Page 83

Trysta tips her head back to look at the towering size of the manor. “This was Damon’s,” she says. Then she looks at Lyr. “And he threw it all away.”

“For me,” Lyr says quietly. And no matter what Damon says, he can’t help wondering if Damon ever regrets it. If he misses this life and this manor and that is why he has brought them all back to Attar and decided they ought to stay here.

This beautiful life. Everything Damon had given his blood and body to build for himself and he gave it all up for Lyr. And now he’s in there. With Inez.

Elric moves closer to Lyr and puts an arm around him. “I know what you’re thinking,” Elric says. “And don’t. He doesn’t regret it. Any of it. Even what we saw done to him on the punishment scaffold. I’ve seen how he looks at you. He’d step up on that scaffold and take those lashes for you all over again.”

Lyr looks up into Elric’s sweetly shaped face. “I know,” he whispers, but his voice is shaky.

Elric kisses Lyr on the cheek. “Don’t even think about it. He looks at you like… Like the Bastard looks at me.”

Lukas scowls at Elric.

Elric leans closer to Lyr. “Well, not that look.”

“I should not be jealous of his wife,” Lyr says in a harsh whisper. “When I first came here I tried so hard not to be. I was already half in love with him and she is so beautiful.”

“I know she is,” says Elric. “I saw them wed.”

“Lordling,” Lukas says, “Damon is wed to Lyr.”

“I know that,” Elric says, turning to Lukas with a pout. “But that does not mean I did not see his wedding to Inez.”

Trysta, flanking Lyr on the opposite side from Elric, links her arm with Lyr’s, and says, “Let us not talk of Damon’s wedding to the beautiful wife he could not fuck.”

Lukas laughs.

Lyr looks at Trysta. He feels so sweetly relieved to be reminded of the truth of the matter.

Trysta looks at Lyr with her bright eyes dancing. “I have known Damon a long time. I know his heart and I know his cock. We would sit in his tent and he would wipe blood off his sword, while telling me of his beautiful wife and how he could never give her a son because his cock would not permit him to cover her.”

“You’re right,” Lyr says. “I should stop. I should not mistrust Damon when all he has ever done is prove to me that I am his.”

“I’ll change the subject,” Elric hisses, turning to face Lukas. “When are you going to wed me, Bastard?”

“I will wed you if you can be silent until Damon returns,” Lukas says with the kind of smug tone that suggests he thinks there is little chance of Elric keeping quiet for more than a moment.

Elric presses his lips tight together, looking at Lukas defiantly. At that moment, Damon comes out of the back of Sanglora.

Elric’s eyes go wide. He grins. “I accept your proposal, Bastard.”

But Lyr barely notices the bickering conversation that follows, because walking a step behind Damon, is Inez. In the greying dusk, she looks almost exactly as he remembers her, but somehow more human. As if his memories of her had built her up into something beyond. She is beautiful. But she is simply a woman. A woman with gold hair piled on her head and a fine gown that is a fall of pale blue fabric, fastened to a gold collar at her neck. She glances at Lyr once, and looks away.

Damon says, “This is Inez. Mistress of Sanglora. She has agreed that we can stay here. At great risk to herself.”

Inez is standing beside Damon, letting him speak for her.

Lyr looks at Inez and says, “You would really take such a risk?”

Damon frowns, but Inez responds with a nod. “I understand the danger. Damon has done much to keep me safe.” But Lyr notices her eying the dog in Elric’s arms as if she didn’t know they were bringing such an animal into her home along with a group of wanted men.

“You could lose Sanglora if you are discovered,” Lyr says. “You could lose everything.”

“Yes,” she pauses. “But I have this life in Sanglora because of Damon. And I understand there are greater things at stake here.”

So, Lyr thinks, Damon has told her about Ur-Durik or Vindar or perhaps all of it. He wonders why she believed him. Did she want to believe him? Does she want him here? Does she hope to be with him again? Does she love him? Lyr is sure that Damon does not love Inez, but does Inez love Damon? What has he truly promised her?

He agreed to this. Lyr has to remind himself of that. Damon promised Lyr that if Lyr asked it of him, Damon would break his word to Doroth Zain and not return to Attar. But Attar is the only place where they know of anyone who can read Ur-Ambolk. And the safest place in Attar, is here, is Sanglora.