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Damon inhales. He wishes the bodyman had told them. So he wouldn’t have to. “There are four runes on Lyr’s chest,” Damon begins, “branded there by the Hevelikar witch Jareleezi. She used her scrying magic to know to place him in the harem so I would end up taking him. He had a mission from her. To seduce me and persuade me to run away with him to Ismagaar. To take me to her. None of it was real. I gave my skin for nothing. He didn’t mean what he said to me, it was all for his mistress.”

“Oh,” says Opeth. “No, that isn’t… He didn’t seduce you.”

“Don’t,” Damon says. “I know you are his friend. He probably lied to you too.”

Opeth laughs. “No. No, he told me the truth. All of it. It was sending him half mad. Jareleezi sent him to you because her Gods told her that that would set you on a path which would lead you to her in Ismagaar. He did nothing. He was just a tool of those vicious Gods, the same Gods that had Jareleezi carve and burn marks into his skin.”

Damon shakes his head, feeling a mess of emotions break over him like a wave. “He had my name written on his chest, by her, in her filthy rituals. My name.”

Opeth sighs, “But he didn’t put it there himself did he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Damon,” Opeth says, “Jareleezi used Lyr’s flesh to receive messages from her Gods. She hurt him deeply. Partly for magical rituals and partly, I think, because she enjoyed it. She had absolute power over him. He was terrified of her. And he was as terrified of you discovering what he was. But did he ever do anything to hurt you? Did he ever place you in danger? Did he make any attempt to take you to Jareleezi? You know his heart is yours.”

“He didn’t tell me the truth,” Damon says in a whisper.

“That’s his only crime against you? Not telling you something for fear it would drive you away. Because he had fallen in love with you.”

Damon looks down into his empty wooden bowl. He hates how true Opeth’s words are. He knows Lyr. He does. He knows his heart. “I don’t know how to trust him now. He even dosed himself with foribunda on the Azuria Ascendant, to try and make me take my pleasure from him when I resisted.”

“That,” Opeth says, “was me.”

Damon’s whole body goes tight. He controls himself but his body language must have given something away because Trysta’s hand moves on her dagger. “You?” Damon growls out, “How could you do such a thing?”

Opeth shrugs. “He wanted you. And you wanted him. I thought it would help you get over your reticence. I wanted Lyr safe. I thought he would be safest in your care if you took him, as you desired.”

“He was desperate for me on the Azuria Ascendant,” Damon says, his voice a low, sad rumble. “I almost fucked him.”

“You would have been safe on the Azuria Ascendant to do so.”

“I would have been doing exactly what Atticul wanted me to do.”

“And what you wanted to do.”

Damon nods. “Yes.”

“Damon,” Trysta says, “I know you loved him.”

“I love him still,” Damon answers in a whisper. He shivers. Lyr has had such a miserable life, unthinkably miserable, and yet he treated everyone with bright, sweet kindness. He’d lost his mind if he ever thought Lyr had betrayed him.

“Then why don’t we go and get him?,” Trysta says.

“At least talk to him,” says Opeth.

The idea seems to eclipse every other thought in Damon’s head. He will get Lyr back, he thinks. He will take Lyr back and hear the truth from his own sweet lips. Exiled or not, he will go to Attar. He will storm the Rose Palace. They called him One Man Army once, let them see what a One Man Army can truly do.

He stands up. “Let us go. Let us go tonight and take him. I will kill anyone who stands in my way.”

His legs buckle under him and he slumps back onto his barrel.

Trysta pats his arm, “Gather your strength, you took enough sofi to kill a carthorse. What’s one more night? We will go take him in the morning, One Man Army.”

26

DAMON

One night is all Damon can bear to wait. He should take another day, but he knows Lyr is rotting in the dungeons of the Rose Palace.