The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(71)

Dahlia saw him as vulnerable, and because of her own background, and because she had long seen the truth about herself, she knew how to wrestle free that vulnerability and take advantage of it.

“Do you know why I wear such baubles on my ears?” she asked. Entreri looked at her curiously, studying her diamonds, the many clear ones on her left ear, the single black diamond stud on her right.

“Former lovers,” she said, tapping her left ear.

“Current on your right,” Entreri said, and he chuckled. “Black diamond for a drow, I see.”

“I hope it doesn’t look awkward when I move it to my left lobe with the others,” she said.

Entreri laughed at her.

She poured more wine.

“Will you listen to my tale?” Dahlia whispered.

“I think I know most of it.”

Dahlia looked around. “Not here,” she said. “I cannot.” She slid her chair back and stood up, drained her drink in one gulp, then similarly drained Entreri’s. She collected the bottles and glasses and looked at the man plaintively.

“I need to tell it,” she said. “In full. I have never done that. I fear I’ll not be free until I do.”

She looked across the room to the stairs leading to the rooms above, then back at Entreri, who, to her pleasant surprise, was rising from his seat. He stopped at the bar on their way, and collected two more bottles of the wine.

Dahlia had been caught by her own net, she realized once they’d arrived in his room, and realized, too, that she didn’t care. So she told him all of it, of her trip that morning long ago to the river to fetch some water, of returning to her clan’s small village to find it full of Shadovar.

With tears in her eyes, she told him of the rape, of watching her mother’s murder.

They drank and they talked, and she began to pry at Entreri, and Entreri began to talk. He told Dahlia of his own mother’s betrayal, of being sold as a slave and taken to Calimport—and he nearly spat as he spoke that city’s name. He started to tell of his rise on the streets, but suddenly he stopped, and he looked at her with a puzzled expression.

She swallowed hard.

“Tell me about those other diamonds,” Entreri said. “The ones in your left ear.”

“About those other lovers, you mean,” Dahlia said, and she let a hint of wickedness slip into her tone. But any hopes that Entreri was looking for a voyeuristic thrill were quickly dashed by the stern-faced assassin.

“Which one represents Herzgo Alegni?” Entreri asked.

Dahlia tried unsuccessfully to keep the startled look off her face. Why would he say such a thing? Particularly now?

“I notice that you did not move any upon Alegni’s death,” Entreri said, and Dahlia realized that a long while had passed while she had chewed over Entreri’s previous comment. “You didn’t remove any, or shift any from one ear to the other. Why is that?”

“You do not wish to hear,” Dahlia replied.

“Should I be jealous? Or afraid?”

“You do not seem to me to be the jealous type.”

Entreri grinned back at her, a look that made her think that he knew a lot more about her macabre game with the diamond studs than he was letting on.

“Herzgo Alegni was my rapist, never a lover,” she said evenly, and Entreri nodded and didn’t seem intimidated by her threatening tone, and seemed rather as if he’d expected that very answer and was glad of it.

“And when will you move the black diamond?”

Dahlia stared at him sternly, but didn’t reply.

“The old swordsman’s rule, yes?” Entreri teased, and he took a drink, lifting a full glass with his right hand and draining it. He wiped his mouth with his left sleeve and said, “Dispatch with your right hand, dispose with your left.”

Again Dahlia sat silent, digesting the assassin’s cutting insights. Of course, none of the diamonds represented the beast Alegni, but it was also true that all of them represented Herzgo Alegni. Those diamonds, this whole game, had been put in place because of him, after all. Taking her lovers was because of him, murdering her lovers was because of him, and because those lovers were not strong enough to win the necessary fight and end her own pain.

And thus all of them served to satiate the woman, all of those lovers, one by one, getting Alegni’s just reward …

But what about Drizzt, then, she wondered?

They drank some more, and Dahlia made sure to get very close to Entreri as they sat on his bed, and made sure to turn just so, that she could afford him some tantalizing views of her blouse, unbuttoned low. And she made sure to touch him just so, to comfort him at first, then to tantalize him.

And she realized that she was indeed having that very effect.

“You deny it, but you love Drizzt,” Entreri said unexpectedly, throwing her back, but just a bit.

“I am not with Drizzt,” she protested.

“Because you love him, and he has pushed you away. Dahlia cannot accept that, can she?”

“Do you really want to talk about Drizzt?” she said, determined not to get sidetracked.

“Or are you, perhaps, jealous of him?” Entreri posed. “Jealousy, or simple admiration?”

Dahlia sat back and stared at him incredulously.

“Because he was stronger than you,” Entreri explained. “Because of his choices. I can assure you, from first-hand experience, that Drizzt’s homeland of Menzoberranzan is as bad as anything you have ever known—even the violation by Alegni.”