With my own bag in hand, I joined him. “What do you suggest?”
“You could have a hot meal. Come, sievā, unless you eat more, you can’t continue to ride as you have been.”
The idea of downing another energy bar made me queasy. The pantry here had been stocked.
“Afterward, you could have a long, hot shower.” When I faltered, Aric pulled off his gauntlets and reached for me. He laid a bare hand on my lower back, ushering me into the kitchen. Before he released me, his fingertips dug in a little, as if he battled with himself to let me go.
“We should prepare a feast.” He placed his helmet, swords, and gauntlets on a counter, his bag on the floor.
He motioned for me to give him my pack, but I wasn’t sold on staying. “You expect us to fire up the stove in a slave boss’s house and cook?”
“Let’s.” His amber eyes were playful. “And if we get thirsty from our labors . . .” He opened the refrigerator with the toe of his armor-covered boot, revealing a twelve-pack of bottled beer. “Not as bracing as the vodka we always share, but we’ll manage.”
“Even with the bodies out there, shouldn’t we be anxious about more slavers coming? Or the men in the garage getting free? Or Bagmen? It’s A.F., we should be anxious about something.”
“If for some reason I don’t hear a threat, Thanatos is right out back. He’s quite territorial.” To put it mildly.
I sidled over to the pantry. Among the offerings was a jar of maraschino cherries, just like Jack and I had found at Selena’s.
When I was with Aric, things reminded me of Jack. And the opposite was true as well. Which meant I was forever screwed. If I chose one, I’d never stop thinking about the other.
Pain awaited me, no matter what I did. The idea couldn’t be more depressing. . . .
My foraging turned up a family-size lasagna in the freezer. The package didn’t even have ice on the edges. The meal wouldn’t be gourmet, but it’d be hot and cheesy.
Game. Set. Match. I dropped my bag. “Fine. We’ll eat. Just so no one else can have it.” I tossed it in the microwave, then hopped up on the counter to sit, my transceiver within reach.
Aric opened two beers—pop-tops with his fist—handing me one.
The same reasons for drinking still applied: possible imminent demise plus severe mental confusion equaled to hell with it.
He leaned one broad shoulder against the kitchen doorway. He was so tall, he barely cleared the frame. “Uz veselibu.”
“What does that mean?”
“Cheers.” We both took a swig. “The mortal’s meeting must have been dire for him to leave us together.”
“Jack trusts me.”
“If only you could return that trust.”
I frowned. “Why do you have to taunt him so much?”
“Because he gives me much fodder.” Aric took a long draw from his bottle.
“You called him a drunkard, but we’re drinking right now. You like your vodka well enough.”
“Yet I didn’t bring a liter of it in my valise.”
“No. But you smoked opium for centuries straight.”
Lips curving, he said, “And this is why I should never tell you anything.”
“Like who my sworn enemies are?”
His grin deepened. “Am I to get away with nothing, little wife?”
“Jack was a prisoner of the Lovers, just days ago. I still have no idea what they did to him—but it’s safe to say he’s been through enough without your jabs.”
Aric’s amusement faded. “I give as good as I get.”
“Put yourself in Jack’s position. A man with a deadly touch singled out his girlfriend to torment, and she had no clue why. Then the man took her away. Violently. What would you do if someone else treated me like that?”
His expression told me everything.
“In any case, you’re so much older, so shouldn’t you be more mature?”
“Mature? You know I don’t age physically between games, but I probably don’t mentally either.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I go into a kind of stasis.” Staring past me, he said, “The centuries between feel like one long dream. The games are like briefly waking in the night—to an awareness of threat and peril—only to slip back into slumber once the game ends.”
My God, his existence had been horrific. And then I would come along every few hundred years to crash his life. I took a deep drink.
But I couldn’t feel guilty any longer for misdeeds committed by another incarnation. I wouldn’t. “I’m sorry for your past, Aric. I wish it had been different. I wish I had been. But I refuse to keep paying for what I did in past games.”
He seemed to shake away a haze. “Do you, then?”
“In our first meeting, you skewered me with your sword. In other words: you started it. You didn’t ask me to marry you, just ordered it. I played the hand I was dealt.”
“I take your point.”
Hadn’t really expected him to say that.
“Let’s begin anew, Empress.”
Over the rim of my bottle, I said, “I haven’t decided anything.”
He made a sound of frustration. “The mortal can’t provide for you like I can. I offer you a home. Does he think you’ll live in that muddy outpost?”
Defensive, I said, “Jack plans to rebuild Haven House for me.”
Anger flashed across Aric’s face. He schooled his reactions as quickly as he did everything else, leaving his emotions to seethe beneath the surface. “If you desire something, all you have to do is tell me. It will shortly be yours. You’ll see soon enough.”
I swallowed. Was he referencing the gift he’d spoken of? The trick up his sleeve? I almost dreaded learning what it was.
What if Aric could straight-up end the game? Blow up the machine?
“Deveaux will never understand you as I do. As only another Arcana can.” Aric replaced my beer. Because I’d finished it.
“Maybe not. But we have other ties.” I thought of the ribbon he’d kept all this time, the one now in my pocket. I thought of our mutual longing for our home.
“As do we. We are wed.” Aric set down his bottle, moving in front of me. “I think of you as mine. You don’t see the countless times a day I have to stop myself from touching my wife.” His eyes were just on the verge of glowing. Like this, his gaze reminded me less of stars, and more of a sunrise.