They were both silent for a long moment.
“Do we have anything to drink?” She finally asked.
“Water.” He pointed to a clay jar on the table.
She made a face. “No, I mean something to drink.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe in it. Spent too many years drunk on cheap ale.”
“Figures.” She shook her head sadly, feeling her own pain and working up her nerve. “This whole ‘sharing’ thing would be easier if I was drunk, Kobb.”
“I didn’t ask you to share.” He assured her. “I’m just…”
“Oh, you never ask for anything.” She cut him off. “Because you’re a fucking coward.”
He pursed his lips, considering that. “I’ve never been called that before. Not by anyone who didn’t immediately regret it, anyway.” He turned to look at her. “What exactly am I supposed to be afraid of?”
“You get all panicky about accidentally poking a hole in the ‘sexless and profound holy man’ bullshit façade you’ve spent decades creating. You’d rather pretend to be ‘above it all’ than involved in it.” She pointed at him. “I can read you like a fucking book, Kobb, and I ain’t exactly a great reader.” She met his eyes meaningfully. “You know what I’m talking about.”
He looked away. “I have no idea, no.”
“Fine.” She snorted in dismissal, ignoring his cowardice. “But you know I’m right. And yes, you damn well know what I mean.” She put her feet up on one of the cut logs they were using as stools. “My parents owned a brothel.” She supplied, just wanting to get this started so that she could stop talking. “That’s where I was born and raised. And whenever things got too bad… or one of the ‘clients’ decided that I was… for sale…” She cleared her throat. “I’d go hide in the closet. There was a loose board in there and I could squeeze down under the floor, where no one could find me. It was dark and quiet and safe. And I’d dream of someone showing up and rescuing me from… well… my life. But they never came. And eventually, I got too big to fit into that little sanctuary anymore. And I learned real quick to watch out for myself. I realized that I could either let my parents turn me out like they’d done with my sisters… sell my body to every drunken miner and bastard from hell who wandered through our door... Or I could run away. Even though I had nowhere to run to.” She tapped the table, as Kobb had done. “But that’s what I did. I got out of there as fast as possible. I still pray every night that I never go back. I’d die first.” She shook her head. “But everybody I’ve ever met in my life has been a complete piece of shit, out to hurt me. That’s just the way Galland is. Everyone wants to take whatever you have. The government wants your gold, the men want your body, the army wants your life, the creepy Primacy cult assholes want your soul.” She met his eyes. “I am not a trusting sort. But… but I trust you.” She nodded to herself. “You’re my friend. And… and I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Thank you.” He straightened. “I mean that. I don’t think anyone has ever given me a compliment which meant as much as that one.” He reached down to pat her hand in gratitude. “The feelings are mutual.”
She looked down at his hand as it rested on hers, then looked up to meet his eyes again.
He recognized the way that could be interpreted, and quickly yanked his hand away. “That… that’s not what I meant.”
She arched an amused eyebrow. “You sure?” She knew the answer already. She’d always known.
“I have no illusions on that front, don’t worry.” He assured her, a little too quickly. He went back to watching the fire, once more a detached holy man. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You aren’t as old as you pretend to be. And I’m not nearly as young as you’re afraid I am.” She reminded him. “It’s not ridiculous.” She thought it over for a beat. “Trust me, Kobb, it’s the opposite of ridiculous.”
“It’s not why I’m your friend.”
“Didn’t say it was.” She shook her head. “You’re my friend with no strings attached, I realize that. I’ve seen a lot of men fuck women they weren’t friends with. Never seen one fuck a friend they didn’t love.”
They both were quiet for a moment.
“In either case, you do not have to feel uncomfortable around me.” He informed her. “You are a guest in my home and Chox curses any man who takes from a guest.”
“What about giving?” She arched an eyebrow. “Is Chox okay with that?” She put her feet up again, enjoying this conversation. Kobb’s main trouble, aside from having an ungrateful whelp of a nephew, was that he couldn’t admit to being human. He was always so damned afraid that human emotions would lead him down a bad path again. But Violet had no such worries about him. Or herself, really.
Her religion had 254 gods, each with a different purpose and area of oversight. Maritimus the Martyr was the patron god of her people, the ancient snow bear of the mountains. And Maritimus didn’t demand that His “cubs” abstain from things which made them happy. He demanded that they be happy. …And, obviously, that they kill anyone who stood in the way of said happiness.
He was not the most powerful of the gods. He couldn’t keep bad things from happening to you. But He was the one who would stick with you through them, even when all of the other gods had struck their names from your soul and abandoned you to the four winds.
Violet always appreciated that. That’s why he was the only one she ever prayed to. The other gods could go fuck themselves bloody for all Violet cared. Because Maritimus was the only one of them who could be counted on.
Kobb didn’t rise to her question, so she moved on. “What do you want from your life, Kobb?” She asked him.
“Peace and serenity.” He answered immediately. “I want to live out my remaining years quietly appreciating Chox’s many gifts. The sunlight on my skin, the wind at my back.”
“Horseshit.” She scoffed in dismissal, recognizing the lie. “That’s just what you think we both want you to say. So, I’ll ask you again: What do you really want from your life, Kobb?”
He considered that for several minutes. “I Challenged once, did I tell you that?” He finally asked. “I was… a stupid little boy. But my sister didn’t kill me. She didn’t give me that honor. She held the blade to my neck and she said to me: ‘You need to find your wellspring, little brother. The thing which gives you power, purpose, and a reason not to be the sniveling little puke you’ve always been. Because you are of use to neither Chox nor man until you do.’”
“And did you?”
“Well… I’m working on it.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I spent a good many years cursing her and wishing she had just finished me off.”
“And now?”
“I think she had a cruel sense of humor.” He absently tossed a handful of twigs into the fire. “Life is a funny thing.”
“Yeah. You die laughing.”
“Look,” he turned to face her again, his voice serious, “I’m a shitty person, Violet. I have been a thousand terrible things, in a thousand innocent places. I’ve had many names and many death sentences. Plundering. Robbing. Killing. Burning through whatever gold I had on wine and wenches. A wanderer of all of the shadowy alleyways and desperate places on this dying earth.” He shook his head, looking haunted. “I… I have seen the worst in myself. And what I saw is not easily forgiven.”
“I grew up in a whorehouse.” She reminded him flatly. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what my worse memories are. We’ve all got baggage.”
“Some hells are worse than others. Especially if you’re the one who crafted them for yourself. Chox, he tells us that after we go under, we will stand before his Throne of Bones to be judged. Two versions of each of us, the way we were on our best day and on our worst; strongest and weakest. And he will ask them each to explain themselves.” He shook his head. “My worst day will make him shamed. My best days are all spent, and they weren’t that great.”
“You’re a good man.” She assured him. “Bes
t I’ve seen.”
He didn’t reply to that.
“Oh, please.” She snorted at his opinion on the matter. “This whole conversation is stupid self-pitying horseshit. Shut up, you’re basically perfect and you fucking know it.”
“I’m not perfect.” He met her eyes. “The man who would have stopped me from doing the things I’ve done… Killed me before I did them or locked me away in a cell somewhere... He would have been a perfect man. For years, I waited for him to emerge from some unfriendly shadow, like a vengeful spirit. Whoever, I didn’t care. Anyone. Someone. Someone to just… just stop me…” He looked away. “But like you said… no matter how many dreams you have of someone showing up and rescuing you from your nightmare… they never appear. And then you outgrow the dream. But… but the nightmare continues on.”
His words hung in the air like smoke.
“Fuck.” She started laughing. “You are one dreary bastard, you know that?”
For some reason, he seemed to find that amusing.
She shrugged. “Well… you don’t have to be perfect to still be a damn sight better than everyone else.” She pointed at him. “And for the record, you’re good to me. That’s all I care about, honestly. I think you’re perfect.” She gestured to his chest. “You took four arrows to the heart for me a few weeks ago. That’s something.”
“Three arrows.” He calmly corrected. “Only one of which was seriously life-threatening. The others were flesh wounds.”
“Either way, it was terribly gallant.”
“No, it really wasn’t.” He turned to meet her gaze. “Trust me, it wasn’t.”
She continued watching him for several breaths, then she sat up straighter. “Holy shit…”
He looked confused. “What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking.” She firmed her jaw. “Okay… Okay, fuck it.” She leaned forward. “Are you for real?”
“Huh?”
“Are. You. For. Real?”
“In what context?” His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand what that means.”
She squinted at him in amazement. “This isn’t some vague flirtation thing for you, is it?” She nodded in certainty. “You want me.”
“I what?”
“…And I don’t just mean that in a ‘he wants to fuck me’ way, which I’m used to. I mean it in a ‘he wants me, not just my body’ kind of way. The ‘he’s my friend and he wants me’ way.” Her mouth dropped open in shock. “Holy shit…”
He looked back to the fire. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, you fucking coward.” She snapped. “You want to discuss our lives, we’ll discuss them. We’ll discuss this… this bond we have.”
“I didn’t even bring up this subject.” He dismissed. “I think we should talk about…”
“You brought up this subject the second you appeared in my life.” She said, her voice unexpectedly breaking. “You’ve been silently arguing your case since before I even spoke a word of your damn language!” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Every goddamned time you’ve ever looked at me… you’ve told me you wanted me.” She looked down at the table. “…every time.” She whispered.
Violet knew what lust looked like. She’d seen it on the faces of countless men at her parents’ bordello and many faces since. But in Kobb’s eyes, it looked different. It looked pure and gleaming. He didn’t want to make her less; he wanted to give her more. He’d give her everything he had if she wanted it. He’d lay it at her feet. He’d proven that. Violet had given him many opportunities to let her down. But he never had.
Violet had no experience with anything that powerful and deep.
But she recognized it all the same. Knew what it meant. Tried to deny how much she liked the idea… and how much she liked Kobb.
He tossed the last handful of twigs into the fire and turned towards her, obviously bracing himself for embarrassment. “I am attracted to you to the point that it’s a character flaw.” He informed her bluntly. “But I know I can’t ask you to…”
“Ha!” She clapped her hands together, cutting him off. “I knew it! I fucking knew it! Why!?!” She asked in disbelief, honestly wanting an answer. “I’m objectively horrible. Hell, I broke your face this afternoon.” She paused. “…which, again, I’m really sorry for, I swear that was an accident.”
“I know.” He nodded.
“You know that it was an accident? Or you know, like… you ‘know that I’m the one’ kind of know?”
“Both.” He replied simply. “You wouldn’t hurt me deliberately. Because you’re the one. The only one.”
She considered that. “Huh.”
They were both silent for several minutes, as Violet thought the matter over. It was an odd situation.
But Violet had often been accused of being an odd woman.
He was a good man. She had no doubts about that. Violet didn’t have many skills in life, but she had an innate sense of people. She wasn’t empathetic to their troubles, because fuck’em, but she understood people all the same. She’d instantly seen that Kobb was tough as nails. And that he was deeply sad. And that he wanted her. More than that though, Kobb had proven that he could be counted on, no matter what. As silly as that sounded, Violet had never known anyone in her life that she knew would have her back if the fighting started. Who she knew would never hurt her. And she’d never met a man whose desire for her didn’t make her skin crawl.
True, he had a stupid nephew, but she could deal with that. Tzadok was an idiot. And he was apparently content to just watch this man self-destruct? Merely sit there quietly while Kobb was miserable and everyone knew it? All for some stupid honor code of a bunch of savages? No. No, that was bullshit. Tzadok didn’t take good enough care of his uncle. He treated him like he was an annoyance who was half in the grave. Kobb was a man. He deserved to be treated like a fucking gift. Because that’s what he was.
Violet liked Kobb. She liked him a lot. More than any person she’d ever known or was ever likely to meet. She was mainly looking for a downside to Kobb. And that’s basically what Violet had often thought about while she’d been here. Trying to figure out what his hidden menaces were. How he intended to hurt her, so that she had a reason to stay away from him. She’d never really been able to come up with one though.
And no, he wasn’t completely “perfect.”
But it wasn’t Kobb’s fault that his life had been shitty and violent. Violet’s life had been shitty and violent too.
Kobb couldn’t help being a few years older than she was. That didn’t bother her at all either. She fully intended on dying young, so it would equal out in the end anyway, even if they were an unreasonable number of years apart, which she didn’t believe to be the case. Not even close.
And Kobb couldn’t help the fact that he lived in a barren wasteland. Hell, this place was a fucking paradise compared to some of the places Violet had called home over the years. She liked it here and had no real intention of ever leaving, no matter what happened.
Besides, Violet had no illusions about being perfect either. She was a bitch who thought with her fists most of the time. She had no manners and she didn’t trust anyone. From any neutral viewpoint, Kobb was the one who could do better in the arrangement. He was tough, and intelligent, and strong, and hot, and gentle…
She trusted Kobb. Completely. Not only because he’d literally died for her, just because… Well… She liked him. From the second she’d seen him, she’d felt like she’d known him forever. He made her feel good about herself. She felt safe with him and Violet didn’t feel safe anywhere.
So ultimately, the only question was if there was a downside to telling him what she wanted to tell him?
She… couldn’t really think of one. It seemed like a genuinely good idea. Fuck, possibly the best idea she’d ever heard. Violet was not a woman who stood on ceremony or backed away from something because of potential embarrassment. If she wanted it or thou
ght it, you were probably going to hear about it. She kept her secrets and she didn’t share lightly, but she was unafraid to follow her own heart. To go after what she wanted. Violet was the executor of her own happiness. True, she was also frequently its executioner as well, but that was beside the point.
And Violet… wanted this. She’d wanted it for weeks, actually. She didn’t doubt herself because doubters ended up as corpses who possessed nothing. Cowards played coy to save face; Violet took her fucking happiness. Even if it had to be wrenched from semi-unwilling arms.
Finally, she simply shrugged at him. “Okay.”
“Okay what?” He sounded both surprised and confused.
“Okay okay.” She shrugged again. “Fuck it.” She yanked the iron band from her finger and held it up to show him. “This. This is… It’s… it’s a long story. I don’t really want to talk about it. But it’s the nail from the floorboard in the closet where I grew up. It saved me once. As a girl. From something very bad. Worse than you can…” She trailed off, recognizing that if she elaborated, she’d start crying. “Anyway, I made it into a ring, as a symbol. So I wouldn’t forget how strong I could be. Even though my countrymen don’t approve of jewelry and keep trying to take it. Worn it anyway. Every single day. I’ve fought many times over this ring, Kobb. Bled for it. It’s the only thing that… Well, it means more… It is everything, do you understand?”
“I understand.” He nodded. “It is a talisman. Very powerful.”
“It is… it is me.” She pointed at her chest. “Who I am. What I dream and where I’m from.” She slid it across the table to him. “It’s yours”
He looked down at the ring in surprise. “…Why?” He glanced up at her. “Why are you giving me this?”
Captive of a Fairytale Barbarian Page 39
