Page 69 of Shadow King
I hand the mugs out and put mine on the floor. I go to the kitchen and drag back the rickety wooden dining chair, the one with the wobble, and I plant it in the middle of the room at a diplomatic distance from everyone, and I sit on it.
It is not a comfortable chair. It is, at least, a neutral one.
Adam’s mug of tea is shaking slightly as he lifts it to his lips.
I pick up my mug. I think about how secrets are awful. Poisonous, wriggly little things that don’t seem important, until you are riddled with them and they are devouring you, and the contagion spreading to the people you love.
Fuck anymore secrets. I am done with them. Forever.
The plastic on the window flaps again. Nobody says anything.
I realise my cold feels remarkably better, which seems unjustified. But I guess being attacked by a freaky-ass assassin from another realm while running around butt-naked flinging magic willy-nilly, is just as an effective cold remedy as tea-tree and ghost peppers.
The adrenaline blasted the virus out of my system. Quite effective if you don’t mind the nearly dying naked part.
“Your fiancé saw me naked,” I blurt out into the silence, because apparently I’ve decided that no more secrets, really does start now, this second, even the embarrassing ones. “Just thought I’d say. So it doesn’t become a thing.”
Adam splutters on his tea. “What?”
“I was in the shower when Wraith attacked. The towel fell off in the fight. Well.” I pause, for accuracy. “Technically, while I was running away from Wraith and he was trying to kill me. But the point is, Hex saw everything, and I wanted it on the record so it doesn’t fester.”
Adam’s eyes pingpong between me and Hex. Hex has gone very still in a different way from before, the way a person goes still when they are hoping very hard that something will simply pass without incident.
Then Adam sighs heavily, shakes his head as if physically freeing himself from the mental image, and all the tight tension drains from Hex’s posture in a single visible wave of relief. Something small and warm passes between them in the silence, something that closes the six-inch gap slightly, and I feel the rift ease just a fraction and am pathetically grateful for it.
Right. Okay. Onwards.
“You need to free Dis,” says Adam.
“Absolutely not,” I say, the response coming immediately and without thought, like a reflex, like something my mouth has decided before my brain has weighed in.
I sit with that for a moment.
I’m right, obviously. Absolutely not. For several reasons. One, I haven’t got my revenge yet, not really, not in any way I can point to and call justice. Two, I hate being told what to do. Three, I had a plan, a careful, months-in-the-making plan, and I’m not abandoning it just because things have gotten complicated.
And reason four, if I let Dis go, he will be gone.
Which should be fine. Which should be the goal. Which should feel like victory or at minimum like resolution, and instead feels like something I don’t want to look at directly because of what looking at it directly would mean.
Obviously, I cannot possibly say any of that out loud. Ever. So I need to say something that makes sense. Something that will ease the shocked look of dismay Adam has been wearing since I blurted out my absolutely-not declaration.
I clear my throat. “I summoned him. Bound him in a circle. Forced him to watch daytime TV.” I look at Adam steadily. “If I release him, he’ll kill me.”
Adam’s eyes go very wide. He turns to Dis with the expression of someone hoping very much to be reassured.
“Is that true?” he whispers.
Dis glances at me. Just briefly. Something moves in those blue eyes that I can’t quite name. Then he looks at Adam.
“I have witnessed,” Dis says, with immense solemnity, “every episode of The Great British Bake Off.”
The silence that follows is profound.
Adam blinks. He looks at me. He looks at Dis. He looks back at me again, clearly trying to work out if he’s missed something.
My stomach does something strange and complicated. Because that is technically not a lie. Dis has, in fact,witnessed every episode of the Great British Bake Off. He has also watched the better part of two solid weeks’ worth of daytime television, watched me eat pasta, had long conversations with me about old battlefields and things worth fighting for, tucked a blanket around me when I was sick, and curled himself up small and sheltered in the palm of my hand when he had nothing left. None of that was mentioned.
He backed me up. Dis, who could have told Adam and Hex everything, who could have demanded rescue and received it, who could have blown the whole situation open and walked free, backed me up instead.
