My blood thundered in my ears, loud enough to drown out the surrounding din.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I’d been unfailingly short with him. Cruel, even. And he came back with this? This...giftof an interpretation?
I buried my face in my mug, desperate to soothe the erratic leap of my pulse.
Kyven resumed his peeling, apparently unbothered by my silence. “Now, what I’d like to know is what the Lady Amryssa did to inspire your devotion in the first place.”
His words were airier than dandelion seeds catching on an updraft, but they brought me to a standstill, anyway.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not a woman who trusts easily. Yet you stuck your neck into the marital noose in order to spare hers. She must have donesomethingto earn that from you.”
I stared. Kyven’s knife scritch-scritched, depriving the apple of its armor, exposing the soft core beneath.
How had he guessed that? Especially when Merron had assumed the opposite?
Then again, the two men had nothing in common. While Merron took everything personally, Kyven seemed immune tomy opinions. Trying to insult him was like trying to injure a well by throwing a dart into the water—all I earned was a ripple of amusement, and once it faded, the surface adopted the same configuration as before, utterly unperturbed by what had just happened.
He wasn’t the kind of man I could hurt. Not by accident, probably not even on purpose. Which was...oddly freeing, now that I thought about it.
“Amryssa saved my life once,” I heard myself say. “When I was eighteen.”
“Nine years ago.” He dropped his eyes, slicing the apple into sections, now. “The same age as the nightmares. Interesting. What happened?”
I hesitated, but either the heat or the ale or the way he studied his apple—as if intentionally granting me a reprieve—pried my tongue loose.
“It was after... Well, I didn’t have any family, then. I didn’t even have a home, just a shanty I’d pieced together in the swamp. I used to dig for mussels out there. Bring a bag to town each week, barter it for bread and soap and matches.” My words grew halting as I stumbled over the memories. “But everyone in Oceansgate avoided me, even back then. They called me names. Swamp-girl. Bog-wraith. Seemed like they came up with something new every week.”
And later, once Olivian had given me the dagger, the whispers had inevitably included the wordwitch. People had taken to crossing their fingers when I passed, attempting to ward off whatever evil spirits I must have appealed to in order to alter my face and hair.
But I left that part out.
“They never welcomed me. It didn’t matter that my parents had taken me into the swamp and just...left me. Thetownspeople saw a raggedy, penniless girl, and they shunned me. Everyone except Amryssa.”
Kyven’s gaze didn’t lift. As if he knew. As if he understood I hadn’t spoken of this in years, that the words were too raw and fledgling to survive direct observation.
“I don’t want your pity,” I rushed out.
“I don’t recall offering it.” He sounded like he was commenting on the weather.
I breathed. Guzzled more ale. Kyven betrayed no hint of impatience, and that, more than anything else, prompted me to continue. I’d started this, for Zephyrine knew what reason. I might as well finish it.
“Anyway,” I said, “one week on my way to town, I ran into an alligator. A nasty one. He wanted my mussels, and I didn’t want him to have them, and by the time we’d finished arguing about it, he’d laid my leg open from hip to heel. I was bleeding so badly I couldn’t find a clean patch of clothing to staunch the flow with.”
Alarm flickered across Kyven’s features.
Hesitation sank steel-tipped claws into my windpipe, but I swallowed it down. No sense stopping now. I would get this story out. Drop my past into his lap, if only to see whether maybe, just maybe, he had a heart that beat, after all.
“I staggered into town, trying to get to the surgery, and Amryssa was passing in the street. I remember she was wearing a white dress that day. I’ll never forget, actually, because I’d never seen anyone so beautiful. So angelic. And I couldn’t believe it when she helped drag me inside. She let me bleed all over her perfect dress, and when the physician said I’d lost too much blood to survive, she volunteered to give me some of hers.”
Kyven’s knife pierced the apple’s heart and stayed there.
