Bloodsong Ch. 02

She combed through her hair with her fingers and stared at the body, expecting to finally be bowled over by the awareness of every which way in which she'd ruined everything.

All she could think was that Ralen made for better company as a corpse than he had alive.

She couldn't stay sitting there forever. The dress was torn evenly enough that if she allowed it to dry, walked with care and kept the fabric pinched at knee level, the slit might be mistaken for a feature. If she stuck to the darker paths of the gardens and avoided acquaintances likely to stop her for a chat, she stood a chance of getting away from the Glass Tower and . . .

And then what?

There was nowhere she could run to, not from this. Once Ralen didn't turn up, people would go looking and they would uncover her crime. She could, Valeriana supposed, wondering when and how her mind had become this ice palace in which she stood capable of contemplating such notions, dump the rest of the body in the sea. It would wash up somewhere, but she'd buy herself time, for all that she did not know what she'd use it for.

She'd been seen leaving with him, so they'd realize her guilt, eventually. She'd be arrested and face the judgment of the High Council. Plead her case, feign remorse with a straight face, because although she could now feel herself edging closer and closer to a meltdown, she still couldn't make herself regret.

"Val! Thank the gods!"

Valeriana had been focusing so intensely on dreading the future that she'd missed not just the familiar song drifting her way but also the steps barreling up the bridge.

She swallowed twice before she dared to turn her head, now well and truly panicking. It was panic of an unknown sort. It didn't strangle her and render her paralyzed. It flared danger danger danger and urged her to run, scream, break something, break someone, act.

Jack slowed down as he neared her, switching to a sedate, careful gait, as if he believed she might spook and bolt if he were to approach too fast. Valeriana laughed before she could help it, acknowledged that she didn't know why she'd done it when the situation was in no way amusing, laughed again. Was this what despairing was like, on the other side of the myriad of lines she'd crossed? Things just bubbling out of her for no reason, uninhibited?

She'd never seen Jack's face look so ashen, but then again, he'd never caught her in the company of a man she'd murdered. Laughter kept erupting from her until the sound was rendered unsettling and hysterical even to her own ears. Even then she found it hard to stop.

"Hi," she said. Her hands shook. The contents of her head were such a maladjusted mess that she couldn't pinpoint what about Jack's arrival had tipped her over the edge, if it had been him to set her off. If all of it hadn't just been overdue.

"What happened?" What happened should be obvious. She gestured at the body, in case he'd overlooked it, then at her mouth, hoping to be understood without having to explain aloud.

"I . . ." No, she truly couldn't say it. Not yet.

Jack sank down and put an arm around her, tracing her face and shoulders as if making sure that all parts were present and accounted for. She endured it for a moment before it became too much. It felt wrong to be touched. Like her skin was tainted, covered in poisonous tar, and she'd make it stick to him by allowing contact. She slunk back, shaking his arm. Jack let it drop in surprise and confused hurt.

"What did he do?" His tone was low, dangerous. Valeriana couldn't recall any other time he'd sounded like that. He made no other overtures to touch her, but moved with her as she turned her head, so that she couldn't escape facing him. "Val, look at me. What did he—"

"I'm fine." The words came out wet and weak. She was crying; she hadn't noticed until just then. Her mouth felt like an alien entity stuck to her face as she struggled to form a coherent account and, predictably, failed. "I'd have been, I— he was always planning to back out of the match, he never meant to — even if I had let him, he'd still . . . and everyone would know what I'd let him do and no one else would ever . . . "

Jack swore aloud and stood up abruptly. She didn't register his intent before he stopped by Ralen's body, scowled at it, and landed a kick right between the legs. Then he did it again, the sound strangely squelchy on reprise.

"He's dead already," she told him, at first feeling silly for saying it, what with the absence of the head making it self-evident, only to shudder as she assimilated that she'd gone and said it. "He's dead. I killed him. I bit his head off and he's dead."

"Good." Jack kicked a few more times too many and surveyed his handwork — or, rather, footwork — with a dark satisfaction. Valeriana went against her judgment, looked, dropped her head in her hands and covered her eyes. Ralen's groin had come to resemble a sloppy helping of beef mince. The sight, combined with the memory of his blood, his flesh clogging her mouth, made her dry heave.

Jack reacted to her sound of distress at once, swooping to her side. He had blood on his boots. They were the soft, pale sort of leather that would be forever stained with rusty marks if he didn't wash it off before it dried. Why was she concerning herself with that, of all things? Valeriana wanted to laugh again, and once again she didn't know why.

"I didn't realize that you had left. When I went looking for you, you were nowhere to be found, so I knew right then that something was wrong, but . . . " Jack sucked in a breath, looking — guilty, why? Then she remembered how personally he'd taken everything involving her upcoming mating. "I'm sorry I didn't get here in time. I'd already combed through the tower and the gardens. This was the last place I thought to check . . ."

"It's alright. It wasn't your responsibility to look out for me." Valeriana discovered she'd lost the ability to cry quietly, her sobs becoming so violent they turned into coughs. "I'm . . . I think . . . I don't know what to do, now. I don't know how I'll make myself return there and tell everyone—"

"Don't."

"I can't hide it, they'll find out, and then it'll look even worse because I tried to cover it up!" She bit her lip, feeling nauseous in a way she hadn't even while eating through flesh. "I'm not sure how they'll — they won't execute me for this, I think, but they'll send me to prison and my family will never want to speak to me again. And what can I hope to do with myself once I'm out?" She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, but even that was too much, made her feel awfully trapped.

"You're not going to prison." When he said it like that, Valeriana almost believed him, though her optimism was tempered by the knowledge that when Jack looked so certain about something, it meant that he was about to propose something liable to make her tear her hair out. "We'll say it was me. That he tried — what he tried, and that I stopped him. Everyone will believe that easily enough."

After his nearly as mad proposal from earlier that evening, Valeriana had been preparing for something of the sort, so it didn't come off as so much of a shock as it would otherwise.

"You can't." Why, why couldn't he stop to think at a time like this, when she couldn't do it for him because the inside of her head had become an unending fracas. "You can't. You were on trial not one month ago and everyone knows you only got acquitted because of your father. If they take you in on a murder charge, they won't let you off the hook this time as a matter of principle! They'll assume that you're a menace to society!"

Jack said nothing, which was on its own an acknowledgement of her rightness.

"I'll turn myself in," she concluded. "It's the only thing I can do."

"No, it isn't." He didn't let her stand, clamping a hand on her shoulder and turning her towards him. Going against every misgiving wriggling inside her chest and every voice that screamed no, wrong, leave, Valeriana leaned forward and rested her head on his chest.

"I can't let you take the blame. I won't." Which made this a goodbye of sorts, meaning that when Jack reached out to stroke her hair, it wrenched her heart more than it made her skin and flesh want to slide off her bones.

"And I won't let you be put away to have only darkness knows what done to you," he retorted, holding her tighter while she kept shaking her head. He must have tried to sound very grave, to still manage it with his mouth buried in her hair. "I'm getting you out of here. I'll talk to my aunt again, she'll—"

"I—no. You can't shelter me at her house, if they ask my family where I might be that's the first place they'll think of, and I don't want to impose on Lady Marabeth, or make more trouble for you . . . Jack, I don't—"

"Earth, then," Jack cut her off, before she could launch into a lengthy breakdown of why it was all so unfeasible. "Aunt Marabeth was going to leave for the facility she has there one of these days. She can take you with her; it's an unconquered world, so it has next to no Council oversight. Her younger sister has been hiding there, having a grand old time, for two thousand years, and that one pulled crap that powerful people have an actual investment in getting her to answer for."

"I'd never be allowed back if I ran."

"You did mention that you'd always wanted to travel off-world. Would you really mind having to do it forever?"

"My family—"

"Already hates you anyway."

"That's . . . not fair to Tess and the twins, they're hard on me but they don't . . ." They hadn't before, but there was no way that they wouldn't despise her after what she'd done. Valeriana could see Jack's expression turn triumphant as she worked out that when you boiled the situation down to its marrow, running wouldn't lose her anything that she wouldn't be stripped of either way. "Will you — will you come too, or is that . .?"

He tipped her chin up and kissed her forehead, leaving her so startled that the urge to tell him off forgot to manifest and all she could do was look up in his eyes.

She saw herself reflected there, hopeful.

"Wait for me by the garden wall. I'm going to drag my aunt out and we'll meet you there. See if you can . . ." He grimaced at the body, but bit back his distaste as he released her with one lasting, reassuring squeeze. ". . . dump that filth somewhere where it'll take a while to get found. I'll be back before you know it, and you? You'll be just fine. Trust me."

Valeriana couldn't do anything but nod.

It might be the first time she believed those words.