Chapter 12 #2
She hadn’t shed a tear in front of her family. She hid away in her books and writing instead of facing the stressors in her life. Retreated to a world in which she hadn’t had to acknowledge her papa’s passing, until that morning, when clearly her subconscious prompted the Lioness.
No, she was not fearless. She was a pretender, pushing off her pain until it bent even her waking world by conjuring monsters she had no choice but to deal with.
“You are, Aurelia,” Kayce said dismissively, unaware of the battle waging inside her. “The qualities of fearlessness are courage and boldness. You show these every day.”
If he only knew. The intrusive thought was bitter.
He stepped closer. She could feel his warmth against her back, but she refused to turn around.
“Slipping onto naval ships to look for contraband. Sabotaging and attacking pirates. Tracking and exposing smugglers of the nefarious sort. I’ve seen you fight four men at once.
I’ve seen you scared, but push through that fear.
” His voice dropped lower. “What is that if not courage?”
Pulling back from the volatequis, Lia held both hands to her chest. Hearing Kayce list such feats only made her clench those hands tighter. All those things were Aurelia; Lia was an imposter. She barely knew how to swim in this flood of her own making.
But maybe…just maybe, he could help her tread to shore.
“It is the courage within dreaming,” she whispered, the breeze taking the words. Lia turned to face him. His nearness rocked her, the words tumbling from her lips. “I have done nothing but hide lately.”
“From what?” His gaze didn’t waver.
Blinking rapidly, she looked from Kayce to the seas in the sky and knew this was what the queen had pressed for earlier. It was now or never.
She took a breath. “My papa… I called out to him at the ball because I couldn’t hide from it anymore”—her voice hitched, eyes burning—“and I’ve been so scared of drowning in this pain that if I start crying, I fear I might never stop.
And then your mother—” Several tears slipped free as Lia caught her breath.
“She told me to confront what I’ve been trying so hard to keep away.
But it’s like the air is sucked from my lungs and I still can’t stand to feel anything.
And I have to hold it all in so no one else will drown when I finally let go. ”
Kayce listened, the furrow in his brow smoothing out. Realization dawned.
“And that grief…” she continued. “Kayce, I’m terrified that this grieving is making me lose my mind.
” She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to disappoint him, for him to see how broken she was inside.
The five slashes around her ankle burned like a brand.
There was nowhere she could run from any of it.
Lia bit her lip so hard she tasted copper.
“Papa’s dead, and now… How can I be fearless when I don’t even know what’s real anymore? ”
Kayce drew her into him, enveloped her. She clung to his arms; her eyes squeezed shut. Held him so tight that she trembled like a buoy in the storm. Tears slipped down her cheeks. She was so tired. Tired of paddling in this tar-like sea.
Tired of doing this alone.
“This is real.” Kayce’s breath shuddered in her ear. “I’ve got you.”
Her heart lurched into her throat, and that tight embrace she knew him for shifted as it went on longer than the boundaries of childhood friendship.
She couldn’t ignore the lingering glances, how he’d stared at her during the inauguration ball.
How she had, somewhere along the line, stopped seeing him as that gangly teen ready to take on the crooked captains the Ranger’s Guild could not.
How he was now a young man—taller, stronger, his very presence consuming her senses—and how she longed for even more amidst the tempest raging inside.
Here, now, each breath whispering against her ear as he tucked her head into his shoulder, made her realize how perfectly she fit into him.
Even though he had been there in her imaginings, through it all—her father leaving, the trials of growing up, moving somewhere new—this embrace was stronger, warmer, and solid. Real. It was an embrace Lia could sink into. Depend on in a way she never had before.
Kayce didn’t move an inch, not even when tears stained his tunic. He just smoothed her curls, his other arm braced around her back.
He tamed the tempest.
Floodwaters receded. The pain was there, but Lia no longer needed the dam. It coexisted with everything else inside her. But like a relentless pest, darkness swarmed again. Flashes of oily eyes and talons shredded through Lia’s mind, making her shiver.
“I wish you could go where I go,” Lia mumbled into his shoulder. “I don’t want to face this by myself.”
He rested his chin on her head, stroking her hair. “My mother once told me that a flower is bright and warm in the sun. Yet in the storm, its petals sag. Maybe a couple fall off when thrashed by the wind, but it’s still a flower. Perhaps not as vibrant as it was, but it will be again.”
“Are you trying to say that this will pass?” She pulled back to look at him. “You may not enjoy the trappings of court, but you can’t seem to let go of those pretty metaphors. Jace would be proud.”
A soft chuckle parted his lips. “What I’m trying to say is you may not feel strong or brave right now, but that doesn’t make it so.”
She hummed in acknowledgement, soaking up the solid warmth of him. The lightness he brought to her chest. The full breath of air to her lungs.
“I think she likes you.” The white volatequis had brushed her velvet muzzle against the back of Lia’s neck.
She shivered at the touch, turning partway in Kayce’s arms to reach out to the beautiful creature. “She’s such a beauty… I can’t thank you enough,” she said and swallowed the lump that threatened to choke her again. “I cannot imagine what she cost you.”
“I may be a royal and have the privileges of one, but I want to make my own way.” A grin spread over his face when she quirked a brow at him. “That’s why I take extra missions on commission.”
Of course he didn’t take a single coin from the royal coffers.
Circling the volatequis, Lia ran her hand over her mane, marveling at the swan-white feathers of her wings, the delicate cloven hoofs made for the mountain range. She hauled herself into the saddle. “What am I gonna call you?” Lia whispered, urging the volatequis through the trees.
Kayce ran toward Storm. He threw himself over the saddle before urging his mount into a run, straight off the cliff. “Race you to Corinth’s Peak!”
All Lia could do was laugh and follow. Flicking the reins, she whooped before she, too, charged through the alcove. The volatequis’s hooves churned the earth until she leapt off the edge. Wings caught the wind when they snapped out, banking hard and fast.
Uninhibited by fear, pain, or sorrow, Lia flung her arms as wide as the volatequis’s wings.
She flew past Kayce toward the far side of the mountain.
Closing her eyes, the dying sun warmed her face.
It all melted away from her, knowing she was no longer fighting this dark sea alone.
Someone had her. One that wasn’t going anywhere. At least in her dreams.
A word came to her suddenly.
“Paxia,” Lia murmured, lowering her arms to hug her neck. “That’s your name, my fierce girl.”
She whinnied in reply, the sound echoing off the snow-kissed peaks.
The sky, once painted in broad sunset strokes, had faded into deepest indigo when they returned to the alcove.
They had raced to Corinth’s Peak, a smaller sister to Fealtek, and Lia insisted she won.
Nothing left her feeling freer than being in the clouds.
Every qualm and heartache was on the ground, and once in the skies with her best friend, nothing could touch her.
The steadiness followed her as they went to relax up in the outpost’s look out, leaving their mounts drinking from the creek.
The second floor held two rooms, the sleeping quarters and the study.
The study boasted floor to ceiling bookshelves, desks with journals and documents dating back hundreds of years.
Aurelia had been quick to adopt the room as her own, and now only a single desk sat in a corner near a neatly made bed piled with folded blankets on the footboard.
The bookshelves were filled with her own collection of books she’d acquired over the years, more even than her apartment over the Belhaven Bookshop in the city.
The sleeping quarters had become Kayce’s domain; a single bed off to one side, a desk piled high with all sorts of sharpening stones, a hunting blade, new arrowheads, fletching feathers, maps, and a single book.
Following the stairs up, the last floor opened into an area allowing observation through the waterfall to the skies above.
It was a small space illuminated by crystalline carvings, now emitting the soft luminance of the moon’s glow instead of the sun’s rays.
Lions prowled where the walls met the floor and waves crashed around the border to the observation window, water falling beyond like a curtain.
The crystalline’s glow was enough to read by, a small horde of novels shelved in the stone wall.
None of them called to Lia tonight as she dropped into the pile of cushions in the corner, the muscles in her thighs quivering from the ride.
“The two of you are definitely more agile than Storm and myself.” Kayce dropped a fur blanket on the cushions. “For now.”
“Just wait till I’ve had half as long to bond with her.” Lia smirked. “Then we can race again. You know I won’t settle for such a close tie.”
“Always the competitive one,” he sighed as he settled beside her. A small distance rested between them, something she was all too aware of since he’d held her so close.
She smiled, not bothering to deny it—the competitiveness, she reminded herself. Looking out the window and beyond the water, the stars were brighter than anywhere on Earth. A cosmic sea in and of itself. A sense of familiarity settled over Lia, a memory of her waking world stirring.
“My papa took me camping once,” she murmured. “He said sleeping under the stars was the second closest thing to feeling part of the universe’s grand design.”
“Your grandfather was a wise and honest man.” Tearing the last stuffed roll in half, Kayce handed her the bigger piece. “I wonder what the first one was.”
“He never said.”
Leaning against the stone wall, Kayce ate thoughtfully.
“Looking at the stars, one can imagine whole other worlds out there. I’ve always sensed a peace lying underneath them.
” From the corner of her eye, she watched as he faced her.
Studied her. Then, his hand brushed her arm and he uttered softly, “Tell me more about him.”
Lia watched the stars, wondering what to delve for: truth or imagination.
She reached for what she thought would honor Papa best. “He was a writer, loved to tell stories. He always needed a cup of tea in the afternoon or else he became grouchy.” Her eyes filled.
But she didn’t fight it. “He was one of those odd people who put ketch—ah, tomato sauce on his eggs.” Despite several tears sliding into her wind-swept hair, she chuckled at her Earth-lingo slip.
Kayce laughed with her. “Tomatoes on eggs? Sounds like a bold, unapologetic man who knew who he was.”
“Bold was certainly the word for him.” Lia rubbed her nose. With any luck, the waterfall would hide the tears she tried to hold.
But she was short of luck as of late.
Kayce opened his arms to her, and she couldn’t fight the need to melt into him.
She scooted over, closing the few inches of distance between them.
Such a distance had never felt so big before, and to cross it didn’t feel easy.
A new thrum of tension hummed between them.
Still, her heart was too heavy to ignore his warmth as she used his thigh for a pillow, gazing at the glowing ships carved across the ceiling.
A gentle tug pulled at her curls, slow and methodical.
That, coupled with the weight of his arm over her shoulders, made Lia’s eyes heavy.
“He would never correct the wait staff if a restaurant—uh, tavern got his order wrong,” she continued.
“Then he’d say it was the most delicious meal he ever ate. ”
“Bold and kind, a powerful combination,” Kayce hummed, watching her while her eyes drooped closed more and longer. He continued running his fingers through her hair, gently teasing out the wind-snarled knots. “Like someone else I know.”
Lia fought her blush as he continued the uncharacteristic yet tender gesture, offering pieces of Julian Corvine as he was on Earth until her voice grew hoarse. Kayce listened, his hand never stopping. Held her like she was his best girl. She certainly felt it.
The lull of sleep grew harder to ignore, Kayce’s body warm against hers under the furs. The waterfall rushed, droplets occasionally floating upward as greetings to the seas and constellations above. Lia tracked them to the stars her papa loved.
Sometimes, she swore those stars stared back.