FAZER LOGINSera“Why would anyone do that.""Because I wanted you." He said it plainly, a fact too simple to need defending, and he couldn't seem to understand why I was making it complicated. "The child was already there. It didn't change what I wanted. So I took the vow."Something in me pulled tight and went looking for the soft place to put a knife."And you said nothing." Low. "For all of it. You knew, and you watched me carry it. You watched me go grey, you watched me flinch every time you came near with that nose of yours, and you said nothing. You let me come to you. Tonight, on the worst night of my life, you made me be the one to drag it into the light, when you could have ended it any time you wanted.""Sera.""That's what you do, isn't it." I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop. "You decide what people get to carry. You sit on the hard things and call it protecting them. You'd rather hold a thing alone until it rots you out than say it to someone's face, because saying it means some
SeraI'd decided I would say it the second I walked in, before I lost the nerve, but Fenris was at the window with his back to me and the words went to nothing in my mouth.He had a map unrolled across the table, weighted at the corners with whatever was nearest, a knife, a cup, a stone the size of a fist. He wasn't reading it. He had his eyes on the dark below the keep where the torches marked the training yard, and his shoulders had the set they got when he was somewhere else, somewhere I couldn't follow him into. I'd come up here full of the thing I had to tell him and now I stood in the doorway watching the back of a man who already seemed to be carrying too much, and I thought, not now, do it later, there's never going to be a good time and this is a worse one than most.But Mina's voice was in my head. He should know. That's all I'm saying. He should know."Fenris.""Mm." He didn't turn."I need to talk to you."That turned him. Something in how I'd said it. His eyes came to me
SeraI grabbed onto her. Both hands on her arm across my chest, gripping hard, and I couldn't make myself let go."I'm sorry." I was crying. "I'm so fucking sorry, Mina. I'm sorry. I keep... I keep hurting you and you keep being here and I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you being here.""Shut up," she said into my back, soft. "Shut up. It's fine.""It's not fine.""It is. Shut up. Stop talking."I couldn't stop. "I used you. I kept you in the dark and I used you and then when I was scared I turned against you and I thought you'd sold me. You. The only person who—""Sera." Firm. "I said shut up."So I shut up. I stood there and held her arm across my chest and cried with my face wrecked and my nose running and absolutely nothing composed about any of it. She held on. We stayed that way until the breathing evened out and the fire had burned down to a lower sound and the guard's shadow had passed the window twice more.She let go first. Came around to face me. She had been crying too,
Sera"That's not fair.""What's not fair is getting your shoulder fucked up by the person who's supposed to be your sister." She said it to the mirror, flat and even. "That wasn't so fair either.""I know.""Do you.""I came here to say I'm sorry.""Great. You said it.""Mina, come on.""No, I heard you. Sorry. Noted." She picked up the comb again. "Anything else?"The air between us went thin and hot. I could hear the fire and my own breathing and the small scraping sound of the comb through hair that didn't need combing."What do you want me to do," I said. "Get on my knees? Crawl? What is it going to take for you to actually look at me?""I'm not stopping you.""I do mean it.""You mean it how you meant it last time. When you said sorry and then spent ten minutes telling me why you were right.""I'm not doing that.""You're already doing it. You walked in here with a compress and a speech and you're waiting for me to accept it so you can feel better. That's what you do. You manage
SeraI'd been standing outside her door long enough that a girl carrying linens had passed me twice, and both times I'd pretended to be looking at something on the wall.There was nothing on the wall. Grey stone, a torch bracket, the same as every other length of this keep. I'd ordered a man's death with less hesitation than it was taking me to lift my hand and knock on a door I'd walked through a hundred times. I knew the room on the other side. The narrow bed, the vanity with its polished iron mirror, the smell of lavender soap and whatever she burned to keep the damp out. It was a room I'd been safe in, and that was the problem. The last time I'd been in it we'd torn something open and never closed it, and I'd let the weeks since do the closing for me, which meant it had never closed at all.My hand wouldn't go. I stood there and watched it not go. There were things I could make myself do, and this was not one of them, and that frightened me more than the door did.I knocked. Twice
Mina"It's complicated.""It's not, though." He said it gently. He always said the pushing things gently. "It's the simplest thing in the world. I'm not a man who hides. I don't like the hiding. You're not a thing I'm ashamed of, Mina, you're the opposite of that, and I'm tired of the only place I get to have you being a cold lodge two hours' walk from the people who matter to you."The people who matter to you. He'd put it right next to the thing I'd been bleeding about all night, the people who don't see me, the people who count me least, and now here he was, the one who saw me, the one who counted me, and he wanted to stand in the same room as the people who didn't, and let them see that someone did.When he said it like that I couldn't find the edge of the no. The no had been so clear an hour ago and now it was somewhere under all the warmth and I couldn't put my hand on it."You want to meet Fenris," I said."I want to meet your brother." A correction so soft it didn't feel like
LyraShe ignored me. She dropped to her knees, her hands sliding down to the waistband of my trousers. She shoved her fingers inside the fabric, gripping my hips tight. With one sharp pull, she dragged the pants and my underwear down to my ankles. I stepped out of them, kicking my boots off in the
Lyra"Tell the girl to step into the room," he said."Leave her out of this," I said. My voice came out as a pathetic, raspy whisper. I cleared my throat, trying to find some spine. "She didn't do anything. It was my idea to come in here.""Tell her to step into the room," he said, his eyes going d
LyraThe voice didn't belong to Nadia. It didn't belong to me. It came from the metallic object resting directly behind my hip.Nadia froze. She pulled her mouth away from me and yanked her fingers out of my body. She stood up quickly, wiping her wet mouth with the back of her hand, her chest heavi
SeraNight fell fast, and with it, the temperature plummeted. We had three fires going, but the heat didn't seem to travel more than six inches past the flames. I sat on a log by the middle fire, pulling the wagon fur around my shoulders, shivering so hard my teeth were literally clicking together.







