Valentin walked towards the outskirts of the camp, the soft footsteps of Morna following him. He hadn’t really envisioned how he would navigate the conversation, not yet. He cursed the events and people that led him to ever thinking that this would be a good strategy. She knew what she had done, what purpose would this conversation have other than dredge up bad memories and meticulously buried emotions?
“I heard that things in Allbost were challenging,” Morna commented in attempt to break the brooding atmosphere emanating off of Valentin.
“It was poor, but not terrible,” Valentin replied curtly. “We gained much from it considering what we had to contend with. I heard it has been difficult here as well.”
“Robert died,” Morna informed after a short pause. “Spear caught his neck at a bad angle, bled out by my feet. But, I got the person who did it to him so he wouldn’t burn alone.”
Valentin paused and looked over his shoulder. The woman’s face showed no real expression of grief while recounting the news. He could not tell if she held no regard for Robert or that she simply viewed death as part of the business of warfare. It was not as though he ever bothered to find out how close she was to the others in the deg.
“When did that happen?” He inquired.
“Four days ago,” Morna replied. “He was the eighth in the warband to die in this stupid place. The air is too dry, made my nose bleed after the first night. The ground is like stone. Worst of it, the pay is going to be shit. I could understand fighting if Ferron was here but with Dur-”
Morna sealed her lips as she realized she her rant caused her to speak a little too openly in dissent of their temporary leader. Even though they were quite a ways away from camp, she still took a brief glance around the hills in worry that Durant and his warriors had suddenly appeared from nothingness.
“Speak freely,” Valentin permitted with a wave of his hand. “I have no love for the one that I’m supposed to call brother.”
“He’s weak and does not inspire fear as a commander,” Morna continued. “While we have to be wary of their War Leader joining the fray, they do not have to do the same. Even if the orders sound similar to Ferron’s, they don’t inspire the same confidence when they come from his mouth. That’s why it’s such a relief that you’re here now. We have something threatening of our own.”
Valentin nodded at the appraisal. The enemy commander had to have been smart enough to know that Ferron’s son was unfavored or created a situation that would confirm it. Either way, it was enough to constantly put the warband on the back foot and sour their typically positive opinion of Durant. The enemy commander’s greed to extract every last coin from their employer was likely the only reason that these battles remained at a stalemate.
He finally reached a place that he felt confident was out of range of any stray listeners. The looming darkness should have hopefully warded off any stray warriors from overhearing. If he could, he would have walked until his feet were turned into dust, until both of them died. But, he could not. His palms began to turn slick with sweat.
A painful ball of invisible energy formed in his throat, blocking any words that tried to form. It felt like forcing them through would rip his mouth into bloody tatters. He grimaced, frustrated that his body was making such a simple conversation so cumbersome.
“Let’s talk about Lutant,” Valentin said with a soft voice.
Morna looked shocked at Valentin’s sentence. She gave a tense, uncertain smile, her teeth flashing in a way that brought up old wounds. Something behind her eyes betrayed the thoughts that there was hope of a reversion back to their old relationship. It was a thought that sickened Valentin to his core.
“What about it?” Morna asked curiously.
Dry mouth; the saliva had sucked deep into Valentin’s body and turned to the sweat that flowed from his hands to stain his gloves. He stood against an ascending spirit. He had grown so strong that he no longer feared the Bothair Clan. Even after all that he did to not be taken from any more, he was still terrified of Morna. When she looked at him, he felt like he did before he had felt favor for the first time.
Valentin despised this feeling more than any other. Confronting it tore open all the scabs of old wounds, revealing them to be just as fresh as when they were first inflicted. He was opening himself for even more anguish if things did not work out.
But, he wanted to believe in the Madame’s words. He wanted to hope that there was a way to feel different, to heal.
“I wanted to say,” Valentin began. Each word added to the difficulty of the immense task. “I wanted to say…that you hurt me back then.”
Morna expressed a look of confusion at Valentin’s words. She placed her hand to her lip and gave a thoughtful pose. “When did I hurt you? I made sure I could do everything possible to provide for your needs. Was it about how I failed to control Guinn?”
Every time. He was left dumbstruck by this person every single time they tried to speak. These moments of innocence and vulnerability was unable to exist as genuine expressions for Valentin.
“I’m speaking about cabin, Morna,” Valentin clarified with great discomfort. “The deal.”
Valentin was growing more agitated at Morna’s continued confusion. No matter how closely to the subject he walked, she wouldn’t take the hint. Must she force him to say it? To express himself in these words?
“I’m talking about the-,“ Valentin tried to say. “I’m talking about the sex.”
“Oh, what about the sex?” Morna asked.
Was it not obvious? Valentin nearly bit his tone in surprise that she still did not get it. What world did she see through those eyes? What, in her mind, transpired that night?
“I didn’t want it,” Valentin said, admitting it for the first time.
Morna’s mouth twisted and Valentin’s heart nearly ripped at the seams in anxiety. He brought the tip of his glove to his teeth and bit down; anything to direct his fraying into.
“But I was kind to you,” Morna protested, her mind reeling from Valentin’s assertion. A frown formed on her face. “I protected you from everyone else. Without me, you would have been at the mercy of others that are far worse than I was. You could have been like poor Bassett.”
Bassett. A new wave of questions sprayed into his head. He had to push those pressing thoughts from his head for now. There was only one thing that mattered at the moment. He had to say the words on his mind before he lost his nerve completely.
“I hate you for what you did, Morna,” Valentin stated. “And I so badly want you to hurt for how I feel. But, I still don’t know how badly.”
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The side of Morna’s mouth twitched. Sadness turned into a simmering anger. Though Valentin inadvertently flinched, it felt as though her emotions were not truly addressed at him.
“You want me to hurt,” she repeated in a small voice, a smattering of tears joining the arrangement of negative emotions that gripped her. “You want me to hurt as you hurt?”
“I do,” Valentin admitted.
“Had you ever asked Zalavo what injury he treats most often?” Morna asked and Valentin shook his head. “Forceful tearing. If what I’ve done is so wrong, then you must take all of them down with me! Why do you feel no sense of injustice against the greater offenders? They are not so hard to find! Where is the justice for the others? Where is the justice for those you claim to care about? Where is my justice?”
Valentin felt like he took a forceful butt of a spear into his gut. He had turned a blind eye to the transgressions of the deg. He had closed his heart to others. Was he being selfish in his assertions of morality? Was it fair to target Morna first when he knew that he was her only victim? When Hubert said what he did about Tara and who knows who else? Should he have used his power to step in, even if it would have angered many and brought disunity to the warband?
He couldn’t stand being hated. He couldn’t stand being looked at with judgmental eyes, tearing him apart to his smallest parts so that he could no longer hide what he hated most. They would laugh at it and undermine it and humiliate him further, he knew it.
As it turned out, he may be less alone than he imagined. The words proclaiming that there was worse in store for others was only seen by Valentin as threats to keep him obedient in his situation. But how did they feel inside? How were those emotions handled?
If they felt anything like Valentin, it was misery. A misery that would only show bitterness to Valentin, whose abuser was fair faced.
It was all too much.
“Where does your justice lie, Morna?” Valentin asked wearily. “Who hurt you?
Morna’s shoulders slouched and she gently bit her bottom lip to create a pensive expression. Now, it seemed it was her turn to fight her words. She was a piteous sight to Valentin, but he did not allow himself to be swayed.
“Would you be able to listen to me, Valentin?” Morna asked with a heartbroken expression.
“I will offer you that much grace.”
Morna let out a shuddering exhalation, emotions already spilling forth before the first word could even be uttered. She sat down upon the dry grass, allowing the stability of the ground below to be her anchor.
“I was the second of four daughters,” Morna began, wringing her hands together. “We lived in a small hut near Sarcinel. It’s close enough to the road that I could show it to you. I don’t know if anyone lives there anymore. My mother died when I was nine. It was an illness that the druids could not effectively treat for the money that we had.
Everything changed after that. My father’s face grew redder and he would come home later. My sister took on all the responsibilities that my mother did while I focused on my younger sisters. While I tried to be there for my sister and be as close as we were before, she grew distant to me. I thought it may have been something that I did, but she always told me that it wasn’t my fault, that nothing had changed between us. But then she disappeared one day without leaving a single clue to where he had gone.
I quickly learned the reason why she left. While my sisters were out doing chores, he asked me to help him. He told me that, since mother was dead and that he could not find a woman to replace her, it was our jobs to fill in that role. That our sister abandoned us because she was unsuitable as a woman. I didn’t know what he meant so I just agreed. That was when…that was when…I-I had to take on every duty that my mother had as his wife and learned why my sister left.”
“Your own father,” Valentin murmured to himself. He could imagine, he did not wish to imagine what his life would look like.
“I sympathized with my sister for what she did by escaping,” Morna continued, deflecting Valentin’s words. “But I hated her more than him, because she did not try to take us with her. I knew that, if I ran, then my younger sister would replace me. So I endured until it was shown that I had favor. My father drank so much in celebration that he passed out. I chose that night to take my sisters and escape to a new town where he couldn’t find us and couldn’t prosper. He would wake up alone and with nothing.
But, in a new place, things did not truly improve. I was beginning to grow and, with that, garnering the same ugly looks that I received at home. So I had to fight constantly to avoid my fate. I had to take it too far so that they would get the message. I was whipped and stripped of my pay before I was cast out entirely. I was recruited under Ferron shortly after, but then I met Hubert and he was a man that I could not defeat.”
Valentin bit his tongue. The words coming out of Morna’s mouth deeply disturbed him. It, for a moment, made him feel as though his own feelings were insignificant. That everything that everyone said to him about it was right.
“So when I saw you at that cabin, you were thin and cold and wet. You hadn’t eaten and all of us there knew that you had experienced deep loss, that you were alone and unsupported,” Morna explained, shedding light back on that fateful day. “But, somehow, there was this shine in your eyes that seemed unaffected by the awful things that weighed you down. It was not a light that I had seen for a long time and I…and I had to…”
“Take it for yourself and reclaim what you had lost?” Valentin spat. He felt disgusted by the logic behind the decisions made. He was just collateral in a different story of pain.
“And, somehow, I still see it in your eyes from time to time. You’re thriving, Valentin. Aren’t you glad you had me instead?” Morna asked. “I shielded you from my fate.”
Valentin boiled. His rage was not reserved for himself, but for everyone who had a story like theirs; that this stories were continuing to be created. But, for now, his caustic words would be reserved for only one person.
“You went through all of that and still did what you did to me?” Valentin questioned with raw indignation, his throat chapped from shouting. “You know exactly how it feels and decided to pass that feeling along to me! You’ve hurt me the most, Morna. More than the ones that killed my uncle. More than the man who sent them to do so. It is you that makes it so that I cannot comfortably bathe with others. It is you that causes me restless sleep. It is you that makes me feel like I am no longer understood by others; that I am no longer like the rest of them. And you tell me that you’ve been where I’ve been?”
“But I made sure yours was the gentlest!” Morna shouted in response. “If I didn’t claim you, someone else would have. I was doing that to protect that shine. I needed to see it again!”
“Are those the words that you would have wanted to hear if you stood where I stood?” Valentin demanded in a hoarse voice. “If you had the chance to do as I am doing, what is it that you would want to be told?”
Morna’s body froze. Somewhere, deep within her mind, a connection was made. Her muscles went slack and she began to breathe heavily.
“I’d want to hear them admit what they had done,” Morna admitted with a whimper, her eyes reddened eyes leaking once more. “I want to hear that they regretted it.”
“And what would you want done to them?” Valentin pressed.
She gave a deep, shaking sigh and drowned in Valentin’s silence. The realization had already sunk deep into her body, giving true clarity to her words. She rose to her feet, but was unable to look Valentin in the eyes.
“I-I don’t know. I told myself that I was helping you,” Morna admitted. “But, that was just delusion. I was wrong, Valentin. I hurt you for selfish reasons. I’m sorry.”
Valentin stood in silence for a moment. He felt for the woman, he hurt for her. But, the apology was too late. While he did not feel bloodthirsty, he did not feel merciful. It took pressure to earn it.
“I understand you, Morna. I empathize with you. I hurt for you,” Valentin admitted, still feeling rage on the woman’s behalf. “But I will never forgive you for what happened. I will show you that there was always a choice to be better than the ones that hurt you. Despair that you could not become someone I could feel affection towards. Lament that you are someone that I cannot allow to be close to me. Accept that the distance between us is of your own creation and come back to me when you have determined what you would do if you were me.”
Morna nodded. She no longer argued her position or defended her choices. She just stared down at the ground, unable to return Valentin’s gaze.
Valentin had to admit that forcing Morna to confess in her own words felt good. He felt like what he had gone through was finally acknowledged; that he was allowed to feel the way that he did. Yet, it was also no miracle tonic that swept the following cycles under the rug. He did not feel compelled to engage in any of the actions that he scorned. He did not feel any more romantically inclined to those that showed interest and the thought of group bathing was too daunting for him.
What was he to do next? What was the next step to normalcy?
“Now, what was it that you were saying about Bassett?” Valentin asked, no longer willing to think of this topic for the day. His curiosity was still piqued by Morna’s earlier comment and the context of it made his stomach feel tight with worry.
“Tomorrow night, wait near Hubert’s tent and see for yourself.”