Page 31 of Bitter Burn
“I don’t care that she claims to hate Ys, Mark. She was at Drobny’s favorite club, and she has no problem sowing discord inside yours.”
Mark responds by pouring himself another scotch.
“As I was saying,” Isolde says after a deep inhale, “I don’t know how safe any communication would be, either because of a plant here at Lyonesse or because of one at Armorica. We have to assume that anything might leak out to the club at large and render all our careful sacrifices useless.”
Well, fuck, I don’t want that either. Leaving the two of them alone to re-create even the facsimile of a healing marriage will cleave me down to the bone, but the idea of my semi-banishment ultimately being for nothing is unendurable. I’d rather go back to being a ghost in my father’s farmhouse. I’d rather go back to Carpathia.
“Right,” I say around the ache in my throat. “We don’t want that.” And then to cover the new thickness in my voice, I say, “And when should I go, sir?”
Mark doesn’t answer right away, and when he does, it’s with the kind of precision that comes with a rehearsed apology…or a death sentence. “Your plane leaves tonight, Tristan.”
Thirteen
Tristan
Tonight.
I leave tonight.
“What time tonight?” Isolde asks for me, as if she knows I can’t speak right now.
“Jago will escort Tristan to the airport in two hours. Goran will go too so he can give Tristan a quick briefing on Armorica on the way there.”
So it’s already been arranged, all of it settled. I should have known—Mark would never have broached the subject if he didn’t have a course charted and the sails trimmed awaiting a tilt of the rudder. Sea Hound indeed.
“It’s discourteous of me to separate the two of you with so little preparation, I admit, but I believe it’s the safest course of action for Isolde.”
“And your vendetta against Ys,” I say, the acrimony seeping up from my stomach and stinging my tongue. But I can’t stop myself. “That’s what it’s all been for, right? Marrying Isolde? And now splitting us apart? It’s all for your revenge. Yours. Even though none of it would’ve been necessary if you had just left the two of us alone in the first place.”
“I regret that I’ve put the two of you in this position.” The words are diplomatic, but his bloodless knuckles around his glass are anything but. He looks like he wants to hurl his drink at the window and then demand I square up. “And I regret that any of this was necessary to avenge Eliot.”
“You don’t regret it,” I say, getting to my feet. Not to fight but so that he can hear this properly before I go. “Not enough that you’d do it differently if given another chance.”
A merciless smile. “How well you read me, Tristan. How well you know my mind, because you are correct. I would not do it differently, not if I thought there was no other way to find Ys and strangle it to death. But this is why you stayed a soldier and why they pulled me out of a war to do the things even generals blush to think about. Because I am willing to put three hearts on the scale and offer them in payment for the destruction of a shadow that has stolen from me, from you, from Aaron Sims and Cara Sims, from the people of Carpathia, and on and on and on. I have watched people pay far greater prices than heartbreak for far, far fucking less, so yes, I would do it again, because I think it’s a goddamn bargain.”
The glass makes a sharp crack as Mark sets it on the credenza. He doesn’t look like a man who’s found a bargain at all. He looks like we’re robbing him and leaving him for dead, like a traveler from Jerusalem on his way to Jericho. Like he’ll never have a Good Samaritan pass by no matter how long he waits.
It doesn’t cut my anger, but the joyless resignation in his face complicates it. I think Mark believes what he says, but I think he hates it too.
I think he has to remind himself to believe it sometimes, because it hurts so much.
“Did you mean that as a kind of comfort?” inquires Isolde, and there’s scorn in every curve and angle of her body. She wears it well, like a designer dress. “We’re supposed to hear that we’re cheap tender for a debt we didn’t know existed and be glad?”
Mark looks at her sidelong. He taps his fingertips on top of the credenza.
“No,” he says finally. “I wouldn’t ask that. Hate me as much as you wish.”
There is a candelabra at the edge of the credenza, something that I’ve never seen before in his office, with its sumptuousness of minimalism and richness of emptiness. But the candles appear to be the same ones that were being wheeled into the hall earlier. Supplies for Saturnalia, whatever that means.
They are all half-burned, maybe as a test to see how long they lasted or how much wax they dripped, and Mark produces a matchbox from the cabinet next to the place where the liquor is stored.
“I imagine you’ll want to say goodbye,” he says. The match catches with a tear and a hiss, and he uses it to light the candle in the middle of the candelabra. And then a second one. “I’m afraid you don’t have long, only until this burns down.” He takes the second candle from the holder. “I’ll have its twin with me here. You take the candelabra into the apartment. I’m sure you remember how soundproofed it is. Your privacy until the flame dies is complete.”
And with that, he carries his candle over to the window and looks out at the water, deliberately giving us his back. Giving us the chance to say goodbye.
I don’t even care if it’s a trap. I stride over to the candelabra and then offer my hand to Isolde. With a conflicted look at Mark’s back—the candle sending gold dancing in his hair, making his reflection in the window flicker—she takes my hand and allows me to lead her into the apartment. But she doesn’t close the door behind her.
I also don’t move to close the door. I’m not entirely sure why, and I’m not sure why she doesn’t either. Privacy should be all we want—separation the best gift we could be given. But should has never had much power around Mark Trevena. Even angry, even hurting, I want to be near him. That a man so cold has somehow become the sun of my life is a very bleak thing, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
