18 – 6
My tea is down to dregs by the time I've finished, a bitter slurry I choose to study instead of seeing disapproval, or worse, disgust, on their faces. It's an irrational fear, I know, and yet here I am. It doesn't matter that I decided to be unashamed, that they have no right to feeling either about me, or that they offered to listen. It matters only that they might look at me like that, and I do not want them to.
So I study the dregs. I spin the mug between anxious, fidgeting fingers and study them until an ink-stained hand lands on my wrist. Adelaide's touch is gentle, as is her voice, “Will you look at me, Zira?”
It's the only reason I can. She can't have those looks on her face, not if she sounds like that. I lift my eyes, and see that I was right. She wears soft concern in the crease of her brow, empathy in her vivid green eyes. “Where's Milo?”
His seat is empty, his mug gone. Adelaide's mouth curves into a fond smile, flicks her eyes to the hallway door, “He thought you might feel more comfortable with some more privacy, so he went to bed.”
Oh. Wait, “Did I – am I keeping you–?”
“No,” she pats my hand, “No, honey, I'm fine. We can sit out here all night if you need to. Take your time.”
I nod. Find the question spilling from me before I can stop it, “What do you think?”
It surprises her, widens her eyes, and pushes her back a little, “What do – I – think?” I nod, “Does it matter?”
I don't know why, not when I had just resolved it wouldn't, but, “Yes.”
Her ink-stained hand moves to my wrist, squeezes, “I think you've done nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. I think you're a brave, strong young woman with a good heart. I think my daughter adores you – she wants to be you when she's your age – and you'd have to do something so, so much worse than have sex for us to turn you out.” She wrinkles her nose, “You're washing the sheets, though.”
Air rushes into my chest, a laugh snorts out. Relief, blessed and pure, rushes through me. It pulls my shoulders down, loosens the knot in my stomach, and lets the tea settle in warm; but it stops there. I'm no closer to understanding why I feel like this, let alone what this is.
Flick my eyes to Adelaide, the patience she wears. She might. I lose nothing in asking, except dignity, “Why do I feel like this?”
She drops her chin into her palm, “Like what?”
“I feel – it's...” I growl, slash my hand through the air, “I don't know!”
She squeezes my arm, “Try. Take a deep breath, let yourself feel it.”
I smell apples and lamp oil, wood polish and parchment dust. Adelaide's eyes are calm, her expression patient. She'll wait until sunrise for me, for my fool brain to sort out what my fool heart is feeling. Regret? No. Hurt? Also no. Shame? None. Fear? Of course not.
Except, it is; not fully, not truly, but it's the closest I can name. I say as much and watch it not change her at all. She expected this, I realize, both what I feel and my inability to name it.
“My first time,” she says, “I cried afterwards. Not from pain, or – or fear, or regret, I just...I felt so – strongly –, and that was how I expressed it.”
I hadn't done that, but I could why she would, “What – is – it, though?”
She lifts a shoulder, lets it drop, “A lot of things, and all at once. It was like I was naked – I mean, I was, but...it was like that the person I was with could see me, all of me. I'd never felt like that before, it was...powerful. It surprised me.”
It clicks in my head a moment before it leaves my mouth, “Vulnerable.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Mm?”
“You felt – I feel vulnerable. Um...exposed, I suppose.”
“Yes,” she smiles, proud, “that's it exactly. There's nothing wrong with feeling this way, and it might not happen next time. If there isn't a next time, if you didn't like it, then that's fine, too. If Clarke has a problem with that, then it's hers to deal with, not yours.”
“No, I liked it,” I say, echoes of just how much running through my skin, “I just...why now? Why today, of all days?”
“You wanted to,” she says, “You felt safe. Does there have to be more than that?”
Does there? “I – I'm not sure. I don't think so.”
“Sleep on it,” she squeezes my arm, one last time, then rises from her seat, “We can talk more later, if you want.”
Adelaide, worker of miracles. “Thank you.”
She drops a kiss to my hair as she leaves, “Don't stay up too late.”
I promise that I won't, and retreat to their sitting room. I curl onto the sofa and close my eyes, letting my head drop against the armrest. It's quiet and cool, dark and soothing. I'll go back to bed soon.
- - -
The sky is clear, with no threat of rain on the horizon. The air stirs with a gentle breeze, a cool sigh through farmland hills. Dogs bark and children shout as they run and play in distant streets. Carts trundle down narrow, rutted roads, pulled by indifferent steeds or reluctant people. It's a beautiful day in the twilight of autumn, Amberdusk coming alive to take advantage of it.
Not us, though. Not us. The five of us head north out of town, following a path that winds and weaves between the ever-steepening hills. Milo and Jeremiah take the lead early on, a towering, listless figure guided by a weather hand on his back. Adelaide and Lavinia lag behind, one repeatedly refusing to lean on the other. The bickering behind drifts up to mingle with the quiet murmur ahead, creating an eddy of silence in the middle; and it is there that Clarke and I languish.
I fell asleep on the sofa, waking with the dawn. I hadn't meant to, but the hurt in Clarke's eyes says she feels differently. She hasn't said anything, though; not a word, not since we left the Thorngage home. I need to fix this, so I quietly offer, “I'm sorry,” Her eyes, blue like the sky overhead, lift from the dirt to me, “I was going to come back.”
The vulnerability in her eyes makes my heart keen, “Why'd you leave? Was it – did you not – did I do something wrong?”
Oh, what a mess I've made. “No!” I'm loud enough that Milo glances over his shoulder. I wave him off, “No, you were – it was wonderful, I just...I couldn't sleep, so I went to the kitchen. Milo and Adelaide were there, we talked, and...I fell asleep. I didn't mean to, I swear.”
I watch the relief hit her, almost stagger her with its strength. “Oh,” is all she says, a sigh more than anything. She takes my hand, slides her fingers between mine. We spin in our little eddy, languishing no more, and hike on.
We leave the road at the peak of a hill, follow the narrow ridge into a copse of trees. Dappled shadows play over us five as we pick our way through a bed of fallen leaves, mindful of tripping tree roots or burrow holes. The air is thick with the dry, sappy scent of evergreen, sap-sticky needles catching rides in hair and on clothing.
The copse opens up onto a rocky promontory, looking out over a sheer drop down to an ice-blue river winding through a forested vale. To follow its course upstream would lead to the Icewalls, towering, cloud-shrouded crags that fill half of the horizon. The rest belongs to the trees, evergreens without end spreading out of sight beyond the world's edge.
Then there's the castle, made small by distance and comparison to its surroundings. Puff of smoke rise merrily from its chimneys and blow away on the wind. Fort Tanner, the place from which Juliana led her knights. It can be nothing else.
Do they know she's gone? Do they even care?
Jeremiah steps to the promontory's edge, slumped and hollow. He looks down at the drop and, for a moment, I think he'll throw himself down it. That moments ends, his chest hitches, and his voice is choked when he says, “This was her favorite place.”
“It's beautiful, Jer,” Milo, hand on his friend's arm, “She had good taste.”
Jeremiah sniffs and nods, swiping the tears from beneath his eyes, “Yeah, she did. I...” he swallows thickly, “Is there something I should say, or...?”
“Not if you don't want to,” Adelaide goes to him, takes his hand in both of hers. Lavinia follows suit, eyes bright. Clarke and I don't move; can't, glued in place by grief and guilt.
A sob catches in his barrel chest, “Good, because I don't think I can –” He covers his face with his free hand and weeps, gasping between his fingers,
“I love you, Jules.”
Coda
It doesn't get easier. You can get used to it, he's found, but it doesn't get easier. It shouldn't. If it did, it was as good as saying they didn't mean anything to you; and that said something about you, something bad. Milo swallowed the lump in his throat. He hadn't known her all that well, but he'd known that she was good, that she'd cared, and that she was loved.
Sunlight bless, but she was loved.
Jeremiah wept like only the grieving can, clinging to Addy and Lavinia's hands like he was drowning. He was.
Milo patted his back again and looked for the girls. He found them a few steps back, blaming themselves for all they were worth. Clarke had her hand over her mouth, muffling her crying like it was something to be ashamed of. She needed hugging, holding, and he looked to Zira to do it.
She didn't. He couldn't figure out why. She was just looking at him, blank-faced, tears streaming from hard eyes. There was something going on in that head of hers, something that needed addressing, and soon.
“I'll be right back,” he said to Jer, who gave no sign of hearing. Addy nodded to him, though, so he left his friend in her capable hands and went to address this. Whatever it was.
Close up, he could Zira grinding her jaw. He could see the tension in her, the anger. Who was she angry at, though? That was the question. Herself? Him? Juliana? Her killer? There were plenty of people to be angry at, and it was looking like she had enough to go around.
“You two alright?” he asks, knowing full well the answer; but that wasn't the point. Point was to get them talking, and Zira did.
“No,” she says, and it's all she says. She turns those hard eyes onto him, red with tears that fall no more.
“Can I help?” She nods. “How?”
“Teach me,” she says, “teach me how to be a soldier. Teach me how to kill her.”
Oh. Oh, shit.
“No,” he says, flatly, “Absolutely not, an' don't you ever ask me again.”