This is dedicated to all who knew the sight of tears falling on the pages of Mastiff, cut to the core with betrayal on behalf of our heroine.
Many people have gabbed at me about my eyes, how they're ghost eyes or ice eyes, I hear them talk but I didn't pay any mind to them, until then. Then, I felt them. They burned in my face, not just from the tears that have been my companion these last few days. Kora put a magic on me so that I didn't look like I had been crying, though in truth I had cried harder than I ever had in my life.
The guards closed the door behind me. In that small room my tripes clenched. I had to do this, I knew. But my legs were telling me to just run out of there. Too late.
There he was, just sitting there, with the marks of the Cage Dog's teeth all over him. The guards shut the door behind me and I sat cross-legged on the floor across the room from where he was chained to the wall.
"Cooper." Gods curse him, he sounded the same. He sounded like the same cove that had taught me everything I know about a Dog's business, him and Goodwin. Goodwin refused to see him. I still didn't know why I was there.
"Tunstall." The silence near about deafened me. They seem to think that the opposite of love is hate. I know better now. The opposite of love is indifference. Only love could have turned into such hate as I had in me then. If a mot could die just from hate and pain they would have had to take me out of that cell in a cart.
What was I supposed to say? I couldn't ask why, I knew why, he had told me. The cold of the cell was starting to seep into my bones and it occurred to me that he must have been nearabout freezing. I could feel those owl eyes on me. I had to say something. I balled my hands into fists in my lap so he couldn't see that they shook. I met his eyes with my own, he looked away fast.
"Do you have anything to say to me?" I asked, I'm not sure what I wanted to hear from him.
"Anything I have to say has already crossed your mind." He replied, and damn him, he sounded as cool as the Black God's breath.
"You're not going to see me cry, Tunstall. You taught me to be too strong for that. Do you regret it? I must know."
"Do I regret it? Beka, you don't know what it's like, to be in love and so far beneath your lover. Don't judge me like that Beka. You don't know-"
"Don't judge you? Don't judge you? I don't have to judge you, a magistrate already did. You'll be hanged, Tunstall, and not because you loved a mot. You'll be hanged for being a traitor to the Crown, the Dogs, and to me." I stood because I couldn't bear sitting still any longer and I put my back to him like a coward.
"I wish I could call you a scut. I wish you were a scut. I wish I could care no more for you than I would for a flea on Achoo's bum. Do you realize what you've done to me? To Goodwin? To Sabine?" I stopped myself and took a breath. He was so quiet I had to turn around to make sure he hadn't died while I yattered on. He lived, and watched me. His eyes were hidden in shadow; I couldn't see the emotion in them.
"I won't be at the hanging. I don't think even now I could sit by and watch someone kill you; I'd have to kill them. Good journey to the Black God's embrace." I crouched right in front of him, knowing full well that he could kill me at such a distance. What I said next probably destroyed him, but I needed to say it, for whatever reason.
"You'll always be my hero, even though you've lost your mind." I left and never looked back, but I cried again that night for the man who taught me the Dog's business, and grew flowers, and made jokes.
I don't own Tunstall or Beka, or the rights to the book. Please review. I'm sorry if this made things worse.