“I’m sorry.” Allana’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but it was still enough for Tenebres to shoot straight up from where he lay on the floor.

“Allana?” he asked, shaking his head groggily. It had been three days since he had last seen her, after she stormed out of Geoffrey’s. He had spent the time assortedly visiting their usual haunts, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, and staying in the tiny apartment they had taken to sharing, in case she happened to return. But now that she finally had shown up, in the darkest hours of the night, Tenebres found himself lost for words.

“I’m sorry… I just…” Allana sighed, still all but invisible in the dark room save for the faint glow of her irises, and Tenebres could hear the tightness in her voice.

“It’s okay.” Tenebres tried to reassure her. He cautiously stood up from his sleeping mat. In the gloom, he could barely make out the shape of her sitting on her bed. The apartment was a single room, with little more to it than her bed, a small vanity table with a stool, and just enough space for Tenebres to spread out a sleeping pad at night. She was leaned against the wall, as far from him as she could be without leaving the room, and from the outline of her, he was pretty sure she had her arms wrapped around her legs, like she had curled up into herself. “Let me light the lamp,” he suggested softly.

“No.” The word was as much a plea as anything else. “It’s… easier, like this.”

Tenebres thought he understood. Allana clearly had a hard time being vulnerable, and with what he knew about her past, he could understand why. If talking in the dark would help, it was the least he could do.

He nodded, then smiled to himself as he realized how useless the gesture was. “Okay,” he replied.

“Do you know how many friends I’ve had in my life? Before you?”

Tenebres frowned as he sat back down on the floor, resting his back against the foot of Allana’s bed. “Not many,” he guessed.

“None.”

There was a long moment of silence after that. Tenebres wasn’t sure how to respond. Every reply he could think of seemed… flippant. Insufficient. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her again.

Before he managed to formulate a response, Allana asked, “Did you? Before the cult and all that?”

He frowned at the question. He didn’t think about his childhood much anymore. It was sometimes hard to remember what his life had been like just a few years before, when he still lived in Culles.

“I guess,” he finally answered. “I don’t really know. There were a few other kids in town close to my age. We’d play sometimes, make pretend as elves or adventurers or dragons. But…” He hadn’t thought about them in a long time. “I don’t even know if I could tell you any of their names anymore.”

They both stayed quiet after that, sitting in the darkness. It almost felt like Tenebres was alone, and he half wondered if Allana had snuck back out of the room. He knew she was probably capable of it, if she tried. But somehow, he knew she hadn’t.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she told him. “I’m a street wraith. A thief. An assassin. I don’t have friends. I have allies, contacts, rivals.”

“But you have me,” Tenebres insisted. “I’m your friend.”

“Are you?”

Tenebres turned around, so that he was on his knees, kneeling in front of her. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to more clearly make out the ball of Allana sitting across the mattress from him, hugging her legs tightly to her chest. Her violet eyes, half seen but bright even in the darkness, were intent. “Of course I am,” he told her, hurt that she’d think otherwise.

“But you don’t want to be.”

“Of course I do L- Allana. Of course I want to be your friend.”

“But you want to be more than that, too.”

Tenebres’s face suddenly felt hot. “I…” he flailed verbally, not knowing how to defend himself.

“You flirt, and you tease, and you joke, and you talk, and you stay down there on the floor, like you’re content with that. But I don’t think you are.” Allana’s words were weirdly toneless, as if she was reciting facts–or as if she was trying very, very hard to not let her emotions seep into her voice.

“Allana…”

“I saw you, when I was flirting with that bar girl the other night,” she continued, snarling slightly. “I went home with her that night, you know. After I left. I went to bed with her. And not on her floor.”

Tenebres swallowed, his throat tight. “Okay…”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I… I mean, I don’t like it…” Tenebres admitted. He felt short of breath, in fact. His heart was racing, fear and anxiety breeding like ants under his skin.

“Why?”

“I just… I don’t.”

“You don’t like me being with someone else,” Allana stated matter-of-factly. “You want me to be with you. Just you. Like a possession, a special little treasure all your own.”

Tenebres jumped to his feet. He felt odd, the squirming unpleasantness burnt away in a single moment. Suddenly he was as angry as he’d ever been… no. As angry as he’d been since that night on the altar, at least. His blood pounded, and his head throbbed with the force of it.

“NO, I DON’T!” he shouted back at her. “I’m upset, and I don’t like it, but it’s because you left! No word, no explanation. You’re my friend Allana, and I had no idea what happened to you! I spent three days sick with fear–that you had gone back to Telik. That you had fled the city. That you were dead.”

Tenebres could see Allana blink, her violet eyes flickering a couple times, but he didn’t give her the chance to respond, venting out all the feelings he had stewing inside of him for the past three days. “I don’t care that you slept with her. I don’t care if you’re sun-drawn, I don’t care if you fuck half the city, Allana! I care that you left me, upset and angry and resentful, without a Rogue-damned word, for three days!”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Allana pushed past him as she sprung to her own feet, eyes flashing. “Oh yeah? Then what was that performance in the tavern? I mean, by the Rogue Seo, you’d think your pet had just died!”

Seo furrowed his brow, even if the expression couldn’t be seen, and his face suddenly heated back up as he figured out what she meant. “I was trying to figure out if you just liked girls or not!” he shouted back at her.

Both of them paused, eyes wide–and then they both collapsed into laughter, falling back onto the bed. The claim, shouted so angrily, was just too ridiculous for either of them, and in an instant, all of the bitter and dark feelings inside both of them seemed to wash away under the sudden gale of laughter.

Allana drew in a few rapid breaths, and managed to choke out, in a rough imitation of Tenebres’s voice, “Do you like girls?” before they both collapsed back into giggles.

It took many minutes for their mutual fits of laughter to finally die out, and by the end, Tenebres felt relaxed for the first time since Allana had left.

He blinked tears out of his eyes, still grinning–and very suddenly realized that he and Allana were now laying in bed together. They were settled the wrong way, their legs both hanging off the end, but he was suddenly very aware of how close his friend was, how warm the air between them felt. He took a breath, and it smelled like woodsmoke and sea salt and distant, bitter acids. Like Allana.

“I don’t have much of a preference, you know,” Allana told him, her voice a low whisper. The faint luminescence of her eyes let him see that she was staring at him now, focused solely on him. “If anything, I find myself preferring girls because… well, you’ve seen what the men of Lowrun are like.”

Tenebres grinned wider, and he had to force down any more giggles. “Yeah well… you’re right that I do want more than what we have, you know.”

“Really?” He swore he could hear the smile in her voice, but the question was more sincere than he would’ve expected.

“Of course. No one… no one has ever made me feel like you. Like I can say whatever I’m thinking, like we can talk about anything.” Tenebres cleared his throat awkwardly and added, “Plus, you know… I have two eyes. And I don’t know if you’re aware, but you’re actually incredibly attractive.”

“Oh am I?”

“Mhmm.”

“Well then.” As she spoke, Allana wiggled a little bit, bringing herself closer to him. “I have to admit, you’re not very hard to look at.” She chuckled a little, and told him, “Honestly, even if I was fully sun-drawn, I might make an exception for you. You are pretty sunny, after all. I’ve always liked that about you. My little pretty boy.”

Tenebres flushed brighter, but he didn’t have it in him to shoot anything back. His physical appearance and the feminine way he chose to present himself had raised some eyebrows when he was younger, but the people of Culles were too practical to much care. He hadn’t realized how important it was for him until Kellen took it away from him, and it had been the first thing he had reclaimed when he was free from the man.

But no one had ever actually embraced it. Sure, some men preferred a sunnier boy, but their comments weren’t the support he never knew he had been looking for. Everyone else just accepted it, as if to comment on it would be rude.

But for the first time in his life, laying on Allana’s too small bed the wrong way, Tenebres felt more than accepted. He felt valid.

He didn’t know how to respond. His throat was tight, and he felt tears leaving warm trails down his face. Fortunately, he didn’t have to figure out how to put his feelings into words. Before he knew it, Allana’s arms were around him, and her lips were pressing against his, and Tenebres knew she understood.

#

“Well, well, well,” Geoffrey observed with a grin when the two entered his office the following day. “About time.”

Tenebres felt his face heat up to the pointed tips of his ears, and couldn’t contain a smile at the man’s words. More shocking, to him at least, was that Allana mirrored the expression, her own blush brightening her purple skin to a brilliant magenta. Tenebres just hoped Geoffrey didn’t notice that he was limping more than Allana was.

The two had spent the rest of the night, and most of the morning, together, talking and laughing and covering the other in kisses before they finally made their way to one of the local taverns to break their fast. As if he had anticipated their plans, a message had been waiting there from Geoffrey for them to come see him in the afternoon.

They had tiptoed around what this meant for their relationship, but Tenebres didn’t feel any need to push the issue. The argument had made Allana’s stance on a committed relationship obvious, and while he wished that more was possible, Tenebres was happy to remain Allana’s friend, even if they never had another night like that again. He suspected, however, that it wouldn’t come to that. Allana wasn’t exactly subtle in her attentions, and already she had been far more physical in her affection than he was used to from his often reticent friend.

“Do you have anything on the necromancer?” Allana asked hurriedly, clearly attempting to change the topic.

Geoffrey must have read the girl’s desperation, and a smile flickered across his face, but he let it go. “I might. I’ve been following up on the lead you two found, but it’s about as easy as you’d expect.”

Allana snorted a breath and folded her arms. “I’ll say. It took us days to even catch wind of the rumors surrounding that boat in the first place.”

“And more than a bit of luck,” Tenebres chimed in.

“The fact that it happened at all is enough for me to work with, but now I need to trace the trail backwards in two different directions, trying to figure out who this captain may have been trying to sell the outsider to, while also following the tracks of whoever stole it instead.”

Tenebres blinked, stunned at the mere idea of trying to trace events that had happened days or weeks before in a place as lawless and as unmonitored as Emeston, and Allana said, “I don’t know how you plan to manage that. I grew up in Lowrun, and I still wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Geoffrey’s gray eyes glittered. “Normally, you’d be correct, but one of my gifts offers the abilities for just such an investigation. A remnant from my misspent youth, you might say.”

Tenebres narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, and asked, “Why did you send for us then? It doesn’t sound like there’s anything we can do to help at this point.”

Normally, Tenebres would’ve expected Allana to bristle at his blunt wording, but apparently the previous night had left her as relaxed as he was, and she just seemed to share his curiosity.

“I had a request come in from an old client who did some work for me in the past, out by the Rainbow Square. As I’m preoccupied, I thought it the perfect job for the two of you.”

Allana wrinkled her nose at the mention of the place, and Tenebres found himself distracted by the things the expression did to her face. It took him a moment before he thought to ask, “Rainbow Square? That’s a new one for me.”

“Lucky you,” Allana groused. “The Gold Council had the brilliant idea at some point that all the smelliest businesses in the city should be placed together. Since that includes a bunch of dyers, tanners, and paint makers, the area got called the Rainbow Square instead of the Stench Block or Shit Street.” Allana turned back to Geoffrey. “We spent days slumming along the docks, and now you’re sending us to Rainbow Square?”

Geoffrey huffed a small breath of amusement. “You’ll be fine.” He paused for a moment, musing, before adding, “This is a chance for you–both of you–to show me I didn’t make a mistake in the aftermath of that Algus catastrophe. There’s reports of a pair of lesser monsters, with a handful of dire vermin, terrorizing the area. Handle it well, without any more complaints, and we can let the past stay in the past. Fair?”

Allana opened her mouth, eyes flashing at the reminder of the way their last conversation with Geoffrey had ended, but Tenebres reached over and grabbed her arm before she could reply. The girl flashed him a guilty look, biting back whatever thoughtless words she was going to snap back with, and she reluctantly nodded at Geoffrey.

The assassin himself watched the exchange with interest, his eyes glittering. When Tenebres turned back to him, the younger man could swear he saw Geoffrey tilt his chin by a fraction of an inch, a tiny gesture of respect.

“What sort of monsters?” Tenebres asked.

“The vermin are the usual. Dire rats and dire spiders. The lessers likely spawned from their numbers–based on description, a darkmaw and an orbweft.”

That was as good a match up as they could hope for. Tenebres had never fought a darkmaw before, but he had been practicing his evocations and trusted his magic against any dire vermin, and Allana’s gift of poison offered a defensive ability that would rob the spiders of their most potent weapon.

“We’ll do it,” Tenebres replied, giving Allana’s forearm a squeeze. “Right, Allana?”

Allana blew out a long breath through her nose, and her tone had a note of forced cheer to it, but she managed to agree.

“Fine. We’ll do it, then we’ll all move on.”