“You’re very lucky!” I said, turning around to look at him.
“Yes, I was. I’m normally more careful, but I had some idea of ending it all that night. Not out of any existential dread, you understand; there just didn’t seem to be any reason to go on. It made everything, even secrecy, seem less important.”
“There were reasons!” I said furiously.
“Yes, but I couldn’t see that then. I was under interdict by the demon council with very little likelihood of ever getting out of it. My father wanted me to come home and prostitute myself for the good of the family, and should I ever break my parole, that was where I’d be sent. My wife was dead at my hands, and while her demon status meant that the human authorities weren’t going to investigate, the guilt. . .”
He shook his head. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I wanted out.”
I didn’t say anything, although my hands clenched on his thighs, reassuring myself that he was still there.
“Tobias dragged me up here. We lay on the ground, right over there,” he pointed to a space by the cliff’s edge, “partly to watch the stars and partly due to me being too drunk to stand up. Everything was spinning rather alarmingly, as I recall.”
“And then what?” I asked, after a while, because Pritkin had stopped talking. Probably remembering.
“Nothing. We went back down again. He made me drink his terrible concoction, and I went to bed. It didn’t work, by the way. I threw up hot sauce all the next day, instead of gin. Or maybe along with the gin; I don’t really recall. My throat burned for days.
“But that was the only injury I suffered, thanks to him. It turned out that I didn’t need a bunch of platitudes, which is all anyone else would have given me. I just needed someone to give a damn. I won’t say I was out of the weeds after that, not for years, but I never came that close again.
“I left the Corps shortly thereafter—for a while—but I never forgot Tobias, and the lesson he taught me.”
“What lesson?”
“That it doesn’t matter how strong you are, or think you are. Everyone can stumble. And everyone needs someone to catch them when they fall.”
I started to get the picture. “I have someone,” I reminded him.
“And yet you travel alone.”
“Plenty of Pythias have—”
“Plenty of Pythias weren’t at war. They faced an occasional dark mage. You face . . . monsters.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“It doesn’t matter how powerful you are,” he repeated. “Anyone can fall.”
His fingers deftly found the knot on my head, courtesy of a rock in old Romania. He must have noticed it in the shower but hadn’t said anything. He still didn’t, but those skillful fingers played over it gently, tracing the outline of something that should have been far worse. That had been, until a mysterious woman saved me with healing abilities she shouldn’t have had.
“We were a good team once, weren’t we?” he asked, after a while.
“You know we were.”
“Then why not again?” I didn’t answer and he regarded me soberly, turning my face so that he could see my eyes. “You seem to want me to return, to go back to court, yet at the same time, you push me away. You must have a reason.”
I frowned at him. “You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
I got up, both because I’d finally gotten too cold to sit still, and because I was agitated. Unlike Pritkin on that long-ago night, I hadn’t drunk nearly enough for this! But it seemed to be the designated place for soul bearing around here.
At least it was pretty.
“I want you back,” I told him. “Fuck Jonas—he’s had you long enough.”
“But.”
“But I want you safe. That’s why I didn’t object when he wanted to borrow you. I made him swear that you wouldn’t be going with the invasion. That you’d be an advisor only—”