7. Letters #2
“Of course I wrote you!” I snapped, my eyes burning.
“Did you think some other idiot with awful handwriting was filling up every scrap of paper he could afford and sending it via every stupid, backwoods form of mail courier that’s available in Stag Court?
I wrote you hundreds of letters. I sent one by dog. It’s been eight gods-damn years, Lu!”
His body heaved as he fought back a sob. Warm hands wrapped around mine, fingers lacing through mine to hold my palms against his bare chest. “Eight years, two months, and six days,” Alluin choked out. “I thought— Where did you even send them? Gods, Zhi, I thought you hated me.”
“Where did I—to your fucking office, Mister General-of-the-First-Army!” I clutched him harder.
“It’s not like you ever gave me a personal address!
I don’t have the sort of money to buy a flicker-bird I can send directly to your person, Lu, you know that.
I… I…” I took a shuddering breath. “Did you truly not get them?”
“Zhiolas,” he said, like a healer breaking bad news to a patient, “I’m a general. I have people who screen my mail for me.”
The words took a moment to sink in, but when they did, my skin went cold. “Oh, gods,” I said with nauseating dread. Someone had read those letters. Someone who was distinctly not Alluin. They hadn’t even told him about them. They must have thought I was an obsessed stalker.
Alluin pulled my hands up and pressed his face against my knuckles like he thought I might disappear. “I wrote you letters, too,” he said thickly. “I didn’t send them.” A hot tear splashed onto the back of my hand. “I should have sent them.”
“Yes, you should have,” I said, curling closer. He hadn’t gotten my letters. He hadn’t been ignoring me, and he didn’t hate me. He didn’t hate me. Fuck, that was the best news I’d gotten in my entire life. “Eight fucking years, Alluin. How could you wait that long?”
Another tear hit my skin. “I’m more than forty-eight thousand years old,” he started.
“I’m not. You could have thought about that.
What it felt like for me.” I sniffed back tears and buried my nose deeper in his hair.
“The days are still the same length, you know. Having experienced a greater quantity of suffering doesn’t lessen the pain.
You don’t have to endure for longer simply because you know you can. ”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. That didn’t matter to me.
Every minute we lay there in a bed I hadn’t yet paid for, the evening light slanting through the window to warm his dark skin and gleam off my pale, was another minute for the world to right itself.
One couldn’t pay off eight years, two months, and six days of loneliness with a few minutes of cuddling, but it was at least a good start.
“You should be angrier with me,” Alluin said at last, the words hesitant.
I made a low sound, halfway to being asleep now that I had Alluin back and was comfortably horizontal.
“What’s the point?” I asked. “We were both stupid, and I’d very much like to get over that and get back to being each other’s favorite people.
And…” My stomach twisted in unhappiness, but I still said, “I apologize for being an ass. When, um. When you asked for my allure geas. A lot of people use me for that, and I…reacted badly. If I’d given you a chance to explain, we could have had a very different decade. ”
My sense of balance skewed with the words, leaning towards Alluin. I knew it was a risk, dreaded the price, but he was Alluin. If there was anyone to offer loyalty to…
“Thank you,” he whispered, leveling the field. I felt that kindness settling between us with the promise of unshakeability, a depth of loyalty few fae chose to share. “For all of this. Finding me. Fighting to keep me.”
“You’re Alluin Xilsatra,” I said, a smile starting to warm my face. “The brilliant, incredible General of the First Army. My best friend.” I nuzzled him. “If anyone’s worth fighting for, it’s you.”
Alluin uncurled one of my hands and pressed a soft kiss to my palm in a courtly gesture, then folded my callused fingers over the kiss and held my hand against his heart. “I haven’t gone back to him,” he said with the hesitance of someone who thought they might be punished.
I ran my nose through his curls, enjoying the way they tickled my face.
I didn’t need to ask who he meant. “Even if you had, I would be here. Even if you do, I want to be here,” I said, trying to be gentle.
“But if everything is so awful that you need an escape, I can give that to you. You don’t have to go to him. ”
He shuddered, then nodded, breathing carefully with my hands clutched against his bare chest. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Nah,” I said with a sleepy smile. “You deserve so much better. You’re stuck with me, though. I’m your soul-splice,” I added in a light sing-song.
Alluin made a small sound, something that could have been acknowledgement or pleasure. “It doesn’t work like that,” he murmured, softening against me.
I exhaled softly, wishing for the first time in a long while that I could undo what had been done for me.
Wishing I could give him back what he’d willingly sacrificed to save me.
“I know,” I said, my voice coming out more melancholy than I’d intended.
“But if you can’t have a soulmate, maybe I can at least be a decent consolation prize. ”
Gently, Alluin started petting me, running his fingers along my forearm in an affectionate caress. “You’re not a consolation prize, Zhi,” he said. “Don’t ever worry about that.”
He didn’t try to get up (not that I would have let him), so we stayed there like that, me wrapped around him and him taking care of me, as the sky darkened and sleep wrapped around me in a warm blanket. He’d kept his end of the bargain, after all. I might as well keep mine.
“Besides,” I thought I heard him whisper as I fell into the dark embrace of sleep. “I don’t want a soulmate. I want you.”