Chapter 54 Fight!

Chapter 54 Fight!
AZIZA
The garden was empty at this hour. The second patrol had passed twenty minutes before, the next wouldn't be due for forty, and I had timed the interval perfectly before coming out. Not that I had anything particularly useful planned-it was just the oldest habit in the world. I had been mapping patrol schedules since the first day I had been brought to the compound and the habit died hard even if the purpose was different now.
I needed the water.
Not the cistern tap or the washbasin in the room. I needed the pool; open and still and cool under the stars, with the compound walls looming dark on all sides and nobody looking at me or thinking of me or making decisions about me for forty minutes.
I laid my clothes on the bench at the far end and walked in.
The cold seeped into my ankles, then my knees, then my waist as I stepped in and waded deeper. I stood still in the middle of the pool and let it wash over me. The stars were out tonight. They shimmered silver around me in the dark water, and the only smell was of wet stone and the ivy on the opposite wall.
The blood magic had flared four times that day. A new record. Once in Rhydian's room when he was talking to me and I'd quickly turned away to wrestle it down. Once in the corridor outside the administration building. Twice more in the evening while I stood in the window of the east chamber and felt the spell trying to break itself through.
I touched the chain at my throat, felt the links under the surface of the water.
The pool was quiet. The compound was quiet. I floated onto my back and gazed up at the stars and just let everything be for a few minutes.
Then the footsteps came through the archway.
My feet were under me and I was halfway to my clothes before I even knew it, hands scrabbling to get the tunic pulled down. Then I heard Vessa’s voice.
“Don't rush,” Vessa said. “I’ve already seen.”
She stood in the mouth of the garden in a wrapper with her hair loose over her shoulders, arms crossed, her face fixed in an expression that wasn't entirely angry and wasn't entirely hurt, somewhere in between, and with no attempt to mask it.
I finished pulling the tunic over my head. My breeches lay on the bench by her feet, and there was no way I was reaching past her for them. I stood at the edge of the pool in a soaked tunic and bare feet and stared at her.
“Vessa,” I said.
“I'm not here to argue with you.” She stepped further into the garden and stopped by the edge of the pool. She was looking at the water. “I just couldn't sleep and I saw you come out and I thought- I don’t know what I thought.”
Silence fell between us.
Then she said without looking at me. “He came into my room last night.”
My jaw clenched.
“He's been coming in every few days for a while now.” She looked at me briefly, her eyes flicking sideways. “We're trying again for the baby. Did you know?”
Water was still dripping from my tunic hem onto the stones around my feet.
“He is my mate.” She met my eyes now. “Concubine is just a title. He is my mate, and whatever he's doing in your room, he comes back to mine. I wanted you to hear it from someone who would tell you it plainly.”
I clenched my hands at my sides and then made them relax.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because you’re standing in my husband’s pool in the dark believing that you have something I don’t.” Her voice was quiet. “And I want you to know what it is that you actually have.”
It was worst that she said it with no venom, just clear and even.
“He doesn’t love you.” The words were out before I had a chance to stop them. Vessa’s eyes snapped to mine.
“He told you that?” she said.
“He didn’t have to.”
“Funny.” She tilted her head. “He told me he loved me last night. In your fancy new room.” Something crossed her face and she didn’t bother to hide it. “He tells us both things. He’s like that. He’s always been like that.”
My hands clenched again.
“Get out of this compound.” Her voice broke on the last word. “Please, Aziza. Just leave. You have taken enough already.”
“I haven’t taken anything that wasn’t given.”
“You have taken my husband. You have taken my baby. You have taken my rooms. My rooms are directly across from yours, and I can hear you sometimes through the wall and I-”. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and dropped her hand. “You don’t know what you’re walking into. You have no pack behind you, no history, no name anyone can trace. He’ll use you until you’re no use to him, and then I will still be here.”
My tunic was thoroughly soaked, and my feet were cold on the stones. I looked at Vessa and tried to think of all the things I wasn’t permitted to say.
“You should go back inside,” I said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Vessa-”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracked on the syllable. “Don’t you say my name. You’re the household staff. My husband feels like being generous right now and you don’t get to stand here and-”
She moved suddenly.
Her hand slapped across my face-open palm, hard. It was the same hand she had used on me in the hall, and the same one she had used on me in the pool, the same hand that always landed whenever she decided something needed a demonstration. My head snapped to the side, and I caught my feet under me and pushed her back with both hands. She stumbled two steps and immediately lunged again.
We were neither of us particularly athletic. Neither of us was exactly skilled at fighting and it showed. She grabbed at my hair-what there was of it, growing in ragged bits around my face-and I grabbed her wrist and twisted. She pulled harder and I lost my footing on the wet stones and fell to one knee. She drove down on me, using my momentum and the entire weight of her body to slam me against the ground.
I threw my arm up, blocking my face; she hit my shoulder. I fell from underneath her, almost out of the slippery stone and scrambled back to my feet just as she pushed herself up from the ground, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her hair undone, her robe slipping off one shoulder, her eyes furious and weary and utterly indifferent to everything except that the fight was over.
She grabbed me by the front of the wet tunic and shoved me two steps back toward the pool's edge and I slammed down onto the stone lip with a stinging on the back of my knees and nearly pitched into the water.
She released me. Stepped back. Stared at me with her chest heaving and her hair everywhere and her face utterly ruined, and then she bent over and spat on the stone at my feet. She stood up, pushed her robe back into place over her shoulder, turned, and walked out of the garden without looking back.
The archway swallowed her, and the garden grew silent again. I stood at the pool's edge, my knees throbbing and my tunic dripping, the stars still high, the moon pool still a cold, bright, silent shimmer. I laid my palm flat against the rings through the damp fabric of my tunic, and waited.