Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [32]
“I saw,” she whispered. Fingering the delicate silverwork. He had touched it, too, and his hand had trembled. Why?
Yes, I saw him. I saw eyes wide with the kind of terror most men never know. Looking into those eyes was like looking into a mirror. Like being back in the Forest again, running from the unknown. Alone, so alone. Yes, I know that look.
“Nari—”
“I’m not a child,” she snapped. Pulling away from him. “Not anymore. I can take care of myself.”
And he would accept that, she knew it. That was the marvel of their relationship. Even though he was concerned for her, even though he thought she was dead wrong, even though he was sure she was heading for disaster. That was the difference between Gresham Alder and her parents. He had seen the change in her, when she returned from the Forest, and he had accepted it. Her parents couldn’t. They still wanted to baby her, to shield her from all the evils of the world, and no matter what she said or did, they would never change in that orientation. How could she explain to them that she had already faced the greatest evil of all, the well of terror in her own soul? How could she explain the way in which that confrontation had transformed her, smothering the helpless child who so needed protection, giving birth to someone older and stronger and far more adaptable. What did the petty evils of this world amount to, when compared to the Hunter’s Forest? Abusive men were an annoyance, nothing more. Even rapists were a finite terror. And as for men who wore the Hunter’s face, whose haunted eyes hinted at wounds so vast that no mere words could set them to healing....
I can handle it, she told herself. Running her fingers over the sterling figures, imagining that she could feel Andrys Tarrant’s warmth through the metal. Drawn to his pain, even as powerfully as she was drawn to his person. And I want to.
“I’ll be careful,” she told him. “I promise.”
Six
“His Holiness will be with you shortly.”
Damien nodded a distracted acknowledgment as the acolyte left him. He had been left to wait in the antechamber to the Patriarch’s formal audience chamber, which didn’t bode at all well for his upcoming interview. It was a space designed to impress, perhaps intimidate, and it did so with marked aesthetic efficiency. The high, vaulted ceiling was of dark polished stone, unwarmed by paint or plaster; the numarble walls were sleek and minimally decorated. The furniture was stiff and formal, and after sitting in a high-backed chair for several seconds he decided he would much rather pace. All in all it was a markedly uncomfortable place, and Damien guessed that the room beyond, where the Patriarch meant to receive him, was much the same. Maybe worse. Not the kind of atmosphere he’d hoped for, that was certain.
What the hell did you expect? ‘Come into my parlor for tee, and oh, by the way, would you mind filling me in on your recent activities?’ Fat chance, Vryce. You’ll be lucky if he listens to you at all, and doesn’t just throw you out before you get a chance to open your mouth in your own defense.
There was a small mirror on the far wall, a minimal concession to visitors who might wish to see if they looked as uncomfortable as they felt. He paused in his pacing to look in it, to see what manner of man the Patriarch would be confronting. The priest who gazed back at him was not the same man who’d left Jaggonath two years earlier, that was sure. Limited rations at sea had thinned his stocky frame until he looked almost trim, an unfamiliar somatype. With a weathered hand he stroked the short beard that now marked his jawline, and wondered if he shouldn’t have shaved it off. His skin was markedly darker than it had been two years ago, a tawny brown that spoke eloquently of long months beneath an equatorial sun. There was gray in his hair now, a few strands at the temples and scattered bits of it in his beard. Gray! It was an affront to everything he perceived himself to be, the first hint of decay