Knight of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor Page B

from wanting to see her every day. She was the only bright spot his mother had allowed him…which was his mother’s intent.
    Merewyn placed her tray on the floor before she picked up the cool cloth and held it against the worst of the cuts on Varian’s face. Four rows of jagged welts went from his temple to chin. It looked as if one of the mandrakes had drawn his claw down his face. She couldn’t help but ache at the sight of it.
    He sucked his breath in sharply at the touch of the cloth that must have stung deeply. “I don’t need your kindness, Merewyn.”
    “You need someone’s. Perhaps your own might do you some good.”
    “Is that supposed to make sense?”
    “Yes,” she said sharply. For some reason, his stubbornness angered her. Why wouldn’t he just do what they wanted and end this? “Give them what they want so you can go free.”
    He snorted at that, then grimaced as if a sharp pain had gone through him. “Would you sell out someone for your freedom?”
    She looked down at his words, unable to respond. The answer made her feel ill. “They’re going to kill you, Varian.”
    His face was stoic as those vibrant green eyes captured her gaze. They held a passion and fire that was fathomless and surprising given his current situation. “We all die, one way or another. It’s how we live that matters.”
    Even so, she didn’t understand what allowed him to stand strong against such brutality. “Whatmatters to you so much that you would endure this pain for it?”
    He didn’t respond.
    “Tell me?” she asked as she moved the cloth to wipe away the blood from his lips. “Is it friendship?”
    “No.”
    “Love?”
    He gave a bitter laugh at that. “I don’t even know what that is.”
    “Then what?” She pulled back to stare at him. “What is so dear to you that this”—she gestured at his mangled body—“is trivial in comparison?”
    “I don’t know,” he said in a quiet tone.
    She shook her head in disbelief, then narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t know, and yet you bleed for it?”
    He gave her a gimlet stare that froze her to the spot. “Is there not something you would bleed for?”
    “No,” she said fervently. “Nothing. Why should I? No one would ever bleed for me.”
    One corner of his mouth turned up in a mocking smile. “Then we’re the same, you and I.”
    “How so?”
    “No one would ever bleed for me either.”
    Was that supposed to make sense? “Then why suffer this?”
    Again she was stung by the intensity of emotions that shone so brightly in his eyes. “BecauseI won’t be what my father was. I won’t turn against my oath. Not for anything.”
    She didn’t agree with him, but at least that made some sense. “Then you bleed for honor.”
    “I have no honor.”
    “Then you bleed for nothing.”
    “And you would bleed for nothing, either.”
    She dropped the cloth and clenched her hands in frustration at him. “Don’t twist my words around. That’s not what I meant.”
    “I know.”
    Unable to stand the scrutiny of his gaze and the sting of her own conscience, she started for the door.
    “Merewyn, wait.”
    She paused at his voice and turned to face him again. “Yes?”
    His gaze was sharp as if he were measuring her worth before he answered. “I…” He glanced to the floor as his voice broke off.
    “You?” she prompted.
    Once again he met her gaze and held it. “I need a favor, if you don’t mind.”
    A favor. There was something no one had asked her for in centuries. Here in Camelot they only ordered her about. Favors were for fools. Surely Varian of all people knew that.
    But her curiosity got the better of her, and she wanted to know what a man like this would ask of her. “What is this favor?”
    “Could you loosen the laces of my breastplate so that I could breathe a little easier?”
    Merewyn hesitated. She knew from Narishka that her Adoni mistress had been trying for days to get his armor from him with no success. Varian had kept it