Mizora was still there. She didn't try to talk to anyone. Maybe even she knew when not to push her luck. Karlach threw multiple glares that she might have been trying to incinerate her with as it was. Sara threw a couple as well.
Wyll didn't look at her at all. If he so much as saw her smirking, he would finally, truly hate her. He had never hated anyone in his life and he didn't want to give her that triumph now.
They were breaking into the Foundry the next day, of course. Sara ran through her vague plan with him, Karlach, and Gale, though really, they didn't know what was going to await them inside that place, only that it was probably going to be ugly. All four of them turned in early.
Karlach slept so easily when she had sufficient comfort to, and it didn't even take much of that. She was asleep within five minutes of her and Wyll laying down together atop their couch. Wyll closed his eyes and struggled to concentrate on the sound and the feel of her breathing against him.
He thought he drifted off, maybe for an hour or so. But then it was the middle of the night, and he was awake again, and he didn't know how to he could get back to sleep, with the sharp, hollow ache that was currently filling his chest.
He pressed his face into Karlach's neck. Even when she was asleep, her pulse pounded strong enough he could feel it against him even from the side. Her skin was so, so hot.
I can't lose her, too. The thought lanced through him. For a moment, he thought he might have to get up and flee the bed, to avoid waking her up and begging her to choose differently, to return to Avernus simply so he wouldn't have to watch her die. It would be the most selfish thing he'd ever done, to do that. He couldn't.
He must have shifted a little away from her in that moment, because she stirred in his arms. "Wyll?" she whispered. He could just make out her face from the glow emanating from her, see the worry on it, but also, she looked a little lost, and so sad. "Wyll, can I..." she drifted off. He saw her shake her head.
Something in him snapped. His hands gripped her and practically flipped her around, and he was kissing her hard, tongue lashing into her mouth until hers responded. She pulled him flush against her as she kissed back, then fell on her back as he pinned her down, grinding his body against hers. He pressed kisses to her neck, found places that made her breath hitch, let his hands wander under her shirt to her breasts, too hot in his hands, but still soft.
He didn't care that this was exactly how he hadn't wanted to do this. He didn't even care about all the other people in the room, at least one of whom wasn't asleep, and the others whom they might wake up. He didn't even care that Mizora was probably still there. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything.
But then Karlach shoved him up. "Wyll, Wyll, no," she said. "Not like this."
He stopped and pulled away, of course, but made no attempt to hide his confusion. "Do you not want this anymore?" She'd made clear how much she had their first night together, and if she hadn't brought it up since, it was probably out of a desire not to pressure him further.
"Oh, I absolutely do, I won't deny that," she said. "But if we do this tonight, will you ever in your life stop regretting it? I can't let that happen."
"But I don't know when we're going to do it," he said, and he was whining now, keeping his voice as quiet as he could, but the pain was threatening to overload it completely. "What night can we even hope to look forward to for it? It's been days of pain and brutality, and it's just going to be more days of the same to come."
"Well, personally," she said, "I wouldn't mind doing it on the day we kill Gortash, though I suppose you probably wouldn't want to celebrate killing someone like that, even him. If you're suddenly in a hurry, tomorrow night after we get rid of that Steel Watch that's oppressing the people of this city might be appropriate enough. Or we could go down and get that wyrm that woman told you about. That would definitely be useful against Gortash. Plus it would kind of be your stepping into your new role."
Maybe she wasn't entirely wrong, and obviously she meant well. But Wyll didn't want to think about how he was arguably now the new Duke, didn't want to face what that meant. Too much of him wanted to walk away from that, wanted to stay disowned. But then again, when this was all over, the vacancy in leadership at the city's top could lead to either very good or very bad consequences, and he couldn't morally walk away when he was one of the people with the most power to affect that.
It was as Karlach looked him over, eyes thoughtful as if she somehow read everything off him, that Wyll realized his shoulders were shaking. He wasn't sure whether his head or his heart felt heavier. He wanted to lay down and curl up and maybe not move for a while.
"Wyll," she asked, "I don't think you even need to fuck tonight. I think you need to cry."
"There'd be no use in that." Wyll repeated the words his father had said to him more than once when he'd been young. He hadn't always listened to his father's words, but surely he ought to respect them tonight, of all times.
But he'd been feeling the urge to cry, on and off, since the moment the spiders' explosions had ended and he'd seen his father's charred remains. He'd nearly given in right in the middle of fighting the Waveservants, which had been insult upon injury-he understood why Sara had refused to give Redhammer up to them, but that hadn't made having to kill such people less wrong. He'd trudged alongside the others for the rest of the day with tears still gathered behind his eyes.
And when Karlach just looked at him with that sadness in her eyes, alongside something dangerous close to pity, and sighed, "Oh, Wyll," he felt himself nearly lost.
He thought it was the look on her face, on that night when Mizora had offered him this choice, that might've been the true reason he'd broken the pact. Sara had been urging him to, sure, but he could have ignored her words, her unrelenting anger at his father. He couldn't ever ignore Karlach's pain.
And maybe she knew it, as she said, "Please, whatever you do, don't be sorry you broke the pact. Please, Wyll."
If he'd had anything to say to that, maybe he could have kept the tears back just a little longer. He couldn't even truthfully say he was sorry. But he certainly couldn't truthfully say he wasn't either. Either way, his father was still dead.
The tears were accompanied by loud, painful, ugly sobs. He wasn't even going to get to do this without everyone likely waking up and hearing them. He'd just have to hope they wouldn't say anything in the morning.
Karlach gathered him to her breast as he cried, even though his tears were too hot, possibly enough so to outright evaporate off her skin. Still he let his head lay there, let his tears soak her, desperately, hopelessly wishing they could be enough to cool her heart back down.