Page 29 of Bitter Burn
I shudder. But I’m still falling, only barely listening past the blood whooshing in my ears and the rush of the ground coming up to meet me.
Mark is making me leave Lyonesse. Mark doesn’t want me here with him, with Isolde.
“However,” Mark goes on before Isolde can interrupt, “we have a…” He moves a hand from his pocket, as if to indicate the forthcoming linguistic imprecision. “A challenge.”
“Is that so?” demands Isolde.
He’s unfazed by her anger. “Two challenges, in fact, but they are linked. I’m sure you remember that Andrea was responsible for the revelation of your infidelity, first to me alone and then later to the club at large?”
The narrowing of Isolde’s aquamarine eyes is the only response Mark gets.
It’s enough for him. “I don’t think there’s currently a Lyonesse member who doesn’t know what happened in the garden before Samhain, and while I’d like to think that there could have been some amelioration of the facts if we’d had time after that as a—as the three of us together…alas. The club knows I was discovered tied to that very chair with my neck bleeding and the safe hanging open. This has created uncertainty around the security of the club’s secrets, and I am the first to admit that from a member’s vantage, it all looks very messy and frangible.”
“I presume it was Andrea who made sure this version of events spread through the club?”
Mark’s gaze is cool on Isolde’s face. “Am I to presume that you find Andrea bearing tales about my being zip-tied to a chair more objectionable than the being zip-tied to a chair itself?”
Her eyebrow arches ever so slightly. “I’m presuming that you know where to start cleaning your messy and frangible house, Mark. Your own subordinate is more preoccupied with her hatred of me than the integrity of the club. Or you could simply tell her why Tristan and I found it necessary to leave so quickly?”
“Oh, she knows,” Mark replies. “It does little to change her opinion, of course, but opinions are resistant that way. But we’re drifting from the point: it doesn’t matter how the club learned of anything. The problem is that they did.”
“And now the problem is us,” I say numbly. “If you welcome us back after what we did…”
“I look like a terrible judge of character at best. At worst, I look like I’m again putting the club’s security at risk. The security of the secrets beneath our feet.” Mark’s voice is as stark and cold as the glass surrounding us. “If I’m to keep you safe, Isolde, and if I’m to fight Ys, I need the club stable and reaping secrets at its usual rate. I can’t afford for Lyonesse to fall apart before I’m finished.”
I look down at my hands. The logic is sound. It still hurts.
Isolde takes a moment to speak. “The second challenge?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know if your uncle is sincere in his endorsement of you returning, but I do know that if you’re back here and Tristan remains by your side, it will undermine the illusion that you need time to win back my trust. Allowing your lover to remain here with you will look like I’m entirely too forgiving—and therefore you’d be able to exploit that forgiveness and furnish results for him right away. Or it’ll look like you’re not trying to win back my trust at all.”
“If you claimed Tristan publicly…” She trails off, and Mark nods after it becomes clear that she isn’t going to say more.
“I’m guessing you’ve spotted the problem? Claiming Tristan as my own lover might make a kind of sense if we were only performing for your uncle, but it won’t quiet the whispers of Lyonesse. It will look like I’m keeping two duplicitous lovers close, which is much worse than attempting to repair a marriage with only one.”
Isolde stands suddenly, not to leave but to pace. I look over my shoulder to watch her.
“It’s not fair,” she says, looking at me. “That you should be sent away in exile when you among the three of us have sinned the least.”
“You have to be the one to stay,” I say. I might be falling, all my bones might break when I hit the ground, but this much is true: “You need to be here. You’ll be safer at Lyonesse than anywhere else.”
“I hate this,” she hisses. Her dress swings and swirls around her calves as she walks. “I hate the idea that I have to hide in a bower while Tristan is sent away in shame. That I have to stay here and be judged and reviled when it’s not—not that simple—” Her voice is tight, and she turns away from both of us, too proud to let us see.
“I will do everything I can to preserve your dignity here,” Mark says, and that cold authority of his is layered in every word. “No one will speak ill of you in my presence.”
“Everything you can,” Isolde echoes doubtfully. “Then will you fire Andrea?”
Mark takes a moment to answer. “I will not.”
She turns to face him. “Why? She hates me. She undermines the strength of the club. Are you saying that there is no one else who can be the treasurer? No one else at all?”
“Andrea knows about Ys,” he explains. “This is her fight too. She was the first person aside from Melody to know what I planned to do.”
We both look at Mark, and I think of his words on the roof several weeks ago. She hates the same people I hate.
“That’s why you trust her,” I say. “Because she wants to take down Ys.”
“She needs the club functioning just as much as I do,” he agrees. “And I need her, because the true nature of her job is curating and connecting information that has to do with Ys. Everything we’ve pieced together over the years, that’s been me, yes, but her and Lox too. I’m sorry, Isolde, but she has to stay.”
