Shattered (23 page)

“Untie her.”

“Aren’t you curious what secrets she’s fed your brother?  I know I am.”

Adara went quiet as Nathan’s eyes came off Robin and settled on her
.  He saw the plea in her face, her apology, her sadness.  All the emotions she wore so openly in her expression betrayed her now.

“Oh, now you’re quiet.”  Robin jerked Adara’s head back and she let out a whimper.

“I said untie her,” Nathan barked, and his voice echoed off the walls as he crossed the space between them.  Adara tensed and he stopped again.  He hadn’t meant to startle her.  Robin smirked at him as she unwrapped herself from the chair.  She slid her knife home at her waist and leaned against the table at her back.

Nathan reached up and Adara
flinched, her eyes wide, lower lip quivering, as though she thought he intended to strike her.  His hand froze half way.

“Have I ever given you reason to fear me?”

She shook her head and Nathan removed the gag.  Adara was silent.  He knelt and uncoiled the rope at her arms first, feeding it in reverse over and under, over and under.  Robin hadn’t knotted anything, she couldn’t perhaps, but the sheer amount of loops accomplished the same.  The entire time Nathan worked Adara sat still as stone.

“Tell me it isn’t true and I’ll believe you…
,” Nathan whispered, but only silence answered him back.  He was willing to believe the lie if only she’d tell it.  He needed something to hold on to.

Nathan
stood before her and removed the length that bound her to the back of the seat.  He could feel Robin near him, watching him, and he kept his eyes off her intentionally.

Adara’s lower lip trembled.  “He told me to keep an eye on you
Nathan.  But I didn’t tell him anything.”

More tears gathered in her eyes.  The light bouncing off them before they fell was like viewing the sky in a puddle.  It seemed like too big a thing to be captured in a single drop.

“It’s just that… he was worried about you…”

N
athan wiped her cheek.  He felt cold inside and he knew her betrayal should hurt, but it didn’t.  He couldn’t even feel the warmth of her skin beneath his finger.  He’d given up already.

“Do you really believe that?”
He asked, but his voice was hollow.

Adara bit down on her lip and frowned, and slowly she shook her head.  “I told him you hardly talk to me and that I needed more time.”

“I found this in her things,” Robin said, and Nathan had no choice but to look up at her then.  She handed him a small satchel from over Adara’s shoulder.

He poured the contents into his hand.  Small white flowers lay scattered like pale corpses among dry green le
aves.  “You meant to poison me.”

“No! Master Jeremy gave that to me to help you sleep, after I mentioned your nightmares.
  He wondered why you roam the castle at night… It seemed like such a harmless thing to tell him.”

“That’s C
ythinidia bloom,” Robin chimed in.  “He was right, it’d help him sleep, and he’d be dead by morning.  I know just how Jeremy would spin it too: ‘Poor trouble Nathan, driven to suicide by his own guilt.’ And that would be the last loose thread, neatly tied up.”

“I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t know what to do,” Adara whispered.  “So I took it and hid it
, but then he told me not to when he found out Clara was missing.”

Robin perked up a little at that and Nathan realized she didn’t know.  Jeremy was keeping that secret close.

“Besides my nightmares, my night walks, what else did you tell him?”

“That was it.  I had to give him something and it didn’t seem important. 
Half the castle knows you roam the walls.  But he doesn’t know any of the rest,” she said, and tears continued down her face.  “He doesn’t know that you remember it all, that you know he was involved, that you’ll never say anything because you love that woman.”

Nathan tensed and his eyes shot up to Robin’s just as hers went down.  Realization dawned for Adara a second later and she drew in a sharp breath, hand to her mouth.

“Oh gods, you two know each other…  She’s the one that…,” Adara began, but Nathan interrupted her.

“
Stop crying now Adara,” Nathan said, and brushed her cheek one last time.  “I want you to wait in the bedroom.  Robin and I need to talk for a bit.”

She nodded, scooted around Nathan, and darted from the room with her eyes to the floor.  The bedroom door shut behind her.

Robin ran her gloved fingertip over the wooden table, tracing the rings of a knot on its surface.  “You trust her, don’t you?”

Nathan sought her eyes but she kept them down.  He realized he was seeking the right answer from them
and, just as intentionally, she was keeping it from him.

“I needed to.”  When she was quiet still he felt the needed to justify his answer.  “I needed something, someone.  I languished for weeks after coming home.”

Her eyes came up to his then and they seemed softer than he remembered.  Against the dark border of her hair and the green of her traveling dress they were almost pale.  She hopped up on the table and let her feet dangle off.  Her dress rustled as dusty layers of cloth folded up into a mess beneath her.

“Come here Nathan.”

He hadn’t known what he’d do if he ever saw her again, but now that she was here it felt automatic.  He stepped forward and stopped just shy of her knees.  He wanted to touch her, but he knew better.  He needed her permission.

Robin stared level with him, her head tilted just slightly to one side.  The
messy braid of her hair fell over one shoulder, over the sleeves of her dress that ended in a loose ruffle.  She lifted one leg and the edge of her dress fell back from her traveling boots.  They ended half way up her calf, tied by a cord that crisscrossed from the top of her foot and up her shin.

“Help me out of these,
” she said, and almost as an afterthought added in, “Please.”

Nathan
crouched before her and supported the back of her heel in one hand.  The other ran up her calf, stopping just before leather turned to skin.

“Did y
ou just arrive in the capital?”  He pulled the cord and ran his fingers down the lacing, loosening it as he went.

Robin hummed a little affirmative and leaned back on her hands.  She pointed her foot outward and Nathan tugged one boot off.  She lifted her other so he might do the same.

“Your arrival here… right after Trent’s death – that’s not a coincidence, is it?”

“
I didn’t have anything to do with that Nathan.  That was Jeremy’s doing, I suspect, but I don’t have any proof.  Either way, things have been set into motion now and I’ve come to fulfill my role.”  Robin leaned forward and lifted his chin up.  “But Clara missing, that’s news.  No wonder you’re still alive.”

He turned his head free of her hand and looked down again as he pulled off her other boot.  He cupped her foot and pressed his thumbs against the soles of her feet, tracing small circles through her socks.  “
I know I wasn’t supposed to escape you with my life,” Nathan said, to her feet.  He wasn’t sure he had, but he left that unsaid.  “I wasn’t supposed to come back.  Did they send you back to finish this, to kill me this time?”

Robin pulled her knife from her waist and held the tip to the low fleshy space at the base of his neck.  Nathan looked up at her for just a moment before he turned his attention back to her feet.  He stripped off her socks and ran his hands half way up her calves.

“You don’t think I can, do you?” Robin toyed with the pressure of the blade, pushed it down until she could feel his pulse vibrating up the steel.

“I don’t.”

“I’ve killed men before.”

Nathan lifted her foot to kiss just above her ankle, then lower, to the arch, and Robin pressed the knife down until he winced.  Still he d
idn’t pull away.  At least some part of him didn’t want her to stop.

“You know where
Clara is, don’t you?”

“Yes.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to protect them from, but I sent them both far away from here.”

Robin grinned a little at that.  “Smart boy.  Take off your shirt.”

Nathan didn’t hesitate. 
She gave him enough room to pull the tunic off over his head before pressing the tip of her knife against the naked skin on his shoulder again.  The sharp edge she turned sideways, perpendicular to his body, and in one quick motion she dragged the flat face towards her.  Nathan jerked back. He looked down at his shoulder, only to see that the blade hadn’t even broken the skin, and he was suddenly terrified.  He still wanted to live.

“I want to hurt you Nathan.  I don’t know why, but when you act like this I can’t help it.  You should probably get up before I actually stab you with this.”

“I trust you,” he whispered.  The pain lingered as a light sting but the damage had been done. He wanted more.  “I have one condition though.”

Robin leaned forward, one arm across her knees.  “Conditions are new.  The people I hurt don’t usually get conditions.”

He took the knife from her hands and she let it go as easily as though she meant to hand it to him.  “I’m not your prisoner Robin.”

“I suppose not.  Well, what’s your condition?”

“You have to take off your gloves.”

Robin snorted and leaned back, only to pause there and look down at him again.  “Of all the things to ask for… You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

She pursed her lips together before offering her
hands up between them.

Her hands were limp in his.  She wasn’t happy about this, and thinking about that little victory made him smile.  He pulled off her gloves and kissed her finger tips before she pulled her hands away.

“Now you’re just taking liberties you haven’t earned.  Give me back my knife.”

“Yes Mistress,” he said, and in trying to conceal his smirk he forced it into his words.  She shot him a quick warning look and
it sent his eyes to the floor.

Robin leaned forward on her knees again and put the point to his shoulder.  Cold steel moved slowly, dragging without tearing, and Nathan drew in a long breath between his teeth.  The muscles in his back tensed and his arms went rigid to his sides, but he kept his upper body still.  Robin lifted the tip, moved it in just a little, and drew another slow line.

“If you scream will your little spy come rushing out to save you?”

“Probably,” Nathan said, the word a quick grunt as she tallied a third mark on his shoulder.  The point burned, like it was parting skin, but out of the corner of his eye he could see he was still whole.

“Then you better keep quiet, unless you want her to see you like this.  Have you slept with her yet?”

He wasn’t expecting that and his eyes came up to hers.

“You know better than to lie to me,” she warned, like she could see him debating the decision in his delay.

“I didn’t intend to, not at first, but it just happened.  I hated myself for it afterwards.  I swear I had no idea you were coming back.”

“You didn’t owe me celibacy Nathan, it was just a question,” Robin interrupted him.  “When I let you go I meant to let you go completely.”

She cupped his chin and tilted his face a little to the side, held his gaze, and he couldn’t look away though he wanted to.  Her words didn’t banish his guilt and his shame urged his eyes to the floor.  But before he could dwell on it long her knife moved up, to a spot just below his ear, and he watched her focus as she drew a line down across his neck,
all the way to his collarbone.

His breath whined
out and the effort to remain still had him trembling.  She traced two more lines, one beneath the other, from his ear and down.  And when she paused again he brought his hand to his throat.  It burned, but his fingers came away clean.

“You’re a mess, you know that?” She released his chin.  “I don’t know if I can help you.”

Nathan laughed and ran his hands up the outside of her legs, over her dress, and kissed her knees through the fabric.  He could smell the road on her.  Dry summer dust, her horse, the last tavern she’d stayed in before arriving in the capital, it all clung to her clothes and to her skin.

Robin pulled the dress back and balled it in her fist, upon her thighs, and Nathan trailed his lips over her skin.  He made it an inch beyond her knee before the hem she held taut stopped him.

“You know, there are days when I wonder what might have happened if I never asked for my freedom,” Nathan whispered, into the fabric.

Robin scanned his eyes and brushed the hair back from his forehead.  “I wo
uld have destroyed you, if I didn’t killed you first.”

“I don’t believe that.  You never enjoyed hurting me.  You were gentle, in a way.”

“You’re joking, right? Of course I enjoyed it, that was the problem.”

Nathan shook his head.  “You didn’t enjoy this,” he said, touching over his shoulder to his
back.

“The way I was beating you I’m amazed you had any sense left to feel anything other than pain.”