Page 82 of The Shape of Monsters
“Ah. And the rebel?”
“He was my friend. I loved him.” Iriset shrugs, trying to play it off while her hand is curled in Lyric’s.
“I thought he was hurting you.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt him if I hadn’t been so…”
“Caught up?”
“Terrified.”
Iriset sighs a little. Her opal eye throbs. Bittor had been born with his cat-eyes. She doesn’t want to keep being sad, to feel this ache. Now that she’s here, Bittor would want her to thrive.
Wouldn’t he?
Or would he want her to fight? Stay a criminal, embrace her outlaw legacy, even though her art is perfectly legal here. Her profession. Her purpose. She thinks about her father telling her to change something. Do something great.
“I’m sorry I terrified you,” Lyric murmurs.
“What?” She looks and he’s staring at their joined hands.
“In the explosion. Given the damage, you must have been terrified. And you hurt yourself for me. Because you were afraid.”
“Ah, Lyric, yes, I… I was. I panicked, but that’s not why I did this, or at least, even if I hadn’t been, I can imagine making the same choice with cold, plain rational thought.”
Lyric frowns. He starts to shake his head, but Iriset says, “Look how gorgeous this is,” pointing at her opal eye. “And useful, and just neat. Much better than a regular eye.”
“I don’t mind my regular eyes.”
With a little wince, she touches their shoulders together. It’s strange to be back on a bench in a garden with Lyric, after everything. He wants to know why she didn’t leave him when she could. Why she waited until the last moment, when his mother tried to kill her and her spider array was ready, when the army was going into Saltbath to avenge rebellion against the Holy Design. Slowly, Iriset says, “I didn’t leave sooner because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave you. I wanted it all, but I couldn’t have it all because of apostasy, yes, and Bittor, yes,and your mother. So many reasons. Because I couldn’t stand that you loved Singix and not me. And she deserved better. It was all unsustainable without me doing something even worse, so I had to choose. I chose design. I chose rebellion. You know why, don’t you?”
“Tell me.”
With a little growl, she says, “Because you’re wrong. You were wrong. The entire empire was founded on faulty theory! It made people do terrible things in its name. In your name. You—you, Lyric, you did terrible things! I couldn’t answer your brutality with worse! Just because I love you doesn’t make that less true.”
“I know.”
“That’s worse!” Iriset nearly shrieks. She takes her hand back only for Lyric to touch her elbow instead, as if he needs the contact. Her opal eye aches and Iriset wants to smash her fist into it, or at least cover it with light-repelling cloth. It’s showing her only light and shadow, too-bright light around Lyric like a fucking halo, which ishilarious. “It’s worse that you know you’re being awful. Hurting people for the greater good is still hurting people.”
“I know,” he says again, more tensely this time. “But now the choices are different.”
“Are they?” Iriset turns completely, straddling the cool stone bench. She knows her glare is weird because of her weepy opal eye, but at least the flesh one should be doing its duty. “That’s what fixing this array is: hurting people for the greater good. We brought it here, and people are dead because of it! Because of our—my—negligence. And now my only choice is to remake this city in the Holy Design! That’s such bullshit. I can’t believe I basically blackmailed myself into making it happen.”
“Your power is immense here, because of who you are, because of what you can do,” Lyric says. “Because the Moon-Eater is a monster, not a leader.”
Iriset shoves him. “Leaders can be monsters, too, Lyric Your Glory, and monsters leaders.”
“Yes, both,” Lyric murmurs. “But here I don’t have power like I used to. I can’t hurt people in the same ways. I can only try to build what I know is good.” He says it so simply.
“But you want to find Maimeri and see the miran created and start your terrible empire, like you understand nothing of what I’ve told you!”
“No.” Lyric turns fully toward her on the bench, one knee bent, his shin against her knee. “I want to find Maimeri because I think az is like me: mirané and lost. I want to tell people about balance, about Aharté’s Silence, because it’s so loud here. And I do want the miran born, because I want to be born.” He laughs a little. “Don’t I get to want to be born? And for my sister to be born?” Then Lyric catches her gaze with his, mirané brown and sandglass, and his eyes burn hotter than ever because of it. “But mostly I want to go home because I don’t deserve to be at peace. I would love to live my life here in the past like the priest I always wanted to be, gardening, meditating, teaching, maybe even loving my wife. But I don’t deserve to. I shouldn’t get to do that without earning it. Withoutwork. I can’t do that at the start of the Holy Empire. I have to go home because theendis the only place I can fix anything. The only time I can change what needs to change, even if that means destroying it.”
“Oh,” Iriset says rather stupidly. He sounds so sure, so harsh, and also as vulnerable as if she had her hand inside his chest. She wants to touch him, wrap her hand around his throat maybe, to feel his words vibrate on her palm, his ecstatic pulse under her thumb.
“But I can only start by looking for Maimeri.” Lyric finally frees her by glancing away. “Az must be here, or everything I know about the end of the Apostate Age is meaningless.”
