off on some mad plan that he thinks will win him Josie back, only I think he’s gone straight into something. A trap or I don’t know what. Please, Tallia. Tell me what’s going on.”
She wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, concentrated on binding the cut. Even worse, because he could see the soft curve of her stomach as she lifted her shirt, the hint of a breast, no straight lines, all curves and chaos and…
“Holden, do you love Josie?” She shocked him out of what he shouldn’t be watching.
“What?”
“Do you love her?”
The question startled him. He had done, once, he knew that. A long time ago, and Josie had loved him, before the bond had made him forget her, before duty and obedience had driven her from his mind. A long time ago, years. Then he’d found her again and let himself believe she still loved him, but she’d only been trying to save Van Gast. Even then he’d known, in the darkest parts of his soul, it wasn’t love on his part, not really. It was remembrance, it was wanting things to be otherwise, and a desperate need to be free, like she was. It was admiration, and a lust for what he thought she could give him. He’d pretended, fooled himself into believing it perhaps. Yet that one act of hers, risking all she had, every last ounce of herself, to save Van Gast…and Van Gast, the aching desolation when he’d realized what he’d done to her, what she’d done for him.
They’d shown him that what he felt wasn’t love. Want, yes. Need too, and lust and jealousy and emotions he couldn’t name all rolled into one. But it wasn’t love, not anymore, not in that way. Not the coruscating soar of emotion inside him in his youth, making all the world seem new and bright with it. Now when he thought of her it was a deeper thing, less vivid, and not love.
Tallia sat and watched as all this whispered through his head, through his heart. “You wanted to again, but you couldn’t, don’t,” she said in the end. “Or not anymore, not enough. Not the way you think you should.”
“How do—”
She didn’t let him finish. “What about Ilsa?” Her eyes were sharp as she watched, as though looking for every tiniest movement, twitch of lip, blink of eye.
Holden shivered, suddenly cold even in the sweltering heat. “We were bonded. I—I have a duty to her. She’s my wife.”
“But do you love her?”
“Yes—no. I don’t know. I have to make her happy. She’s my wife, it’s my duty, and I want to make her happy. I’m all she has, all she’s known.”
Tallia’s eyes seemed to be the only thing Holden could see, vast wells of darkness which reflected him back. He didn’t much like what he saw and looked away, only to see himself reflected in Ilsa’s mirror, looking gray and haggard and somehow lost. He wanted to get up and walk away. Away from her tempting curves and chaos, back to straight lines, order. Safety in what he knew. Find Ilsa, love her, make her happy. Forget Tallia and her infectious smile, or how she made him feel. The Master was dead, Holden’s bonds were dead, but he had a duty, a responsibility. It was all he had left of his old life, the only straight line left to hold on to.
“What’s this got to do with anything? And what are you doing, how are you doing this? What have you done? Tallia—”
“Little-magics. I get them from my mother’s side.” She ducked her head at that, made a show of inspecting her bandaging. “Sometimes I know how people connect with each other, the strands that bind them together, the things that pull them apart. Like a web that connects everyone, and I can see it. Sometimes. And your strands are tangled so tight, I’m surprised you can move. Do you know Haban?”
Haban—the name rang a little warning bell in the back of Holden’s head, brought to mind an expansive girth, a booming laugh and a tent in the corner by Herjan’s temple. “The trader. He sold me a way to get after Van Gast. Why?”
“After the Yelen caught Haban with the diamond, they put him in the cells. They knew he’d got it from Van Gast because there’s no two diamonds like that in the world. It was part of the dowry payment, for the trade deal between the Yelen and Remoria.”