Page 4 of Silver & Gold

“What was I supposed to say, Seth? Oh, just so you know, you’ve been putting your cock inside a murderer?”

“I’m not talking about that!”

“What else could you possibly be talking about?”

“When did you figure out what I was after? When I described the book to you? Or was it before that, all the way back in Shalaa? When I came to Shalaa hunting for Julian and talked to the merchant Jamil, I described Julian to him. He’s distinctive with that birthmark. Did you talk to Jamil and learn I was after Julian? Did you know even then and use me? To get the book? Because it incriminates you? Is that what you’ve wanted all along? Is that”—Seth’s voice broke—“why you’re with me?”

Raider’s head spun. Seth’s version of events was so unexpected, so wrong, that it staggered him back a step. “Seth, I didn’t … I didn’t know about the book until I saw it in Malik’s workroom.”

Seth jerked back. “Wait, what? You didn’t tell me that! What do you mean you saw it in Malik’s workroom? When?”

Raider closed his eyes briefly at the memory of that discovery, of how it had torn his reality apart. He had spent years trying to erase his memories of what Kahzir had done to him—and what he himself had then done to Hassan.

But Raider couldn’t pretend anymore that it hadn’t happened. He couldn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was. A weapon. A thing. A murderer.

“It was right before the sand serpent fight. But I didn’t know, until I saw it there, with the cover as you’d described, that the book you were after was Kahzir’s. I didn’t even know he wrote a book. And I don’t know what Julian has to do with any of it. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. I thought he was young, from what you said? He would have been too young for all this. It was ten years ago.”

Seth looked confused. “But …”

“But you must have known. All along. About the book. About me.”

Anger flashed through Seth’s eyes, displacing his confusion. “I told you from the beginning that I didn’t know anything about the goddamn book except what the cover looked like! That’s still all I know about it, except that I now know it’s about you. It’s not like Rahim and Malik let me read it. They had me tied to a chair! All they did was flash its cover at me.”

Raider shook his head. That didn’t fit with what he’d imagined. “But you were with them. You came into the dungeon with them to interrogate me.”

“Because that was the only way I could see you! Are you forgetting that they had drugged me at dinner, just like they’d drugged you? They’d forced their compulsive shit on me, just like they wanted me to do to you.”

Raider’s throat tightened at the memory of Seth pretending to inject him with the arcanist’s compulsive drug. It had meant a lot to him that Seth hadn’t done that, but at the same time …

Raider shook his head again. This wasn’t making sense. “I thought you did that because you already knew the truth about me. So I could lie.”

“Raider, I didn’t know anything about you until they told me—because you never did! But regardless of what you’d done, or whether any of what they’d said was true, I wasn’t going to drug you against your will. I would never do something like that. And, yes, of course I wanted you to be able to lie if you were guilty! But I didn’t know you were, not for certain, until you confessed.”

Raider sat with a thump. He put his face in his hands. He needed a minute to sort through this. He needed a month.

Seth demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me about the book yourself after you found it? You said nothing.”

Raider struggled to circle around to that point. “There was the sand serpent—”

“After that, Raider, after. You could have said something before dinner, before everything went to hell. We could’ve made a plan!”

“When I saw the book, I thought … I thought you’d known all along. About me. I didn’t know your intentions.”

“My intentions? I’m not a fucking liar! But you—”

“Okay, Seth, fuck! Just let me think!”

Seth made a sound of disgust and stalked off. Raider could practically feel him vibrating with anger out there in the darkness, but he didn’t look, even though his arcane eye could have peered through that darkness. He drew up his knees and rested his forehead on them.

Reality—or his perception of it—had changed too many times over the past twenty-four hours. He couldn’t sort through it all, couldn’t see the whole picture clearly.

But …

Seth had not betrayed him. Seth had never intended to. He didn’t intend to now. Which meant that Seth’s rescue of him from Rahim’s dungeon had been real. It meant that everything with Seth had been real.

That fact simultaneously healed a wound in Raider’s heart and dealt him a new one. Because if everything with Seth had been real? Then it was Raider, and Raider alone, who had destroyed it. With his lies. No—with the truth. It was the truth that had ripped them apart.

Raider, already knowing the truth of himself, had known from the beginning that he didn’t deserve Seth. It was Seth who hadn’t known that. Now he did.