Bitter Burn (Lyonesse, #3)

by Sierra Simone

“Well, it does change it,” he said. “I’m going to find the person responsible for Eliot’s death, and I’m going to kill them. And when I kill them, I’ll make sure their body buys something much more expensive than a death notice with the wrong city on it.” “And what is that?” “A fourth option.”

I don’t deserve their forgiveness or understanding, and I won’t deserve it at any point in my life, because I would do it all again. I’m going to keep doing it.

And now I don’t even know what the hell to do with my plan. I was supposed to care about nothing, and now I care about two things, and it’s a little fucking irritating, if I’m honest.

You saved everyone you could, I want to tell him. That’s better than most people get.

It’s this lie we tell ourselves about heroes, about what heroism is, that heroes are apart from such choices, from triage, from discretion. It’s a fucking cancer.

Because I am willing to put three hearts on the scale and offer them in payment for the destruction of a shadow that has stolen from me, from you, from Aaron Sims and Cara Sims, from the people of Carpathia, and on and on and on. I have watched people pay far greater prices than heartbreak for far, far fucking less, so yes, I would do it again, because I think it’s a goddamn bargain.”

I think the meek can only inherit the earth if we demand the will is read first, and I want to do more than read it, I want to be its executor. I don’t just want to keep watch against our foes, I want to lay traps, I want to follow them to their dens. I want my enemies to have everything taken from them before they die, and I want to be the one to light their pyres and watch them burn in the dark.

“And you, sir?” I ask, looking up to his face. The corners of his mouth are blanched as he stares down at my hand. “What will you have?” He draws in a deep breath and then slips my ring onto his finger, in the same spot where his wedding ring was just a moment ago. “I’ll have a piece of something good,” he says.

I’m doing my best to look casual, like any other besuited asshole who thinks a museum is just another place to do business, but I’m not feeling casual at all. I’m feeling like I want to drive to the airport and fly to Montreal and handcuff Tristan’s wrist to mine.

“Hello?” comes Tristan’s voice, and it’s tired, so fucking tired, and I just want to hug him. I want to bring him home and feed him and then make him lie down in bed and sleep until he can’t sleep anymore.

It’s a stupid and foolish world that will take a prom king and send him to war. A hard and inflexible father who will drive his dragon-novel-reading son to R-Day at West Point and probably not even use the full ninety seconds to say goodbye.

“You don’t need me to tell you that you couldn’t have done anything differently, but let me also say this: goodness is not a stable currency. It’s exchanged on an open market with many others. It’s negotiated, it’s bartered, it’s sold. And if you have to sell a little bit of your goodness to make sure that an innocent woman keeps her eye or that a fellow soldier doesn’t assassinate an elected leader and her children, then I think it’s better to be on the market than to hoard your goodness like a talent buried in the earth.”

I’ve been in combat, covert action; I have been shot, stabbed, beaten, and strangled. And the fear I feel now, swirling around this blank-eyed woman who won’t drink some water, is more powerful than any fear I’ve ever felt, because I’m more helpless than I’ve ever been. More worthless.

I know silence is what’s warranted right now, but I’m shaken and floundering and so pissed at myself that I can’t stand it, so I’m muttering to her as I guide her into the shower.

“No gloves, coat unzipped—there’s supposed to be freezing rain this afternoon—you would have been encased in ice like a jewel under glass—you were top of your class at Columbia—surely you can think of smarter ways to punish me—close your eyes and dip your head back, good girl—and you’re barely eating—at this point, why even hide from the other saints and Ys? If you’re planning on stopping your own heart, but of course not before you leave some bruises all over your pretty knees first. My pretty knees, by the way, and my heart, the one you want to stop.”

But I’m foolish and weak right now, because I don’t care about plans or endings or what a good man like Maxen or Tristan would do in my place. I care about her, and I love her, and this love flays me open, leaves nothing hidden, however bloody and primal.

“You are Isolde Laurence, Isolde Trevena, and you are not allowed to slip through your own fingers, much less mine. I won’t have it, sweetheart. You are too dear, and you must know by now that I am too mercenary and too mean to let someone else take what’s dear to me, even if it’s you doing the taking.”

We’d joined the agency knowing that we could die doing something the world would never know about, that our songs might go unsung and all that bullshit, but what I’d never considered is that we might die for nothing.

“And then it was worse than everything being for nothing. The dying and the killing, it was for something. It was for John Lackland and for Ys. For money and for business done half a world away over artistically plated scallops and wine bought by the bottle. I think I would have rather had all the horrors of my life stem from primates fighting for hilltops than know it was all to make the same handful of people marginally wealthier, bit by bit. I would rather have Eliot’s death mean nothing than know that it was for sale to the highest bidder in an auction none of us knew we were in.”

I’ve been where you are, and I can’t make this easier for you, but I can tell you that there is a tiny seed cupped in your palm right now, and that seed is from this moment on, no more. And like the mustard seed in the Bible, you can use it to move mountains.”

I’m hoping there’s enough smoke to cover the fire of the truth: the idea of my puppy staying at some soulless hotel when he could be under my roof is absolutely unacceptable. He needs to be home.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I answer it while staring at the messy love triangle unfolding in my sister’s living room. A love triangle that is absolutely pointless because two of those triangle points belong to me.

“How far are you willing to go for it? I won’t stand for finding you half-frozen again. I won’t watch you unlock the door for death and then wait for him to come calling. And I don’t know if I can survive knowing that you want to hurt yourself in a way that has nothing to do with God or with kink and that you haven’t told me.”

“You can be a shattered reliquary or an empty tabernacle, and you will be no less mine, but you must tell me. I can’t—I have used you enough, and I will use you still even more. I can’t leave you hollowed out after.”

And that’s what loneliness really, really is. It’s being alone inside yourself, alone even from yourself, because if your own mind is haunted even for you, how will anyone else ever join you there?

Maybe you don’t think you’re good, but you’re able to protect good people, and if that isn’t its own kind of virtue, then I don’t know what is.”

Let them see that I did exactly what I set out to do and immolated myself in the process, that I used myself for kindling, my future as accelerant. That I blew on the flames with air I should have been using to say I love you. I’m so sorry. I love you.

“I wouldn’t do anything differently. It cost me a piece of myself, cost me connection, the simple joy of a manicure or rubbing a puppy’s ears or digging my hands into some grass on a summer’s day. But the alternative is…what? Not trying to help when I could have? What use would digging my fingers into grass be if I knew I’d purchased it with cowardice?”

if you make them feel like they’ve been chosen, like they have secret knowledge only given to the special among us…it’s very easy to manipulate people then.

The crimes are not hidden; they are evident in how we treat the sick, the poor, and the stranger, in how billionaires consolidate power and control, in where the bombs fall, in where people die of diseases we have the medicine to treat and go hungry when there’s more than enough food to go around.

If New Camelot is about sacrifice, then Lyonesse, in its own dark, strange way, is about mercy. The mercy that King Mark should have shown his knight and queen in the legends; the mercy that they should have shown him as their betrayal tore his kingdom down stone by stone.

I hope you’ve come home with magic in your eyes.