Night Witch

Chapter 37

Karina was pacing. Hans was brooding. 

"Why are we here, Karina?" he kept whispering, nursing his wound. The arrow had sliced his cheekbone, just a short distance away from his eye. Karina tried not to look at it, instead focusing on leaving a trail of disaster in her wake. Whenever she saw it, something new and strange rolled her stomach about and pinched her chest.

She kicked at a clay pot in the way of her restless feet. It shattered. 

"I'm thirsty," Hans complained.  She hurled the flask at him, and he ducked it, causing an uncomfortably loud clang as it hit the wall. A minute later she could hear the chug-chugging of gulping.

"Why do you hate me?"

The arrow was at her feet. She could pick it up. She could try and throw it, if she had ever been that athletic. And even if she couldn't do that, there was always the option of slitting his throat.

Karina kicked it aside. It skittered across the ground until it ran into a cloak

"You're a monster. A traitor." She was spitting out the words as they formed in her mind.  "Why would I like you? Why would I ever care about you? You're a creature of the Light. There is nothing good about you." She wiped her mouth with a shirtsleeve, before crooking her finger towards the flask. "Give it."

He didn't throw it, like she had expected. Instead, he stood up and walked it over to her, pressing it into her hand. She took a few long draughts of fresh water before capping the bottle and slinging it over her shoulder. He was still standing there, barely a hand's span away.

"What do you want?"

"If you hate me that much, why haven't you tried to kill me?" Oh, why did his eyes have to look so hopeful? And why did he have to stand so close? And Ancestors, why had her heart stopped beating?

She shoved him backwards. He stumbled, but didn't fall.

"Don't you think I've tried? I can't. And that's the reason I'm still locked in this room with someone I'd rather murder than breathe the same air as." The words left her breathless and in his face with a finger jabbing the center of his chest.

He shoved her away this time, and she didn't object.

"So it's that bad?" 

The silence was palpable. She didn't go back to pacing. But as far as she could tell, he was still brooding.

"Do you know the reason I didn't want us to come here?"

"I don't care."

"I was told to kill Baba Yaga, and you, after you led me to her."

If she was still before, she was a statue now. "Who told you this?" she hissed. "What did they want?"

"Luma." She didn't react. "The Messenger of Light. She wants to even the odds for the upcoming war between Light and Dark."

Karina rubbed her fingers together. So both sides were preparing; that was unsurprising, but still upsetting. "When did she say it would be?"

He sucked in a breath, like he was preparing to give big news. "The eclipse."

The eclipse...there was something about the eclipse...if only she could remember it...The answer was on the tip of her tongue.

"Traitor, what did this stupid Messenger of Light tell you about eclipses?" 

The monster's brow furrowed, and the corners of his lips turned downwards. "Will you stop calling me traitor if I tell you?"

"No. Doing one good thing now doesn't change the horrible things you've done in the past."

"I don't define myself by my past. Do you? Because if you do, then you're just a servant girl who breaks her back for people she doesn't care about." His mouth twisted. "Isn't that what you are now, if you're stuck in here with me?"

"I hate you!"

"I'm--" He took a deep breath, interrupted himself. "I'm sorry. For the past. But I'm living now, Karina." His cut was visible in the light. She resisted the urge to touch it, to do--to do something to it.

"You'd still be a traitor. Just not to me."

"Then why do you want me to tell you?"

"I need to know!"

"No." He folded his arms across his chest. "Why should I help you? You don't care about me."

"I'll kill you."

"You said you can't."

"Who said I wasn't lying?"

"I do. You've always been a bad liar, Karina. It's why you avoid the truth. and you've been nothing but honest with me this whole conversation. Whenever you lie your eyes dart to the side or you look at the ground." She realized she was staring at the ground right then and forced herself to meet his eyes.

"Why am I a monster to you?"

There were so many memories that slipped from her mind when she tried to think on them longer than a second, but they left her with an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach and a bitter taste on her tongue. "I can't explain it."

"Fine." He ran a hand through his hair. "I can't explain the eclipses to you then." He turned to go back to his spot by the wall.

She went back to pacing, and he went back to brooding, and they continued to suffer in silence.