He’d been dreading what she was obviously about to tell him. She’d found the secret compartment and the vials of scales and blood. But the look of shock on her face now startled him. She leaned closer to him, lifting a hand. He leaned away from it, but she touched the side of his face anyway. Her fingers slid down his cheek and trailed along his jawline. She’d never touched him in such a way, let alone looked at him with such horror.
“Sweet Sa have mercy,” she said breathlessly. “Sedric. You’ve begun to scale.”
“No!” He denied it fiercely. He jerked his face from her touch, replaced her hands with his own, and ran his fingers over his face. What did he feel? What was this? “No, it’s only roughness, Alise. The river water scalded me, and then I was out in the wind and the sun. It’s not scaling! I’m not a Rain Wilder, why would I grow scales? Don’t be foolish, Alise! Don’t be foolish!”
She just looked at him, her face locked between horror and pity. He rose abruptly from his bed, went to his wardrobe, and took out the little mirror he used for shaving. He hadn’t shaved since his return to the ship—that was all she was seeing. He looked into the mirror intently, bringing his candle close as he felt along his jawline. His skin was rough there. Just rough. “I need to shave. That’s all. Alise, you gave me a turn! What a wild notion. I’m tired now, but I’ll shave in the morning and put a bit of lotion on my face. You’ll see. Scaling. What an idea!”
She continued to stare at him. He met her eyes, daring her to disagree with him. She folded her lips in and bit them and then shook her head to herself.
“I’m very tired, Alise. I’m sure you understand.” Just leave. Please. He wanted to look more closely at his face but not while she was here watching him.
“I know you must be tired. I’m sorry. Well. I’ve spoken about everything except the one thing that brings me here. And I don’t know how to approach that except bluntly. Sedric. Before we left Bingtown, when we were planning this journey…did Hest ever entrust to you a token for me? A keepsake? Something that, perhaps, you were to give me during our journey?”
He stared at her, honestly baffled. A keepsake from Hest for her? What could she be thinking? Hest was not the type to give keepsakes to anyone, let alone someone who had so seriously and recently irritated him. He didn’t say that. He merely shook his head, silently at first and then, as she narrowed her eyes and looked at him suspiciously, more vehemently. “No, Alise, he gave me nothing to pass on to you. I swear.”
“Sedric.” Her tone told him to stop pretending. “Perhaps he told you not to tell me of it or give it to me unless I, oh, I don’t know, unless I lived up to some standard he expected or…I don’t know. Sedric, speak bluntly to me. I know about the locket. I found it when I made up your bed. The locket with Hest’s portrait in it. The locket that says Always on the back.”
At her first mention of it, he felt his heart give a hitch and then beat wildly. He felt dizzy and black spots danced before his eyes. The locket. How could he have been so foolish as to leave it where anyone might see it? When first he’d had it made, he’d promised himself to wear it always, to remind him every moment of the person who had so changed his life. Always. He’d had it engraved on the case. The little gold case that he’d paid for himself. The birthday gift that he had given himself. What a stupid, thoughtless, wretchedly apt gesture that had been!
And now his silence had lasted too long. She stared at him, a sick and reluctant triumph in her eyes. “Sedric,” she said.
“Oh. That locket.” A lie, he needed a lie. Some sort of excuse, some reason he would have such a thing. “It’s mine, actually. It’s mine.”
The words came out so easily. Then they hung, irrevocable and unmistakable, in the silent air of the room. All turned to stillness. He didn’t look at Alise. If she continued to breathe, he couldn’t hear it. He was breathing, wasn’t he? Slow and shallow. Can one unmake a moment? He willed it not to be, tried to make it unhappen with his stillness.
But she spoke, nailing the reality to what he had just said with the most damning words of all. “Sedric, I don’t understand.”
“No,” he replied lightly, glibly, as if the admission meant nothing at all to him. “Most people don’t. And lately, I’ll admit I scarcely understand it myself. Hest? Hest and Always on the same locket? What an unlikely combination.” He laughed, but the sound fell in brittle pieces all around him. Moved by what, he could not say, he reached into the bundle he used for a pillow and pulled out the locket. “Here. You can have it, if you wish. A gift from me rather than Hest.”