LIRO || completed

• 18.1 •

Tyras didn't blink as he looked down on her. Liro hadn't expected him to. She hadn't expected him to come at all. It was an effort to fight the surprise from jarring her system.

He was dressed in finery, a rare look for a huntsman, though he still had a sword secured at his hip. It would have been far too irregular for him to come entirely unarmed. The blue of his overcoat was as pure as a starry sky, embellished with silver. 

He looked like the herald of death.

"I didn't know," he said. His voice was cold, like a sword being unsheathed in the moonlight.

Liro didn't sit up. "I didn't need to hear that."

Tyras swallowed. "I needed you to."

Now, she did sit. Her eyes met with his, neither of them backing down.

"Why?" she asked again. "Why did you come down here? What do you want?"

Her pulse was racing. It was all clicking together, one piece after the other. It was as if now that she had been betrayed, she was no longer terrified of it. She no longer saw only what she wanted to see. Liro was seeing everything for the first time, the whole spectrum.

His dark hair, and his eyes.

"It was you, wasn't it?" 

Her voice was almost breathless. She couldn't remember the last time she had been so afraid to speak. It was as if she spoke them too harshly, her words might shatter before her.

His jaw tensed, and he noticed the way his hand gripped the hilt of his sword more tightly.

She was right. Liro felt as if the ground beneath her had opened up, prepared to swallow her whole if she would let it. Her fighters tightened around the edge of her cot, fighting to keep her balance.

Perhaps he wasn't lying. Perhaps he truly hadn't known. 

But he had brought her to them. He had seen her sisters - he had seen her. By the Mother, her sisters had fired a bolt into his shoulder.

It was a terrifying realization, and she felt stripped bare. 

She had painted him to be a self entitled, pompous servant for the King, bending over backwards to do the bidding of another.

Yet he had kept one of her secrets far better than she had been able to.

Tyras finally spoke, his words clipped. "I did not appreciate the arrow in my shoulder. It left a nasty scar."

Liro swallowed. "That was - ," she began, fumbling for words.

"I don't believe I'm finished," Tyras interjected. 

Liro closed her mouth. She was too intrigued to be furious. She didn't just want to hear what he had to say - she needed to hear it. 

"You were being hunted," he began again. "I remember that. I remember bringing you back here." He stepped closer to the bars. Even though they were separated by several feet, it felt as if he were standing right in front of her. "I know what you are."

Liro's heart raced, and she cracked a smile. "I'm sure everyone knows I'm a murderer by now. It's hardly something to whisper about anymore."

Tyras didn't blink. "You know what I'm talking about."

"Do I?"

He pressed further. "Your sisters were the ones hunting you. And they've been hunting you ever since. The Sisters of Ruin. The bodies I've found scattered in the forest surrounding the kingdom. Why do you think we were all gone when you arrived?"

"You couldn't have carried me with a wound like that."

He wasn't condescending as he spoke, merely explanatory. "My horse was nearby."

"And you were out alone. Alone. No huntsman goes out alone."

"Your Queen has objectives. My King has his."

Liro's eyes narrowed. "And you've kept this quiet. For no reason in particular other than you like to keep secrets, don't you? You like to think you're smarter than everyone?"

Tyras pressed his lips together tightly. 

"Unlike some, I do not feel the need to let everyone in my immediate vicinity that I am a force to reckon with," he snapped.

Liro stood, her words lashing out like barbs. "You're not just a huntsman - you're his spy."

"And you're not just a huntsman, either," Tyras sneered, stepping closer to the bars. "You might as well be her assassin."

Liro smirked. "Would I be here if I was anything but?"

They were a mere hairsbreadth from each other, and if she moved just an inch forwards, her nose would brush his through the space between the bars. Her cheeks were flushed and animated.

She had experienced human sorrow. She had not yet had her fill of human rage.

Not just yet.

"You're here because you killed, but not for her, and in the process, you created a whole host of problems for her to clean up," Tyras snarled. "You were a pawn, and she moved you across the game-board as if you had your eyes closed the entire time."

Liro took a step backwards. His words struck her like a blow to the chest, and her pulse raced.

She had been calm and cool and collected. She had done everything as it should have been. And in the end -

In the end, Tyras was right.

She had played by her sisters game, and she had lost so foolishly. 

Liro took a seat on her cot, her revelation sinking in. Tyras stood stock still, as if he comprehended that something he had said had finally stuck.

Her eyes met his, and he sensed a wall building behind her eyes, brick by brick. Liro was determined to forget all the words that they had just spoken. 

"What's the occasion?" Liro said, glancing his attire up and down. 

Tyras clenched his jaw. His eyes shuttered close for a brief second, before reopening, completely uninterested in the task at hand.

"Just because your situation has taken a downturn does not mean that the world above ceases to turn," he snapped. 

Liro bit back a snarl. "I'd hate to think anyone would miss me."

He didn't deign to respond, instead turning on his heel and walking out of the dungeons.

Liro felt as though all the emptiness she had let grow was suddenly filled with rage. It coiled in her belly and made a home there, rearing its grotesque head as she watched him leave.

She felt the cruel smile she had seen so often on her sisters creep its way onto her lips.

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