming to Quuros. He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover trespassing was a capital crime.
When he finished, he pushed the tray aside, amazed at how much better he felt. “So now I’ve eaten. Can we revisit why you’re helping me instead of all the other things you justifiably should be doing instead? I find myself surprised to still be alive, to be honest.”
That made her laugh again. Miya leaned over and kissed him on the nose. “Idiot. You truly cannot guess?”
All the air fled the room. Therin’s throat threatened to close on him; he lifted a knee to hide how that simple touch had made him stiffen like a teenager. “No. No, I can’t. I have guessed wrong before—”
“No,” Kihrin interrupted. “Absolutely not. This is not happening.”
Thurvishar stopped reading. “Pardon?”
“If this narration is about to describe my parents having sex, I don’t need to hear it. Ever. No one needs to hear it. In fact, remove all those scenes.” Kihrin pointed to the papers.
Thurvishar narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“No, it’s not going to turn into my parents fooling around?” Kihrin looked skeptical.
“No, I’m not going to stop reading a scene just because it involves physical intimacy between two people who happen to be your parents.” Thurvishar rolled his eyes. “Veils, Kihrin, I wasn’t planning on going into detail.”3
The wizard continued reading while Kihrin contemplated plugging his ears.
A flicker of pain crossed Miya’s face. “You didn’t guess wrong,” she said, “but holding my heart is not the same as trapping my soul. How could I ever tell you yes when I could never choose to say no?”
Therin stared at her, hardly daring to breathe. She couldn’t mean …
He closed his eyes and cursed himself, cursed himself a thousand times as the worst fool. Never, he thought, had there been a greater idiot than himself.4
Therin lifted a hand to her face, tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear. He couldn’t speak right away, his voice trapped in his throat. Regret choked him mute, thinking back to the early offers he’d made to free Miya, always refused,5 and how he’d gradually stopped asking.
He’d stopped offering because he’d been terrified she’d finally accept.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry for everything I’ve put you through.”
His apology caught her off guard. An animal sob escaped her throat while tears sprang up in her eyes.
Then her mouth came down against his, violently, as if he were the antidote to all her poisons. She fell into his arms, and no guessing was necessary. He wrapped his arms around her, leaving her mouth only to gasp for air and slip down to her jaw, her neck. She was everything he’d ever wanted, knowing the wish unobtainable. Events had taken on the cloak of dream. Impossible. Glorious.
“No,” he whispered, lowering his hands from her body.
“What?” Miya seemed to shake herself awake, staring at him in shock. “No?”
“Tell me you want this,” he said. “No guessing. No assumptions. Tell me you want me to make love with you.”
Miya exhaled, her relief obvious. “Gods, yes,” she whispered as she tore at her clothes. She hadn’t even finished undressing fully when she pushed the sheets off his body and straddled him.
“Goddess,” he corrected, reverently. “Miya—”
Therin instantly knew he’d done something wrong. She froze.
“What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?”
She shuddered and drew a deep breath before shaking her head. “No. No, it is fine.” She finished lowering herself and pulled her raisigi off her body, revealing breasts he had been dreaming about for over twenty years.
His body would have betrayed him a hundred times if he hadn’t used magic to force the issue. He wanted this too desperately, too fervently, and it had been too long. He was damned if he would spend himself in minutes. He kissed the tears from her skin, unsure if those tears were hers or his. The pain and horror of the last day—the last day he remembered, anyway—was all too fresh, too shocking. He had lost everything.
Therin didn’t care as long as he had her.