I’d been so sure I was nothing to him.
I’d been so sure I was only a religious symbol to him, and a disappointing one, at that. Too ignorant to know anything about seers. To blind to use my sight worth a damn. Sometimes a friend maybe, or an acquaintance, but mostly just a weight of responsibility, someone with a childish crush on him that he couldn’t seem to discourage, no matter how often he pushed me away. He hadn’t wanted sex with me, or even true friendship.
Back then, he’d done nothing but try to escape me, in all the time I’d known him.
I remembered how it had been in India back then. I remembered lying on that fur-covered pallet in Vash’s home, replaying the memory of him fucking that woman on the ship, just to try and convince myself how fucking stupid I was being, how utterly deluded.
I’d tried so hard to let go of him during that time.
I’d tried so hard to move on with my life, to find a place among the seers––even if they still treated me more like a holy artifact than an actual person.
I was sure if Revik had been alive, he would be running from me still.
Feeling him breathing hard next to me, his light spiraling out in uncontrolled arcs, I closed my eyes, rolling to my side. Thinking about what he’d shown me, the pain he’d gone through over me, over being convinced he’d driven me away, that he’d ruined things forever between us, I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood.
He’d done nothing but obsess on me, the whole time he was gone.
He’d done nothing but obsess on everything he’d done wrong with me.
He’d told me that before, but looking at that now, I realized some part of me had never really believed him. When I saw him in London, it was clear something had changed, but I’d thought it was the imprisonment, honestly. I thought he’d changed his mind about me while he’d been locked up, maybe even from so much time spent with my two best friends.
Honestly, I didn’t know what changed with him. I was so pathetically love-sick over him at that point, I didn’t let myself question it too closely.
Thinking about that now, I winced, biting my tongue harder. I remembered how fucking helpless I’d felt over that, how much I’d hated it. I’d never been like that over anyone before. I’d never been so completely unable to control my own feelings, or to shut down my own heart.
Closing my eyes, I fought to control my light, my mind.
It was almost impossible though.
I could feel him again. I felt him behind me, watching me.
Feeling his light on mine, his pain coiling into mine, pulling on me, I fought a harder, sharper stab that seemed to go right through the center of my chest.
Biting my tongue, I forced myself to speak, if only to get my mind off those early days, off everything I could remember and hated remembering.
I almost hated him for reminding me of all of it.
I hated how I’d felt for all those months, thinking he was dead. I hated remembering what I’d been like back then, how weak I’d been, how totally at his mercy.
“Why did you have to show me that?” I wiped my face, my voice gruff. “Now? With Cass riding with us?”
Thinking about that end of things, which I hadn’t really been thinking about truthfully, I felt my throat close. Tears welled in my eyes, without my willing it.
I fought to block out the images, but couldn’t.
I couldn’t block any of it. Memories swam forward the more I tried to push them back, only they were his memories now too, not only mine. I saw him lying there, shivering in the dark, falling unconscious only to wake up wanting me so badly, he’d scream for me in the dark.
I saw Jon and Cass trying to talk him down so he could fall back asleep.
I felt the pain in his heart, that crushing, unending pain, him crying when Terian told him I was dead, or that he was raping me in another cell… or that other Rooks were breaking me in for Galaith.
Somehow those emotions were the hardest to take––even more than watching Terian beat him and strip him naked, or even the parts where Terian forced him to commit sex acts with my friends for his own amusement.
My throat hurt from thirst that wasn’t mine, even as my stomach cramped in hunger.
The separation pain reverberated through all of it, making the hunger and thirst even more unbearable––but it was the pain in his heart that felt like it might actually kill me.
I felt him lying there, wishing it would kill him.
I still hadn’t moved when Revik reached over me in the dark. His hands gentle on my waist, he prodded me with his light to lift my head, handing me the water skein.
I considered telling him I didn’t need it.
I considered telling him I knew it was all in my head.
I knew I wasn’t really thirsty, that I was just resonating with his memories, feeling him lying in that cell, so thirsty and hungry he couldn’t think straight.
I didn’t, though.
Uncorking the top, I drank from it deeply instead.
His arm snaked around me as I did.
I felt the pulling there, the reluctance to let go of me, to stop touching me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to do it chronologically. That’s where we are.”
Pulling the skein briefly from my mouth, I nodded, biting my lip.
I knew he was. I knew that’s what we were doing.
I took another long drink of the water.
I knew him showing me this tonight didn’t have any hidden meaning or agenda. I knew it was just the luck of the draw, but seeing him with Cass, after feeling her light only a few feet behind me all day, was a little more than I could take right then.
His fingers slid under my stretchy shirt, caressing my belly.
“If that’s what you got out of that, I think you missed the point, Allie,” he said, soft.
I turned at that. Frowning, I twisted around so I was facing him.
“I didn’t miss the point,” I told him.
Looking down at my face, he tugged me closer with his hands, pulling on me with his light. I let him, but my eyes closed briefly as his light brought that pain back in a hard flush.
If he noticed, it didn’t stop him from pulling me further under him.
“Are you sure?” he murmured, wrapping his fingers more tightly around my skin. “Or do I need to show you again… how I’d been in love with you for years by then, wife. Or how I’d been out of my fucking mind with missing you, and with realizing how badly I’d screwed things up with us, pretty much from the beginning.”
He leaned his face into mine, kissing me lingeringly on the mouth, then the jaw. He worked his way down my throat, sliding his hands deeper into my shirt, caressing my ribs, then my lower back. Warmth left his light, lips, fingers and tongue, a sensual, liquid heat that wound into my chest, tightening my throat… that drove me fucking crazy.
My pain worsened, closing my eyes.
We hadn’t even gotten to the hardest things of our marriage yet.
We weren’t anywhere near the more recent things, the things that were still raw, that still hurt to even think about, and I was already a mess.
“You do understand,” he said, soft. “You understand better than you’ve been pretending.” Caressing my cheek with his, he clenched a fist briefly in my hair, exhaling. “Gaos, Allie. I can feel the difference. It’s driving me out of my damned mind… but we need to finish this.”
I stiffened in his arms, under his hands.
“What difference?” I said, sharp. “What do you mean, you feel a difference?”
He lifted his head, meeting my gaze with his clear, crystal-like eyes. Looking up at him, seeing his angular face outlined in shadows, I swallowed.
I fought to subdue my voice, to calm my light.
“What difference do you feel?” I said, quieter.
“You,” he said simply. “I feel a difference in you.”
Light flickered in the depths of his irises.
“You’re st
arting to trust me.” He bent down, kissing my mouth lingeringly. Before I could answer, he let out a soft groan, kissing me again, his fingers wrapping tighter in my hair. “You’re starting to really trust me, Allie. And it’s terrifying you out of your mind. You’re doing everything you can to convince yourself that you’re wrong. That you can’t trust me. That I’m lying to you. That I’m manipulating my memories somehow.”
There was a silence after he spoke.
I just lay there while he kissed my face, while he worked his way down my throat.
I couldn’t help but think through it.
I couldn’t help but think about his words.
He wrapped his arms around me tighter, pulling me deeper into his body.
“Is it working?” I asked.
I felt my face warm as I looked up at him.
I bit my lip, fighting a sharp, irrational fear at the look in his eyes, which I could see from the candle guttering on the stone mantle of the half-destroyed house where we slept. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at me like that.
Or maybe I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let myself really see it.
“Is it working?” I repeated, swallowing. “Am I convincing myself?”
He smiled, that other look never leaving his eyes.
He bent lower, kissing my ear, then speaking into it softly, his words pulling, cajoling.
“When this is over,” he murmured. “I’m going to do really bad things to you, wife. Really, really bad things… for as long as you’ll let me.”
He wrapped his arms around my back, curling his fingers around my shoulders. Kissing my throat, he squeezed me until I could barely breathe.
“And no, wife,” he said, a denser satisfaction in his voice, along with that tenderness that was making my chest hurt. “…It’s not fucking working.”
“WHAT THE HELL are you two doing all night, to look like that every morning?” She smirked at me faintly, but I saw the uncertainty in her eyes. “You both look like shit. Are you guys out practicing mulei in the woods all night or something?”
Giving Balidor a wry smile, she gripped his hand before muttering, quieter,
“…We all know you’re not fucking.”
Looking up from the small campfire where I’d been pouring myself some of the mud-like coffee we’d managed to make, using the Turkish grounds Wreg got us in Istanbul, I glared at her, in spite of myself. So far, I’d managed not to aim a single word in her direction in four days, or in Balidor’s really.
Until now, I’d also managed not to look at her, at least not directly.
Somehow, I found myself looking at her now though, before I could really stop myself.
I fought with words, with an urge to snap back at her bullshit jab, her implication that somehow she knew anything about me and Revik, or our marriage.
In the end, I glared at the coffee pot instead, my jaw hard.
I went back to trying to pour the thick liquid through a make-shift filter I’d fashioned out of a porous cloth I’d found in the truck and washed. It took me a few more tries to get most of it through––at least well enough to end up with two cups of what more or less resembled coffee.
Cass and Balidor sat on a dilapidated and water-stained couch right outside the front door of the mostly-roofless house where we’d all spent the night. I knew roughly where they’d slept, in one of the smaller bedrooms. I knew that, unfortunately, because I’d woken up a few times that night and in at least one of them I’d heard them having sex.
Cass wasn’t any quieter now than she had been in college.
Thinking about that now, I grimaced, blowing on the top of my coffee to cool it from the fire. I fought not to look at either of them where they lounged on that couch, talking to one another where I couldn’t hear it.
Unlike the previous days, it was almost impossible to ignore them entirely for some reason.
Some part of me wanted to pick a fight with her.
Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to punch her in the face.
Remembering what Revik said to me the night before, how a part of me was resisting this, resisting trusting him, resisting reframing any of what happened between us in a different light, I wondered if my anger at Cass was just more of that.
Honestly, it was hard to make myself care, if that was true.
I did know focusing on Cass was an easy way to stay angry.
I could feel the vulnerability that lay behind that. I could feel the barely-disguised desire to avoid that goddamned vulnerability, and the more intense feelings I couldn’t seem to shake since the Dreng network came down. Focusing on Cass was an easy way to keep my guard up, and I could feel the part of me that wanted that, too.
To a part of me, that felt like survival.
I couldn’t be this open now, not with what we were facing. Not with what Kali showed us in that vision. I couldn’t just let myself fall into it, or I’d be useless to all of them.
Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Balidor kiss the side of Cass’s face, then lean closer to her, talking to her quietly in her ear, where I couldn’t see it. Seeing the seriousness in his eyes, mixed with a softer emotion as he pushed a piece of her hair behind her ear, I frowned.
She had a plate balanced on her thighs, where she picked at powdered eggs, a piece of a protein bar, and apple slices with her fork.
I’d watched Balidor bring it to her, before he got food for himself.
I wished I could just ignore the two of them.
I wished I could at least find them pathetic, or funny… but for some reason I just couldn’t.
Cass seemed to notice my stare that time. I felt her watching me back, and the one time I accidentally caught her gaze, she smiled at me tentatively. She must have seen something in my eyes, because I saw her fight to hold onto that smile, doubt and fear glancing across her expression, along with what might have been embarrassment.
“Al, what I said before… I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. On the sex thing, I mean.” She glanced at Balidor, then back at me. “It was a pretty crappy joke. I’m sorry.”
Standing, my coffee cup in hand, I turned my back to her.
I was about to walk back to the truck, see where the others were at in terms of getting ready, when Revik reappeared from the side of the house. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, his face reddish but clean from cold water. He wore a different T-shirt than what I’d seen on him the day before, a faded gray one I remembered from the carrier.
He walked straight up to me, smiling when he saw the cup of coffee I held in one hand.
Wrapping his arm around my waist, he glanced down, seeing the second mug sitting on the stone by the fire.
“You got that filter thing to work, then?” Leaning closer, he kissed my mouth, caressing my hair out of my face and then caressing my cheek with his. Kissing me again, he sent a bolt of heat into my chest, making me clutch at him.
“Is that other one mine?” he murmured, kissing my ear.
Clicking softly, I smiled in spite of myself.
“No,” I said. “It’s mine. I’m greedy. I wanted two.”
He let out a low laugh.
Releasing me with a reluctance I felt down to my feet, he leaned down, picking up his own mug. Pain still coiled off his light, messing with mine, but he didn’t seem to be trying to restrain it, or even mute it at all. A part of me was tempted to smack him for that reason alone, but I found myself looking at him instead.
He was starting to look different to me again.
I remembered how much that had driven me crazy when I’d first known him.
In Seattle, after that night where we’d started a preliminary light-bond, he’d looked completely different to me. Then again on the ship, after he’d helped me through everything with my mom, I’d found myself noticing him all over again, especially his body and his mouth. In London, I couldn’t stop staring at him, and not only for all the weight he’d dropped while he’d been Terian’s captive. I�
�d stared at him as Syrimne, when he’d worked for Salinse.
I’d stared at him again in New York, after his light changed.
Now, he looked different to me again.
His body looked different, even his face.
I liked the faint five o’clock shadow, the longer hair, how muscular his arms and chest were from all the weight-lifting he’d done with Wreg on the ship. I liked how tan he was from his daily running on the deck. I liked how the darker skin made his eyes stand out.
He looked exactly the same on one level, but on another, I felt like I was looking at someone I barely knew––or maybe someone I was only just getting to know.
Biting my lip, I tore my eyes off him when I felt him notice my stare.
He walked up to me anyway, nudging me with his light.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Prosthetics?” He took a sip of the coffee, his mouth tightening a little at the bitterness before he swallowed, his eyes still on mine. “As much as I’d rather look at your real face all day, you should wear them.”
When I didn’t move, he nudged me again with his light, and I exhaled.
“What difference does it make?” I said, gesturing in vague annoyance. “Didn’t Wreg say it was pretty much useless, given the ID they have on me?”
He nudged me again. “It’ll still help with amateurs. It’ll help with anyone who doesn’t have access to a flyer with the ID tag programmed in.” He took another sip of coffee. “More to the point, it’ll help while we’re in the truck. Otherwise, locals might recognize you and pass on your location to the authorities, or the bounty feeds, hoping for a reward.” Nudging me again, he kissed my face. “Humor me. I’ll help you put them on.”
Exhaling, I nodded.
I hated wearing prosthetics. They made me sweat, they itched, and I felt like they screwed with my light in every piece of my skin they covered.
I was still standing there when Feigran appeared from the same side of the house where Revik had emerged from, his hair also wet. Unlike Revik, however, Feigran’s shirt was missing, and the top of his body and his pants were wet, too.
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