“I know.” He leaned back in the chair with his whiskey.
We drank in silence for a while. There’d been a lot of silences between us, but this one felt different. Better. We hadn’t talked much out in these past weeks, unless you counted a memorable screaming match. Well, screaming on my part and stubborn insistence—he’d probably call it “manful restraint”—on his. We’d both been exhausted, run off our feet, and in no state of mind to discuss anything.
And now that we were . . .
God, I just didn’t want to! I liked this peaceful quiet, this knowledge that I could talk if I wanted, that I could tell him anything, and that I wouldn’t have to bite my tongue or patrol my own thoughts so he wouldn’t pick them up. Because everything was finally out in the open.
It was nice.
It wasn’t going to stay that way.
And not just because I knew Mircea but because of this infernal, never-ending war! He couldn’t just let it all go for a while, let old wounds heal or even become old wounds. He had to press it, because circumstances were pressing him. The only way to end this thing was to kill all the gods—and considering how much trouble we’d had offing two, I wasn’t liking our odds there. Or to invade Faerie and take out the bastards running this show before they could let them in.
And no way was Mircea going into Faerie without some kind of assurance about his wife.
No way in hell.
I threw back my whiskey, sat down the glass, and looked at him.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
Chapter Thirty-four
Mircea tilted his head, but when he spoke, it wasn’t what I’d expected. “It’s strange,” he said. “Before everything was revealed, all I could think about was how to tell you. What phrasing to use, how to approach the subject, counterargument after counterargument for anything you might say. And now . . .”
“Now?”
“I don’t want to discuss it at all.” He looked tired, stressed, and completely believable. But then, that was the problem. He always did. I thought back to how perfectly he’d lied to the consul, without a tick or a tell. He could be lying to me now, and I’d never know—
“I’m not!” He stared at me, and the dark eyes were haunted and pained and utterly, utterly sincere. “I know how badly I fucked up; I’ve thought of little else. How I should have trusted you, how I could have told you at any time and at least received a hearing, how my cowardice almost got you killed, all of it! How all I want, all I think about anymore, is a way to get you back.”
“You’re not getting me back,” I said, and, for the most part, managed to keep my voice steady. It wasn’t easy. Mircea rarely swore, and when he did, it was usually in some long-dead language, leaving me to guess from his tone what he meant. He also never looked like this—tired, desperate, almost . . . frightened? It was insane! Nothing frightened Mircea.
It was also really, really effective.
It made me want to go to him, to comfort, to console. It made me want to drop my guard, which was the last thing I could afford. Mircea the bastard I could handle. Mircea the tired, overworked, and vulnerable?
Not so much.
“Cut it out!” I said again, to myself as much as to him. “You want to talk about your wife, let’s talk.”
“I want to talk about us—”
“Well, I don’t! And there is no us—”
“That has to be your decision, of course,” he said, but his eyes said something else. His eyes said, “You are mine and you always will be.” His eyes said, “This isn’t over.” His eyes—
Could go to hell, along with the rest of him!
“Damn it, Mircea!”
“But perhaps I can at least regain some of your trust.”
“What?” The sudden course correction caught me off guard. “How?”
“By telling you about this.” His hand clenched in the soft fabric of the cape, causing the picture of the bedroom ceiling to scrunch up and wobble around.
I frowned at it. “And that is?”