"You are lying."
Tish said those words even before Saroth had finished speaking. Saroth paused. And then said softly, "Do I have a reason to lie?"
He didn't. Tish knew he didn't. But that didn't make it easier for her to accept it.
Because accepting it meant accepting Rudra had a reason for cutting Saya's head off.
Accepting it meant also accepting he had saved her life.
"Think about it," Saroth looked sympathetic, "Was she always nice to you or did she become friendly abruptly."
Tish squeezed her eyes shut pushing past her painful memories - the days being locked up in Rudra's quarter, before that the week she had spent in a hazy state of shock and exhaustion in her own room in Parthan Palace- when hurting herself had felt to be the only real thing giving her relief from the guilt of unable to save Saya.
She pushed past the memory of Saya's head getting attached from her body and falling- her blood splattering on the food upon the plates on her hand, her blood on Rudra's sword...
She violently shoved away the grief and terror and tried to remember the night when she was attempting to write her naive letters of invitation to a Dragon Prince whom she hadn't met yet.
That afternoon, she had watched Rudra riding through the woods from her window, chasing a deer- a shapeshifter - as per Saya's informed her.
A shapeshifter.
"They approach those who are lonely and neglected. They friend their victims, isolate them and drink their blood.....eat their flesh."
That was what Saya had described those creatures.
And apparently she had been one of them.
"Shocking, isn't it?" Saroth was still smiling, a sad understanding smile, "You see most of their victims become so dependent on them that they do not even mind letting these creatures feed on them so long as they promise not to abandon them."
"Loving someone knowing they are killing you or about to kill you," mused the Healer, "There is something quite poetic about it."
He eyed Tish as if that should mean something to her. She felt exposed.
"I have to go," the words came out a little fast, "I don't think we are having any productive conversation right now," she nodded at his work table, "Please continue working on your ..... experiment. I'll see myself out."
She grabbed Percival's arm and pulled him towards the door.
"Saintess," Saroth called again.
Tish froze. But she didn't turn back.
"The coat?"
"...I will take it."
Saroth hmmed. A low content sound which had more meaning than any conversation they had shared so far. For twenty years he had hold onto this coat. Made sure it was in perfect condition. But now he was giving something like this away to Tish, something he must consider precious.
It was almost as if he was convinced that by giving away the coat he was building some sort of bridge between the two of them. "Good," said Saroth, his voice careful, "You should have this. I think you'll understand it's worth more than anyone else would."
"I understand what this is," Tish said and then she felt so much worse.
Because, even as she held Rudra's possibly nightmarish past in her hands, she was still angry with him, she still hated him.
And if given chance, she would still kill him.
Yet here she was, protecting a part of him while still being angry with him. She was taking custody of his suffering without an ounce of warmth that would usually motivate this kind of protectiveness. It felt clinical - her decision running almost parallel to Saroth's own detachment. When she realised that, she hated herself a little more.
Saroth noticed ofcourse. "That instinct - right there!" He pointed out, "It's the right instinct to start with. Most healers never move past it but I think you will." He said it like a compliment.
Tish realised that Saroth didn't see her as an enemy, rival or conquest. He saw her as someone unrealised. He was looking at Tish like a mentor looks at a prodigy student- someone who was at an early stage of understanding true mechanism of suffering and how it helped in healing.
"I pray that you may allow yourself to understand the full mechanism of healing without the barrier of unnecessary compassion."
He was fully confident , given time, she would fully corrupt herself.
Tish didn't answer. She just clutched the coat closer to her chest tighter, with both her hands- the way one holds onto a thing as if not to ever put it down.
She didn't wait to get dismissed. She walked to the door, chin high, looking unbothered. Because Tish was Tish.
She didn't talk until they had stepped out of Rān's palace, "This isn't right, Percy," she said, "We cannot trust him."
Percy agreed, "He's lying."
"About what? Why he came to Partha?" Tish asked. It was true that Rudra did have nightmare.
He still did.
Just a week ago, she had seen him tossing and turning on his bed muttering her name and begging.
It hadn't made Tish soften. It had only made her angrier.
Because Rudra was a murderer.
But apparently he had murdered to save her life...
Tish squeezed her eyes shut, "I don't know what is lie and what is truth, Percy," she breathed out, "I don't know what to trust and what to not."
"I just know one thing," muttered Percy, "He lied about Rudra's age. He definitely isn't twenty years old. Black scales and red throat - I've seen him before," insisted Percy, "I have seen him when I was five and he has burned down the last place I've called a home."
Tish froze again, "You mean..."
Percy nodded, "Yes. Zhurgen. He has been there. Not his father, him. Black scales, ember throat. It was him. He destroyed an entire country, Tish. He came a year later I and my family settled down there after travelling from west. He destroyed my family and now he is destroying you."
Like Teresa's family, Percy's family had also come from the chaotic West and instead of Benevia, they had settled down to Zhurgen- a country that used to exist a few thousand miles south to Benevia.
But here's the thing.
Rudra was cruel, yes. He was absolutely narcissistic self-centred bastard who wasn't below burning down a country.
But he always had a reason. Maybe those reasons were sick and twisted but they were still there.
He killed Saya because she could have been a shapeshifter.
He attacked Benevia because he wanted Tish back.
"Was there a reason?" Tish had to ask. Percy shook his head, "Dragons make reason when there isn't any."
His eyes were shining when he stared at the horizon stretching across the Rā, "They don't need reasons."
Tish couldn't agree. There was something Saroth had said which had stuck to her more disturbing than anything - even more than the coat.
He is not the first Rudra and he will not be the last. - Saroth had said.
But she couldn't really point that out to Percival. Not now. Not when his eyes were full of so much pain.
"But I still don't trust Saroth," murmured Tish.
"Me neither," answered Percival, "But I want him on our side."
Tish looked up at Percival as he mouthed those terrifying truth.
"I want that man on our side, of whom, even a dragon is scared of."