Inkblots: A Tale of Magic, Adventure, and Romance

XXIX. Enough Truth for One Day

Alia couldn't remember the last time she'd gone an entire night without sleeping. Maybe never. She also couldn't remember how shade felt on her skin or how it felt to admire Heroes instead of wanting to kick them in the shins.

Kit was merciless, giving no quarter no matter how bleary her eyes or unsteady her steps became. He even had the audacity to seem energetic. Cheerful even. After dragging her away from her only friend and tormenting her with a brisk pace in the endless desert sun, he looked like a man on an important mission.

"What happened to all your chatter?" he asked, tossing the words over his shoulder and striding on briskly. The soil beneath their feet had grown sandy, and he left foot-shaped divots in the soft dirt with every step.

"I'm tired," Alia said dully.

"It's barely midday." His tone was lighthearted, but his intent stare never left the horizon. The sun had just tipped past the apex point in the sky, and the mountains in the distance shimmered with the heat.

She plodded on. "I didn't sleep last night." Because I'm a fool.

Now he actually shot an amused glance at her. "I didn't get too much sleep either." His eyes glinted.

Her head jerked away, eyes leaping to the ground, and a sagebrush caught at her ankle sharply. "Bollocks," she muttered at the bush, trying to stay quiet.

Apparently seeing the chink in her armor, her companion pushed further. "I have no complaints, though. Maybe you should choose your nighttime activities more wisely."

She murmured weakly, a wordless noise of protest. Her cheeks were flaming with sunburn and embarrassment.

"You're blushing like a virgin!" Kit was openly staring at her now, one eyebrow arched high, expression an odd combination of amusement and intrigue. "I thought you said you were twenty."

"Won't you just let it go?!" she blurted, suddenly angry. "I thought you said this was life or death, but now you're all jokes. I would think you could manage to take it seriously considering the circumstances and the responsibility—"

He stopped midstride, spinning on one heel to face her. His face had gone deadly serious, all traces of teasing gone. "What, you mean that this is my fault? Because I had the bad luck to kill that little girl, now it's my responsibility? And now I can't ever laugh again, is that it?" His tone was bitter and strange, almost as though he were accusing himself instead of asking her.

"No—it's not that—I didn't—" Alia drew up short, tongue-tied and feeling wretched. "I didn't mean that at all! I don't think it's your fault—ever since I found out that it was the two magics, I knew it—"

He stepped closer, both eyebrows pushed high above that crooked nose. "What do you mean ever since? Is that why you've been quizzing me so often? You thought I had done something to the Book? Blood of the unnamed gods, I should have known." He sounded weary now, sick and bitter, like a man who's given up hope.

She froze entirely, a mouse before a snake. From here she could see the day-old scruff on his chins and the furious tension that pressed his thin lips into a flat line. "No," she said weakly, but even to her ears it was unconvincing. "I didn't, I just thought that maybe you might have..." She struggled to present it in some non-accusatory way. "I thought there might be some misinformation in the Book. That's all. But obviously there wasn't," she hurried to add.

Kit didn't soften. "You thought I lied. Well, little miss scribe-in-training, you don't know everything after all. You can't lie to that cursed parcel of cow's hide and magic." He was off again now, striding across the desert without any mind to the length of her legs. She stumbled behind him, treading on the edge of his long shadow but unable to close the distance even at a jog. "I suppose you thought you'd just flutter your bloody eyelashes at me and I'd tell you what I wouldn't tell the Scribes," he spat.

Alia panted, stretching her steps further so she could keep him in hearing distance. "Kit," she gasped, "wait—"

"That Book sucked my memory dry," he said harshly, not slowing in the least. "How many times was I supposed to relive it?"

"Kit, please—" She cut off with a cry, foot catching in a hidden hole. The bush in front of her slammed up to meet her hands, releasing the strong, acrid scent of sage, and her pack flew up on her shoulders, yanking at the joints.

The Hero stopped, finally, and turned back to see her sprawled there on the ground. She wanted him to jog back to her, to look as concerned as Darine had when Caddock fell, but Kit just asked, "Are you hurt?" in a flat, reserved tone.

Alia considered this for a moment. Her palms were scraped and welling tiny droplets of blood, and her knee ached terribly. But when she staggered upright, her legs felt strong enough. "No," she said at last, still trying to catch her breath. "But could you please slow down? I can't keep up." She felt defeated, and the emotion made it into her quiet words.

"I suppose I'm supposed to drag my feet so you can interrogate me on every little detail of the Story again," he said in response—but his feet didn't move, nor did he turn away from her.

"Look," she said, feeling very small. She took a few shaky steps toward him, feeling out her bruises, and then settled into a more comfortable walk at Kit's side. "What was I supposed to think? I could feel some sort of tangle in the Story's weave, and it was centered somewhere around your discovery of the—of her. Of Khati. When I asked you about it and you wouldn't tell me more than the barest details, how could I help but decide you were hiding something? I knew you weren't supposed to lie to the Book, and I thought maybe that was what had damaged it." Her hands clenched involuntarily at the memory of the disintegrating parchment, knuckles stinging against her weeping scrapes.

"And I was supposed to what? To say, I sliced the stomach of a small girl open and watched her die and now I'm a Hero? Gods, Alia, I thought you were a child. You practically are." His brown gaze was back on the horizon, but he seemed more resigned now, and he walked at her pace.

"Only at first!" she said, rebelling at the disparagement of her age. "I'm an adult! I'm not certain you're much older yourself, and you knew my age when I was asking you. And you wouldn't tell me anything, Kit. It wasn't just the parts where, where that had happened. You were secretive about the whole journey. Like you had something to hide," she added, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, heavy irony weighting his voice. "Let me bloody well correct myself. I was supposed to tell the naive little scribe girl that I murdered a child oh and by the way, I also fucked Mirabelle bloody Flamelocks, so everyone's favorite love story and the Heroine they idolize are all lies."

Shock slapped Alia like a cold surge of water.

She gaped wordlessly at Kit's handsome profile, trying to formulate any sort of response, but no words were forthcoming. In contrast, the Hero walked calmly onward, like nothing he had said was out of the ordinary.

Alia blinked a few times, looking away at the sky, watching a distant buzzard circle on the drafts of air. "What?" she finally asked. "I— How?"

"I think that's probably enough truth for one day, don't you?" Kit glanced briefly at her, lips quirked, but he still didn't make eye contact.

She nodded silently, mind still blank with surprise.

Kit did WHAT? I'm dying to hear everyone's reactions. Fire away in the comments!