The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(84)

He didn’t even look her way.

“Memnon,” she explained, moving to a chair beside his hammock. “An exotic city, from what I have heard. Southern and very different from—”

“Why would I care?” he interrupted, though he didn’t turn to regard her.

“Look at me,” she bade.

“Get out,” he replied.

Dahlia moved in a rush, leaping up, grabbing Effron and yanking him so roughly that he tumbled out of his hammock to crash down to the floor. He came up at once, violence shining clearly in his distinct eyes, one tiefling red, one elf blue.

“Sit down,” Dahlia commanded, motioning to a second chair.

“Jump into the sea,” he replied.

Dahlia took her seat anyway, and stared up at this half-elf, half-tiefling.

“I need to tell you, and you need to listen,” she said quietly.

“And then?”

Dahlia shrugged.

“And then you kill me?” Effron asked.

“No,” Dahlia answered, her voice thick with resignation.

“And then I kill you?”

“Would that please you?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t believe him, but understood why he had to say that. “Then perhaps I will let you, or maybe I will just let you walk away.”

Effron looked at her incredulously. “In Memnon?”

Dahlia shrugged as if it didn’t matter and motioned again to the chair, but Effron remained standing.

It didn’t matter. The elf woman took a deep breath. “For every moment since I learned who you truly were, in the bowels of Gauntlgrym, I have dreaded this,” she said, hardly able to keep her voice from cracking apart.

“Dreaded? Your admission? Did we not already have this conversation, in the hold of another boat in dock at Baldur’s Gate?”

“No,” she said, looking down in shame. “You already have my admission. You didn’t need it, because everything Herzgo Alegni has told you about that day when he first caught sight of you is no doubt true. There would be no need for him to embellish my crime.” She gave a helpless snort. “I did it.”

Dahlia took a deep breath, steeled herself, and looked Effron directly in the eye. “I threw you from the cliff. I denied your existence and wanted it … obliterated.” She took another deep breath to stop herself from simply falling over and dissolving on the floor. “I denied you. I had to.”

“Witch,” he muttered. “Murderess.”

“All true,” she said. “Do you even care why?”

That comment knocked Effron off balance, it seemed, and Dahlia had expected as much. Effron hadn’t killed her, hadn’t even tortured her, when he had her at his mercy in the hold of the scow in Baldur’s Gate. Most of all, he yelled at her, and asked her questions that had no answers.

But perhaps she had an explanation, and perhaps that was what the young warlock truly wanted.

“I was barely more than a girl,” Dahlia went on. “It wasn’t so long ago, but it seems like an eternity. And still I remember the day, every moment, every step—”

“The day you tried to murder me.”

Dahlia shook her head and looked down. “The day Herzgo Alegni tore my body and my heart.” A sob shivered her, but she would not give it credence, would not allow herself to go there. Not now.

She took another deep and steadying breath, and she determined to look him in the eye again, and was surprised when she at last glanced up to find him sitting in the chair across the way, staring back at her.

“I went to the river to fetch some water,” she began. “That was my morning chore, and one I relished.” She gave a helpless little laugh. “To be out in the forest alone, in the sunshine and with the birds and the small animals all around. Could an elf lass ask for more?”

Another uncomfortable laugh escaped her lips as she looked down once more.

She told her tale, and never once looked up at Effron. She told of the surprise she found waiting at her clan’s small village, of the marauding Shadovar, led by Herzgo Alegni. She didn’t hold back anything for Effron’s sensibilities or her own as she told of Alegni’s reaction to her, and fully detailed his violation, and his ultimate betrayal in the decapitation of her beloved mother.

Tears dripped from her eyes as she continued, describing the months that followed, the pain and the fear, honestly and in full, nor did she shy from the truth of that fateful day when she went to pay back Herzgo Alegni for his crimes.

“You didn’t matter,” she whispered. “It was not about you, even though it was in reality all about you. But I didn’t see that.”

“You could have run!” he shouted at her, and there was a profound shakiness to his voice.

“I know,” she whispered. “But I didn’t know.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me? Do you know the pain I have suffered?”

“You were my only weapon,” Dahlia said, and that was enough, she realized, for that was all she had. Before Effron could reply, she stood up and walked for the ladder.

“You can leave us in Memnon,” she told him, “and I will not stop you. You can find me and kill me if you choose. I will not resist, and I will demand of my companions that they exact no revenge upon you, whatever my torment or ultimate fate.”