Fathoms of Forgiveness (Sacred Breath, Book 2) (30 page)

“Nancy bugger?” she asked softly instead, with a light teasing tone in her voice.

Vachlan smiled, and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, as if he understood what she really had meant to say. “Visola, my darling, how about a little gratitude for saving you from violation?”

“No, I appreciate it, I really do—but couldn’t you have said something a little more heroic while saving me?” The truth was that she could not really imagine anything more heroic. She also could not have hoped for more conclusive proof of his allegiance.

“As you well know, during the spontaneous and transient act of passionate murder, it is extremely challenging to think of the ideal words to say. You must forgive me if the first phrases which spring to mind aren’t trendy American insults.”

Visola squinted an eye open to glance down at the man on the floor. She grimaced. “What do you think Emperor Zalcan is going to say about the modifications you made to his son’s face?”

“I hope he’ll consider it an eloquent letter of resignation.” They smiled at each other. Vachlan laid Visola out on the cot, and began moving around the room. “I need to get you home,” he said. He indicated a large waterproof case to her. “I was gathering supplies while you slept.”

“You can’t,” she told him, surprised with how thoughtful he was. He had been planning their escape, even if this situation with Zalcan had not happened. She felt anxiety seize her. “If you go anywhere near Adlivun, they’ll kill you.”

“I need to take you somewhere safe.”

Visola watched his lips move as they spoke those words. Her eyes narrowed as she searched her memory. She was almost sure she had heard him say that exact phrase once before. An overpowering feeling of déjà vu hung in the air; it was strange but comforting. She tried to shake off the intangible sensations and return to reality. Visola needed to compensate for weeks of silent anger.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t kill Corallyn?” she asked him furiously. “All this time I believed…”

“What? She was just a child! What kind of a monster do you think I am?” he asked her. He seemed equally upset. “Are you insane, Visola? How could you believe I would do something like that?”

“How could
you
believe that I would cheat on you!” she shot back, grabbing and throwing the nearest object she could find at him.

He froze, and the pair of pliers hit him squarely in the chest. He stared at her, unblinking. “You didn’t…”

“Of course not!”

He crossed the room and returned to her—she had fallen off the cot in her effort to reach for something to throw at him. He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. “God, Viso…”

“Two hundred years. Two hundred years!” she shouted against his chest. “Don’t even touch me, you… you fucktard!”

“I’m a… what?”

She pushed him away halfheartedly so that she could punch him in the face wholeheartedly. Her already-broken fingers exploded in pain. “Shit,” she cursed, shaking her hand.

“Relax,” he told her with a smile, rubbing his jaw. “Once you’re better, I promise you can abuse me all you like.”

“Don’t ever forget that you said that,” she said sternly, pointing a bandaged finger at him. She waggled her finger menacingly. “Now what the hell are we going to do?”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her hand. “I’m going to get you to Adlivun.”

The name of her home had never sounded sweeter to Visola. It was impossible. She shook her head. “Your men will come after us. We won’t get very far.”

“We’ll fight.”

“I’m useless. I’ll just hold you back,” she said, giving him a sad smile. “You have to escape without me.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you. Not ever again.”

 “Romance—how lovely,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No time for that. Focus on getting out of here alive.”

“I have a plan,” he said. “We’re both going to make it. There are guards stationed everywhere in Zimovia Strait, except to the west, across the mountains and ice.”

“Mountains and ice?”

“It’s the only direction from which we couldn’t be attacked, so I didn’t station guards there. Maybe I was subconsciously leaving an escape route.”

“This might surprise you, but I have a broken knee. Can’t do mountains.”

“It’s fine—I can carry you. Maybe I was subconsciously starving you to make you lighter.”

Visola saw the twinkle in his eye. She pouted. “Hey! You thought I was fat?”

“It doesn’t matter now—I’ve fixed the problem,” he said with a drawl, putting his hands on her bony ribcage. He moved his face close to hers and spoke in a comically sultry voice. “You know how much I like my women anorexic and dying.”

She smiled at his sexy sarcasm. “Well then, let’s get going—wait! I have a plan too. Let’s leave a note. You will have to write it for me.”

Vachlan began looking around for a piece of paper before grabbing a fancy pen that was lying nearby. He dipped it into the blood pooling in Zalcan’s eye socket, and lifted the pen, poised and ready to write.

She stared at the paper, still curious to see if he would write in the same fancy handwriting of Corallyn’s ransom note. She remembered his handwriting, but so much time had passed that she could not be sure. “Prisoner escaped. Gone after her,” Visola began narrating. When Vachlan penned the words, she was relieved to see that his handwriting was a messy, manly scrawl. It was not elegant calligraphy. She knew who had written the note. “Will return shortly,” she continued narrating. “Load all men up into ships and await my return to command an attack on Adlivun.”

“What does she look like?” Vachlan asked sleepily.

They had escaped from Zimovia, and traveled west for as long as possible before pitching their tent. Visola remained quiet for some time before responding. “I see her every time I look at you.”

“With your red hair, I hope?”

“Yes. Well, she used to have red hair when she was a girl.”

“Isn’t she still a girl? A teenager at most.”

“She is a very old woman. Her life is almost over. She has two grown sons.”

“What? Wait—this is too much information. Our daughter lived on land? I’m a grandfather?”

“Please, Vachlan. I wished for so long that you would return, and you didn’t. Now that we’re here, and this is happening… it just all seems so unreal, and far too late.”

“Viso…”

“Please. No more questions tonight. It’s too bittersweet. I need to rest.”

Visola was curled up in her corner of the tiny space. She stared at Vachlan’s back as she played with a small knife. Her leg was probably well enough to walk on for a few miles, but she did not think he deserved to know this. No, he would have to keep on carrying her until they reached a city.

“Are you thinking about killing me?” Vachlan asked gruffly. He yawned and stretched, having just awoken.

“Yep,” Visola said in a chipper tone as she toyed with spinning the dagger between them. Occasionally it would point west at him, and occasionally it would point east toward her. Occasionally it would point north or south at neither of them. Continuously, when it stopped, she would consider what it meant with respect to fate, and whether fate was guiding her to take action, or to just continue being useless. A voice teased her internally.
You have never gone beneath the truth. You cannot navigate the endless fathoms of forgiveness.
She was reminded of the fact that she had felt somewhat comfortable and safe when Vachlan had been her clear-cut, straightforward enemy, and now that he was showing her tenderness she was becoming increasingly confused.

“So why don’t you just do it?”

“Need you to carry me around. Can’t move on my own—leg smashed.”

“Then once I get you home?”

“Sticking you in an oven and cooking you up with some salt and pepper. Having a scrumptious feast—eating your testicles first.”

“You can’t cook, Viso.”

“That’s true,” she said. She sighed, reaching up and began to trace patterns in the fabric of the tent. “To be perfectly honest, what I’m actually considering is divorce.”

He sat up abruptly, his head hitting the small tent and making it shake. “That’s impossible. There’s no such thing for sea-dwellers.”

“I was wondering if you’d get pissed about it. How delightful; your voice rose a whole decibel in volume.”

“How could you even
consider
divorce after all we’ve been through?”

“You mean after the torture, and more torture, followed by more torture?”

“Viso…”

“Or the whole you never having met your daughter, or maybe you attacking…”

“You have to stop listing my indiscretions.”

“Indiscretions!”

“That was a poor choice of wording…”

“Look, Vachlan. I only said I was considering a divorce. I haven’t decided yet. I spent some time on land. Everything moves faster there—even ideas are more progressive. I learned that marriage doesn’t have to last forever. It’s not the end of the world to make a mistake.”

He reached out and took her hand. “Visola, I’m willing to spend the rest of my life proving to you that I wasn’t a mistake. Please stop thinking about this now—we are sea-dwellers. We are different people…”

“No, we’re not. We’re just people. The way we work deep on the inside, and the way we connect with others, or rather, the way that we don’t connect with others—it’s all the same. On land or sea, people are the same.”

“Well, if you do decide that you want a divorce, don’t tell me.”

“Why not? You will probably have to agree. There will probably be some ceremony or some signing of papers or something.”

“No. I will never agree to that. Our marriage ends with death, Visola.” He reached out and grabbed her fur-covered shoulder.

She could feel the strength of his grip even through the thick layers. She turned and looked at the large hand on her joint, and she could not deny that even as he smashed her skin and muscle, the pressure was soothing. “You’re the one who left,” she said softly. “You ended our marriage with absence.”

“Now I want to begin it again with presence.”

“Don’t make a fool of me, Vachlan,” she begged. “History repeats itself and people don’t change. You know you still have the power to hurt me like no one else on earth ever has, or ever will. I can’t go through this again.

“It was King Kyrosed’s fault… he convinced me that you and he had…”

“No,” she whispered, pushing his hand away from her shoulder. “How could you even believe that? That’s absurd, and you know it’s absurd. If Kyrosed had ever tried to touch me I could have killed him with my eyes closed—with one finger, or even with one toe…”

“I know, Viso, I know… I was just so in love with you, and the jealousy killed me!”

“Like Othello,” Visola said with a sad smile. She reached out and placed her hand on her husband’s stomach. “I’m not some weak, trusting girl that you can wreck just because someone planted an idea in your head. I’m the general of an army, and I’m your equal, your match, your counterpart. I could destroy the world for a price just like you, if I was so inclined. I watched everything you did, and I learned from you. I could hurt you too. You know this, don’t you?”

When he nodded, she continued. “Then please understand if I need a divorce for the sake of my soul. I am a lot like you, but I don’t want to become any more like you. So let me think about this and make my decision.”

“I won’t allow you to even consider that, Visola,” he said, turning to look at her fiercely. He leaned over her, and crushed his lips to hers in a demanding kiss. He allowed the determination in his touch to speak for him for several minutes, as he hungrily kissed her. When he withdrew, he could see that her cheeks were flushed to match her hair and eyebrows. “We are going to be together from now on. Viso. Like we used to be.”

She had returned his kiss, but she toiled not to allow the abundance of happy, tingly feelings which had been generated inside of her to cloud her judgment. “I’ll let you know what I decide,” she told him. Her voice faltered slightly in the giddy, scatterbrained wake of his kiss. “I really think divorce could be a positive thing for both of us.”

He ripped himself away from her angrily, and began to pack up their supplies. “Just kill me if you decide that you don’t want me anymore. What is there left for me in this world if not for you? What is the point anymore? Do you know how much gold, money, and diamonds I have? Do you know how many safety deposit boxes, in how many banks, in how many different countries? How many identities, how many properties, how many passports, how many…”

“Shh,” Visola said, carefully raising herself to a seated position. “Don’t be silly. I would never hurt you.”

“Then, if you decide you want your divorce, just ask your sister or Aazuria to kill me. I am sure they will do it without a second’s hesitation—they will do it before you can even finish nodding to give them permission to do so.”

“You’re still a barrel of piranhas,” she whispered. “You’re the love of my life and the father of my child, but you already gnawed all my flesh off once. I don’t know about you, but I really hate being eaten alive. I prefer to eat than to be eaten—speaking of which, can you hunt some breakfast, V?”

“Mind if we take a break? We’re not being followed,” Vachlan said, panting slightly to catch his breath. He readjusted Visola in his arms.

“No, we can’t stop. Keep moving, and pick up the pace. You’re the one who smashed my knee, so why don’t you reflect on your actions while you carry me.”

“I guess being a wife is like riding a bicycle.”

“Are you implying that I’m nagging? You broke my fucking knee, Vachlan!”

“Sound has been coming out of your mouth for two days and I’m already sick of it. Can you please return to giving me the silent treatment?”

She clamped her lips shut obediently.

“Visola?” he asked, as he continued walking and panting. He looked down at her. “Viso, why aren’t you talking? I was just kidding. Please don’t give me the silent treatment again.”