Chapter Eight - Nearer To Happiness

The next day I went to see Devi at some point in the morning. She shooed me away.

Later that evening, we hosted a repeat performance of the previous evening in which she would rather pay me to get lost than deal with any aspect of our terrible truth. Away I went to the same inn and the same bottle of brand.

The day after I fared better. She asked when I could pay back the money I owed. I told her soon, and she nodded and slammed the door. As you can see, my definition of "faring better" is relative, but as it turned out that she was my relative, how could I begrudge her?

It was the day after this that I knocked and she yanked it open with a put-upon sigh. "If you agree to leave me alone, I'll drop your remaining debt. More than fair, I'd say."

"It isn't fair and you know it."

"What are you doing here?" she said in wonder as I stalked past her into the room. Our room. "Why can't you take a hint?"

"Because we have much to discuss that remains."

Devi grinned at me. Just like a bear woken from too early hibernation before it eats your head. "We don't. It seems plain to me what must be done here. You and I? We never existed to each other. We aren't lovers, friends, family, any. Just customer and shim-gall."

I winced at the less-than-affectionate term. "That must be nice. To be able to chop it off like a gangrenous limb."

"Very apt analogy, Sir Bloodless. Now scoot."

"I'm sorry, Devi," I told her firmly. "This is... beyond the realm of insanity, but you have become a part of my life now. A true, integral part. I'm not throwing it away over-"

"Over what?" She strode up to me and pressed herself flush with me, face pointed straight up into mine. "Say it. Say it right now while we're so close I can feel your heart hammering."

It was a very long second. There were so many things I wanted to do and say, but what could I? My hand reached up to cup her cheek... but I stopped it. Because it was too intimate.

"Don't you love this?" she said dismally, even though she was smiling. "Don't you love what we're turning ourselves into? Reasons to hate. Reasons to hate the whole of everything."

"Devi..."

Now my hand did go to her cheek; it needed to be there. She leaned into it, and a tear leaked down the other one. Her lips curled back in disgust... but she put her hands on my waist.

"We're going to die," she said miserably as she let me press her head into my chest. "Someone's going to kill us for this one day. Even if that someone isn't you or I, which it may very well be."

"It isn't our fault, though!" I insisted violently, as if speaking to the universe. "We are blameless in this. Maybe, if my mother had ever bothered to mention to me that she once had another child before..."

"SAY IT."

I didn't say it. I ground it out, as between millstones. "You're my sister."

"Ah!" she gasped miserably, sobbing already. "There we g-go. That... w-wasn't so hard, now, was it?"

"What else do you want me to say?"

"Say that we're related by blood, Kvothe. Dear brother Kvothe, son of my mother. Say that we're linked by it, that it's possible we even have the same father for all we're privy. Two yield from the one union."

My teeth gnashed as I clutched at her skull. "Why? What good will it-"

"And then say that I took you to my bed," she wept onward. "That son and daughter lay together and did the most vile thing they might. That we're sinners in the eyes of Tehlu and every one of his angels."

"We are," I admitted. There wasn't any point denying that much.

"And then say that you don't care!" she urged me suddenly, ravenously. "Tell me it's okay that we are, that you don't care over that part, and th- and say we're still going to be together in spite of it! Laugh at it, belittle it, make it less consternating! Shuck me like an ear of corn, have your way with me, spread me over my mattress like I'm a dyed silk shirt drying in the sun, and laugh at the absurdity of life!"

My arms encircled as if to crush. For a long several minutes, I held her still there, making no noise of my own while she vented her emotions onto me but merely rocking back and forth and staring at the bed behind her. The bed where we had broken laws of decency and morality.

So warm. Her body was warm and pliable as always. How was she not Devi, the woman I'd shared of myself with? Where was this Devi The Sister I'd been hearing so much about? I couldn't find her anywhere I looked.

But when we kissed, there was emptiness. The texture of it was more real, colder and yet hot as fire. But the emotions behind it were confused, and it felt empty. So we kissed harder, searching out the other person - they were in there somewhere. We found nothing but our own selves, hating what we did and how good it felt.

Much the same could be said of the next quarter-hour. It was explosions, it was passion... and through it all, we were as two people separate, not one entity expressing its symbiotic joy. Very little has happened to me before or sense that rivaled that in awfulness.

As we sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floorboards and not talking, something occurred to me. This might very well be the reason swinging from the limbs of one's own family tree was frowned upon as it was; it felt akin to falling.

"Kvothe, just tell me."

"Tell you what?"

She stood and walked in front of me, hands on hips. It doesn't take an Arcanist to guess what was at eye level, so I turned my head... until she forced my face back up by grabbing my hair and yanking. "Look at me, you idiot! LOOK!"

"What, what?"

"Am I..." Her face fell a little as she forced her words out. "Am I not appealing to you anymore? Because of what we are?"

Perfection is what she was. But I couldn't feel it anymore. I knew it, and I believed it... but the feeling wouldn't come.

The next second she was kneeling on the floor, forcing her head into my lap. I shoved it away, and she shoved back, and we did this until she held my hands away with her own, determined to proceed.

"Devi, please don't do-"

"Make me your whore," she told me, voice broken and forlorn. "Just make me do whatever you need from me, and I'll do it, and then we can keep being together in some way. It's all I'm worth to you now, b-but I'll take that over nothing!"

I yanked her up by her own hair, partly in retaliation and partly out of urgency to end that line of thinking. "NEVER."

"Brother..." It was plaintive and quiet, her neck exposed from where she hung loosely by her own strawberry locks, eyes like my own wide and terrified. She gulped to coat her parched throat, then said, "Slit it."

"What? Enough, don't be ridiculous."

"Rend my throat. I'm sure you can think of one sympathetic binding or another to do it. Spill my life-fluids and then you'll never have to spare me a moment's thought again, and I won't have to live with this agony."

"Stop this or... or I'll..."

"Or you'll what, Brother? Slit it? I already asked for that. No fair copying... I'll tell Father on you."

Roughly, I threw her onto the bed and smothered her body with mine. But I did not do as she asked. Instead, I merely cried and latched onto her as if she were the wind escaping from me. And after a long moment's tension in her entire form she also latched onto me and we cried, together we cried a thousand and one tears.

And I kissed the side of her face, light and chaste, and it was almost as it was before. The darkness refused to flee, but it was beaten back into its own corner. I felt her legs curl around mine, threading through and around as her arms squeezed my back, feeling the scars there with her fingertips and panting in my ear.

But nothing more happened than that. We did that for a long time before we stopped trying altogether and simply held each other, unending rivers flowing down our faces. Slowly it became sweeter, as the more we felt each other the more we remembered how we felt within. There was no sudden breakthrough or snapping-to, but we grew nearer to happiness.

"It still feels so amazing," she whispered, lips against my shoulder. "I... it's disgusting to think what we were doing, but at the same time... lying here next to you, feeling you sheltering me, I'm... it feels so right. It's wrong, but it's right? What in Tehlu's..."

Eventually, we burrowed under the blankets, not bothering with clothes. No more was done than gentle hands in innocent locations, and yet still guilt hung over us like a dark cloud. She pressed her back into my chest, and I felt every inch of it down my abdomen, the slight bumps of her spine, the warmth and cushion of her posterior. It was most of what I desired, wrapped up in her lavender-scented packaging.

"I love you, Devi."

"No, Kvothe. You don't."

I bit her head through her hair, and she let out an amused yip. I then kissed the spot by way of apology. "Sorry, but I do love you. Even if I can't define it any more clearly."

Her voice was hushed, almost reverent, when she whispered, "Is that so?"

"It is."

"Fine. But I'm telling Da that you bit me, too! He's gonna tan your hide but good!"

Reluctantly, we both giggled.

To Be Continued...