A bruised and swollen face and two black eyes and a split lip were not the easiest canvas on which to read emotions, and Gavin saw nothing. Karris’s eyes were closed. Like she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d passed out again.
A solitary tear leaked from the corner of one closed eye and tracked down her cheek.
The door’s open. Nothing for it but to charge through now. Gavin said, “Corvan Danavis and I came up with the plan a month before the Battle of Sundered Rock. We’d made so many bargains with so many devils that even though I thought my original cause was just, I knew a victory would be disastrous for the Seven Satrapies. Corvan gave me a scar to match Gavin’s, and a spy gave us the details of his battle dress.” Gavin heaved a breath. “My mother knew it was me instantly, of course, but she didn’t want to lose her last son so she coached me how to be Gavin. I thought if I could keep my disguise for even a few months that I would be able to stop most of the damage to the Seven Satrapies. I didn’t realize how hard it would be with you. I didn’t know how to even talk with you. I thought you loved Gavin. Marrying you—as him?—it was one betrayal too many, Karris. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But maybe what I did was worse.”
The broken betrothal hadn’t turned out so well. She’d disappeared, humiliated, financially ruined, and he’d thought he would never see her again. Part of him had been glad, the part that wanted to live. Surely Karris would be the one to see through his masquerade. The year she’d been gone had given him time to solidify his mask, to become Gavin Guile.
“Tell me,” she said. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, and she made no motion to clear away her tears. “Tell me everything.”
Her tone gave him nothing. It was cold, flat, lifeless.
She already knew enough to get him killed, so he didn’t know why it should be hard. In for a den, in for a danar, right? But the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t about life and death. Somehow, those were paltry things. This was about disgusting a woman who meant more to him than anything he’d ever known.
He drew a deep breath. Leaned back in his chair, leaned forward. Seven years, seven impossible goals. He’d failed at this goal every year for the past sixteen. If she killed him for this, at least he would have done something right.
So he talked. He told her about the fire at her family’s house, how he’d found he could split light that night, and how he’d been wild with rage, thinking she’d betrayed him. He told of fleeing in shame. Of being pursued. Of having an army coalesce around him he wasn’t even sure he wanted to have. And then of Gavin rebuffing his offers to surrender. He told her how he’d finally started fighting with his whole heart. Of putting Corvan Danavis in charge of his armies. Of fighting across the length of Atash, of promises from several Parian clans. Of how they’d needed those Parian reinforcements so badly they’d fled to meet them all the way into Tyrea—where they finally found out they’d been betrayed. The Parian clans weren’t coming.
He said little about the final battle. He’d killed a lot of men that day, some of them brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of men and women he’d come to admire since.
Then he talked about the years since. How he’d faced the challenges of learning to be Gavin, and how he’d tried to right the wrongs that so few of the other members of the Spectrum cared to try to redress.
He spoke for more than an hour. And as he spoke, he could feel her softening, warming toward him, her expression opening. And finally, he’d reached the Battle of Garriston and its aftermath and how she’d slapped him and said she knew his secret, and how he was afraid she’d known the full truth. Quietly, he shared how he’d had to decide whether he should tell her the truth, or kill her.
Any warmth that had been gathering was dissipated like he’d thrown his windows open in winter. He saw the muscle in her jaw twitch. You were going to kill me, you asshole? it said.
“You wanted the truth,” Gavin said. “Telling you means you could kill me.”
“It makes sense, you bastard, just don’t expect it to warm the cockles of my heart.”
He had nothing to say. He realized he’d ground the little brown grain of opium to dust between his fingers.
“I am who I am, Karris,” he said. Then he realized how ridiculous saying that was right now. “I mean, I am the Prism, so…”
“I know what you meant. So. Is that it?”
He hesitated. “No. That’s not it, Karris. I killed Gavin last night.”