Page 33 of Bitter Burn
“Anything.”
She pulls back to look at me, and there’s fond exasperation on her face. “You are too trusting. Do not promise me anything.”
“I can’t help it.” I offer her a weak smile. It’s who I am. It’s how I love. With a sickness I’ve never been able to cure.
She huffs a soundless laugh. “Fine then. I want you to call for me if you need me. I mean it, Tristan. I know you’re the bodyguard, used to keeping everyone safe, and I know you’re used to a certain loneliness and left-behind-ness, and you think you don’t deserve anything else. But promise me that if you need me, you’ll tell me. And I’ll come. I don’t care if it means my uncle tries to kill me or if it destroys the club—I’m yours the moment you ask.”
I kiss the side of her mouth. “Is that all?” I ask. “That’s such a small thing.”
She sighs. “Did you think I was going to demand that you sneak back to Lyonesse every chance you can? Or command you to do everything that’s asked of you in my name? I just don’t want you to face something awful without someone by your side, that’s all.”
The flame finally, finally gives up, winking out as a thread of smoke twirls up from the charred wick.
We both hold our breath. Now that the moment is here, it feels impossible, wrong. Combat was like this—with a stillness and a quiet and an emptiness of action that began to feel permanent, felt like the truth of things, no matter how uneasy. Until the moment it wasn’t, until it was time to move from an outpost or kick down a door, and suddenly there was no longer any such thing as truth or reality, and everything took on the blur of a hideous dream.
But like with combat, you can’t wait for the moment to come to you. You must meet it, and meet it as well as you can. I set Isolde on her feet, and then I stand too. I take her hand in mine.
“Will you see me off?” I ask, guessing the answer from the slowly shrouding light in her gaze. She’s already closing the doors on herself, clamping down on the wound.
“I think it’s better if I stay here,” she says. “You should have a chance to say goodbye to Mark privately as well. And I…” A self-deprecating smile. “I might try to sneak into your suitcase if given half a chance.”
I want to kiss her. I want to feel the plump give of her lips against mine, lick gently at them until she opens up for me, and then I want to taste her mouth one last time. Who knows how long it will be before we can be together again?
And even after Ys is gone…then what? Will Mark allow us all to be together, like we were so briefly on Samhain? Or will he be too wounded by everything that’s happened, too jealous to try again?
I don’t kiss her mouth. It feels too final somehow, too scripted. Lovers parting in a staged tragedy. Instead, I kiss her fingers, pressing my lips to her knuckles and closing my eyes for the space of a single breath.
“I love you,” I murmur, casting my eyes up from where I still hover over her hand. “I’ll love you past death itself. Into heaven.”
“If only I believed I could meet you there,” she whispers. “I love you with whatever eternity is left inside me. I?—”
Tears are caught on her eyelashes like dew, and she sucks in a breath and whirls away, yanking her hand free of mine in the process. She strides away from me, toward Mark’s bedroom, and closes the door without looking back.
I can still feel the lingering warmth of her fingers on my lips.
Fourteen
Tristan
When I walk into Mark’s office, he’s still staring at the river, an extinguished candle stump hanging from his fingers. He looks back at me and blinks, clearly expecting to see both of us.
“Isolde didn’t feel up to seeing me off,” I explain, and he nods briefly.
“Well then. You have about thirty minutes left before Jago pulls the car around. I’ve taken the liberty of having Sedge pack your things. Hugo is not as particular about suits as I am, but he is quite fussy about Armorica employees looking dowdy or cheap, so I’ve also asked Sedge to make sure your street clothes are up to Hugo’s standards.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We will have to make a little show of walking you down. Don’t give me that pout. It won’t be your own personal Via Dolorosa, just enough of a display to kick off some speculation that I can later feed.” He waves a hand in a circle to indicate the strategy. “Yes, I’ve temporarily sent my bodyguard away. Yes, even as my wife remains here. No, I don’t want to talk about it. That sort of thing.”
“You always have everything planned,” I note. Not spitefully, not mournfully. Stated as a fact, which it is.
He gives a humorless laugh. “No, Tristan. I do not. Not when it comes to you or Isolde or the two of you together.” He steps away from the window and comes toward me, the candle stump left on his desk and his hands in his pockets. “Was it a farewell worthy of your love?” he asks.
Did you fuck her? feels like the subtext, and it’s the subtext I answer. “We left the door open, sir. You were welcome to come witness our farewell anytime you wanted.”
“How noble,” he says. “So pure.”
I don’t want to do this, not as I’m being sent away. I don’t want him to retreat into his barbs and his bitterness, his handsome malice. I don’t want to retreat into martyred obedience either.
