In the Veins of the Drowning(16)
He paused. “On his skin?”
“Yes. And I… well… I tasted it.”
“You tasted—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you without both honor and self-control? Giving your blood freely, and now this—” He paced away from me, mumbling to himself in a pious fit. “What kind of coward stays in this place, scraping to Nemea’s whims? You’re an imbecile to marry a man whose job it is to kill you.”
Fury filled me, alarming and hot, and I heard Nemea’s scathing voice in my head. It is easy to be good when you’re blessed by the bloody fucking Gods. “How dare you!” I balled my hands to fists so I wouldn’t shove them against his chest. “I belong to Nemea. What should I have done? Should I have told him I prefer to not marry? Tell me how you would treat a subject who denied you, Your Majesty.” But he didn’t. He merely watched me in quiet, wide-eyed shock as I went on. “I have twisted and broken myself to survive here. You could never understand what that is like—”
“You should have tried to leave a long time ago.”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I should have. But I am trying now.” I held his gaze. “Will you help me?”
We stood in tense, heavy silence, breaths speeding and mingling. Then he gave a frustrated grunt. “Give me your hand.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Let me close that cut.”
I looked down at my gouged palm. I’d been so angry I’d forgotten about it, but he hadn’t. He had the Great God Panos’s power over life, the power to grow and mend. Slowly, eyes locked with his, I extended my wounded hand. “This is not the help I’m requesting of you.”
“I know.” His fingers were impossibly warm for the temperature in the drafty chamber. With a strong but gentle touch, he inspected the cut. “It’s deep.”
“Yes.”
“There’s too much scar tissue here.” The anger in his voice had dulled, and all that remained was tension. “I can’t prevent it from becoming another scar. I’m sorry.”
I’d never received such an earnest apology. I spoke carefully, trying to hide my surprise. “I am not imbecilic enough to think I’d be undamaged, Your Majesty. What’s another scar atop many?”
He gave me a quick, curious look before a heat built in his hands. A heat like the sun, coming from inside him. I held my breath and watched the red flesh around the gash start to soothe. “It would start a war,” he said, his focus on my wound. “If Nemea knows I helped you escape.”
Slowly, my skin began to knit together. I pulled in a shallow gasp as I watched it—a network of pale, fleshy lace, its stitches growing closer and closer together as the heat he poured into me spread.
“Forgive me,” I said, my voice breathy from his ministrations, “but you have not seemed all that intent on fostering peace between the two of you. Your every action, your every word, has been inflammatory. Why did you truly come here in the first place?”
His jaw tensed and he finished checking his work. The wound had become a thin white seam across the mound of old scars in my palm. His warm hands remained on mine. “As you guessed, I came to see the state of this place for myself. To see Seraf’s horrors. To see just how cruel Nemea had become.” The calluses on his fingers scratched as he finally, slowly, let me go. “I have a deep hatred for the man.”
“Then take me from him.”
His gaze shot to mine.
My words tumbled forth in one desperate breath. “Nothing would hurt him more than to lose what he considers his.”
“That’s my fear.” He shook his head, and he gave me that strange, lingering look once more. “I have a kingdom to protect. A war would put it in jeopardy.”
“You came to witness his cruelty firsthand and then do nothing about it? If there is any person in Leucosia who has the power to alter the awful things that happen here, it’s you.”
Theodore ran a hand through his dark hair. He seemed to grapple with something, shut his eyes for a long moment. When he looked at me again it was with something akin to anguish. Pity coated his unsettlingly soft words. “He’s done such a thorough job of diminishing you.”
That hollowed me out. I stood before him, feeling bare and ill and embarrassed, and fighting to keep it hidden.
He moved back to the small window. “I will send you help. I leave tomorrow—I have no desire to stay for your wedding. When I’m back home, I’ll make a plan to get you off Seraf. But it will take me time. It can’t look like I was involved.”
“I don’t have time.” I curled my healed hand, my nails cutting into my palm. “The wedding is tomorrow night. By the time you send me help, Captain Ianto will have already bound us. How will I leave him then?”
He straightened his bloodstained coat, and it was as if he’d donned a suit of armor. He looked at me down the line of his nose. “There are draughts to sever such bonds.” His features smoothed into kingly austerity. “The appropriate response to my generosity is ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’”
I reeled back. “If you expect me to thank you for giving me the opportunity to suffer, then you are no better than King Nemea, Your Majesty.” His flinch filled me with satisfaction.
I wrenched the door open, letting it crash into the wall. “Move,” I yelled to one of the guards who blocked my path. Panic scurried up my throat, blocked my breath. Agatha’s chamber was on the lower floor. I could keep myself together until I reached her, but as I made my way down the hall from King Theodore’s chamber, I faltered.