“I did it, didn’t I?” His voice was low and furious. “I let the world see me with Cerrington, let them see me treat him like he mattered.”
“Did it cost you so much?” Judah felt strangely calm.
Gavin recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “Forgive me if I didn’t want to watch you waste your life fucking some staff boy.”
“Then who shall I fuck, Gavin?” It sounded so normal. Just a question. “Who do I have your permission to fuck? Oh, yes. I remember: any number of dumb, good-looking courtiers who only want me so they can get close to you. That’s what you said, isn’t it? Back when you thought I was fucking Firo.”
“Quit talking like that,” he said. “Quit using that word.”
“Which word? Fucking?” She wanted to bite him. She wanted to tear his throat out. “You used it. Or is that something else you’re allowed to do and I’m not?”
He ran his hands violently through his hair, and his voice shook with an obvious effort to retain control. “Look, dead or alive, it’s not like you’re going to see him again, so I’m not sure why we’re arguing.”
“We are arguing,” she said, “because you seem to think that all of my decisions should be made with your best interest in mind. You seem to think that I should just stand quietly off to the side until you’re bored and need entertaining, or upset and need soothing, and then come running to serve you, because of course I should never want anything for myself. I shouldn’t even want to live except through you. I should just let you use me and use me and use me until we both die of it!”
She was screaming now, the sound luminous and resonant. Like she had opened a door inside herself and discovered an aquifer’s worth of grand hot rage, as precious as gold. She had thought Darid was dead. She had thought it was her fault.
Gavin grabbed her upper arms. She tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let go. “You’re hysterical,” he said, furious. “You need to calm down.” He pulled her close, fingers digging deep into the meat of her arms, and pressed his head roughly against hers. The more she struggled the more fiercely he held her. When she felt him push into her mind she was not surprised—she’d expected that—but she hadn’t expected the implacable cold that spread through her. Her rage dulled and then faded entirely. What was left was still and stony as marble. She watched from far away as her legs collapsed under her and both of their bodies slid to the floor, his head still against hers. The feeling didn’t have the gentle flow of water, the soft ripple of reflected light. It was dry. Her eyes closed and then everything was still. A shared stillness: theirs, nobody else’s. Together.
And then, like the crate of wine emerging from the depths of the aquifer, something began to take shape, there in the quiet. A face. Another. They drifted behind her eyelids, carved and pale—all different, all somehow the same, so many with the same particular mouth—
And then, his face. Hers.
Horror bloomed in her. He was thinking of the crypts. Instead of living water he was imagining them both as stone effigies of themselves, unending and unalive. She tried to pull away, but she was too heavy to move or even breathe. The stone pushed everything else out. Motion was a faded memory that belonged to somebody else. She could feel nothing but cold, could hear nothing but the sound of the increasingly thick air fighting its way into her lungs. Somewhere, her heart beat. But slowly. Slower. It wasn’t that she couldn’t breathe. It was that she couldn’t remember why she’d ever wanted to.
No.
With incredible effort, she pushed him away. Inside her head and out of it. The two of them were slumped against the sofa. Gavin’s skin looked bloodless and cold. His head lolled to the side as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it up. Then his eyes focused on her, and he seemed to gather himself. “Please, Jude. Let’s end this. I can’t stand it anymore.” He reached for her again.
This time she fought, lashing out with everything she had. On the floor, scrabbling and clawing at him like an animal. She felt the give of flesh under her nails and four long scratches appeared on his cheek, one welling up with blood. She felt the sear of them