‘What are you doing here?’ said Will.
‘When I saw you holding the Collar,’ said James, ‘I was sure that you’d put it around my neck. I didn’t think you’d stop Simon. I didn’t think anyone would.’ James took another step towards him. ‘I thought the best thing that I could hope for was that I’d find the Collar before Simon did. Instead I’m free to choose my future …’ Invisible fingers stroked down his chest. ‘Can you think of a better outcome?’
‘Katherine’s dead,’ said Will.
The invisible touch disappeared, dropping away instantly. Reality settled over the room, as saying the words aloud gave her death the finality that it had not had at Bowhill, when her blood had run black and her eyes had turned to stone.
‘I’m sorry. You felt something for her?’
He had barely known her. She’d liked ribbons, and teacups, and fine things. She’d ridden for two days and a night to follow him to the place where her mother had died, and she’d picked up a sword to fight. Will, I’m frightened.
James gave a bitter smile. ‘I thought the Blood of the Lady was supposed to fall in love with the Dark King.’
What? That didn’t make sense – until Will realised that when James said Blood of the Lady he wasn’t talking about Katherine. He was talking about Will.
Was that how James saw him? As the Lady? As being like James, another obsessional object of the Dark King? The Dark King’s paramours: James and Katherine had both belonged to Simon, and before that … before that the Dark King had loved the Lady and taken James to his bed. The three of them were intertwined, and it had ended with James twisted out of his time and the Lady dead.
God, James thought that being drawn to Will meant being drawn to her – to the Light – to the one who had escaped the Dark King’s hold and managed to kill him. He wanted to tell James to run.
‘And you?’ said Will. ‘He wanted you. Did you want him?’
James flushed. In the dim orange light from the fire, James’s pupils were large, and the blue that ringed them took on the fathomless quality of night water.
‘I fell,’ said James. ‘Does it matter why? He dragged me across time to be born into a world that didn’t remember me. He wanted me waiting, ready to serve him with a collar around my neck. Instead I’m alone, and all that remains of those days is dust. Believing he still controlled me would have given him pleasure.’
Will felt the flickering of the past, old selves like shadows. It was difficult to breathe, the air heavy. ‘You said you didn’t remember that life.’
‘I don’t,’ said James. ‘But sometimes there’s—’
‘—a feeling,’ Will said.
Downstairs, the sounds of the last of the patrons in the inn were distant: the slam of a door, the creak of a board. James didn’t hear the admission in his voice. Instead the words seemed to draw them closer, as if they were in a bubble, the only two people in the world.
‘My whole life, all anyone’s ever wanted was to possess me,’ said James. ‘The only one who ever set me free was you.’
I haven’t set you free, Will didn’t say, because the other words were unspeakable. You won’t ever be free of him. The Dark King’s power was control, the ability to draw people to him and warp them into the shape he wanted. The fingerprints of it were all over James, who had run from the High Janissary to Simon, seeking out men with power. ‘I told you. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I know that,’ said James. ‘Are you going to send me away?’
James said it like he knew Will wouldn’t. James was here, like a moth to a flame, not caring if he was burned. And Will wasn’t telling him to leave; not even when James took another step forward. Will tried to tell himself that it wasn’t because of who James had been, but it was. The past was between them, their histories twining together.
‘You killed the Stewards.’
‘I’ve done worse than that,’ said James.
‘For him,’ said Will.
Him. He. As though the Dark King was separate. As though he wasn’t inside them both.
Another step. ‘You said what someone was is less important than what they could be.’
He had said that. He’d wanted to believe it. But that was before she’d died in his arms, the turning cogs of the past relentless and unstoppable. The Dark King had set all of this in motion. He’d even brought James here, a gift for himself. Will needed to send him away, but James was a gift he couldn’t turn aside, and maybe when he’d ordered James killed all those lifetimes ago, he’d known that about himself.