CHAPTER 15 TYCHO #2
He doesn’t resist, but I can’t look at him now.
A part of me feels as though I’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to me.
My eyes are still hot, but I scan the darkness for danger, doing my duty.
I hate that I broke down. A familiar belligerence has set up camp in my chest, like I’m waiting for him to jerk away, for that same tension to settle between us.
But he doesn’t jerk away. His hand is so warm within my grip, his fingers loosely wrapped around my own.
I finally turn and look at him, and that’s my undoing. His hair is loose over one shoulder, his hazel- green eyes so dark in the starlight, his face so close.
My breath catches again, and I have to let his hand go so I can give my eyes another frustrated swipe. I swear under my breath. It’s humiliating that he’s so calm and I’m practically . . . dissolving.
“Forgive me,” I say, and it sounds like I’m speaking through gravel. “I didn’t mean to . . .” I search for the right words, but none exist in either language. “Ah . . . completely unravel.”
Jax looks out at the night and shakes his head slightly. “I did it plenty while you were gone.”
Well, that just makes me feel worse. “Silver hell, Jax. I’m sorry—”
“Stop. I know.” He glances over. “I’m sorry, too.”
“You haven’t done anything to apologize for. It’s me. All me.” As I say the words, I feel the truth of them so deeply. I’m the one who keeps leaving.
Jax says nothing for the longest moment, and he eventually looks at me. His voice is so quiet. “It’s not all you.”
Something in the words forces me still. Another cool breeze winds down the road, and I almost shiver. That happened the last time we sat in the darkness, so I glance up at the sky, thinking of scravers.
But there’s no dangerous magic here. Just me and Jax and the weight of everything unspoken between us.
I want to grab his hand back and pull it against my heart and leave it that way. But if all my conflict with the king has taught me anything, keeping wounds hidden just lets them deepen and fester until they’re nearly impossible to heal.
“Tell me,” I say softly.
He stares out at the darkness again, his jaw set. His leg is still pressed into mine, and I can feel his sudden tension, the weight of words he isn’t ready to say.
I reach out and take his hand again, pressing it over my knee, holding it there. “Please,” I say.
He lets out a breath, and in the sound, I hear frustration. “It’s not . . . it’s not fair,” he says. “You’re beholden to the king. None of this is your fault. Not really.”
I frown. “None of what—”
“I was angry, Tycho.” He finally looks at me, and his eyes are full of fire. “I was lonely and homesick and you were just— you were gone. And then you came back and you were gone again. Every time!”
I swallow. “I know. I’m sorry—”
“Stop. I don’t want you to be sorry. Like I said, it’s not your fault. I just— I want— I want—” He jerks free of my grip and runs both hands back through his hair.
“Tell me,” I say more firmly. “Tell me what you want.”
“But why?” He scoffs. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have any right to want anything.”
“You do.”
“Tycho, I can’t want anything from the King’s Courier—”
“Silver hell, Jax!” My own anger finally flares. “Just tell me.”
“Fine.” His eyes blaze into mine. “Stop leaving me. That’s what I want. I want you to stop leaving me.”
He might as well have punched me in the gut. Air leaves my lungs in a rush. I look back at the night and run a hand over my jaw.
We’re both rigid, not touching now, staring into the darkness. Back where we started. The King’s Courier, always alone, always beholden to someone else’s needs. The poor blacksmith, always left behind.
But as I sit there and breathe, I realize that’s not quite accurate. At least not anymore.
We’re literally sitting here proving it.
I turn my head and look at him, then reach up to wind a finger through a lock of his hair. He looks so angry that I think he might punch me for real, but I give his hair a gentle tug, and it has the same effect on him that his voice has on me. The anger melts off his face. His eyes soften.
“I didn’t leave you,” I say softly. “This time, you came along.”
He gives a little jerk, his eyes flaring wide, as if he’s struck by that.
I wind another lock of hair, letting it slide between my fingers like a satin ribbon. “While I was gone, you learned to ride, to shoot, to speak Emberish. To walk, Jax. No one can leave you behind. No one. Never again.”
He flushes, and I can even see it in the shadows. “I can’t speak Emberish. Not yet.”
I give him a look, and his flush deepens. “Well,” he adds, “you taught me how to shoot.”
“Not like you are now. I’ve seen you on the fields.”
His eyes flick up to meet mine. “Yeah?”
“I can’t keep my eyes off you.” I wind another lock, letting my thumb graze his cheek this time. He leans into my touch, so I do it again. When my fingers brush his mouth, his lips part, and something inside me clenches tight.
“You’re supposed to be keeping watch,” he whispers.
“Damn it,” I snap, jerking my hand down, turning my head to look out at the night.
But he moves closer, until we’re pressed together again, his hand against my knee, his head falling against my shoulder.
Down the road, a man laughs heartily, his voice booming, then choking off as his silhouetted form practically falls out of the tavern.
A series of girlish giggles follow. Beside me, Jax shifts his weight a little, and then his breath falls on my neck, his hand sliding away from my knee to the inside of my thigh.
My breath catches at once. “You just told me to keep watch,” I growl under my breath.
“Yes,” he breathes against me. “Do that.” His hand slides higher up my thigh just as his mouth closes on the skin below my ear, and fire spreads through my veins.
Truthbringers could flood the street, and I’d sit right here, trapped by the feel of his hand.
A low sound pulls free of my throat, and I reach up, catching another lock of his hair, giving it a harder tug this time.
As soon as I do it, a memory smacks me in the face: Sephran doing the same thing to him this morning. Time to wake up, Archer.
That throws an icy dart right in the center of all my warmth.
“Jax,” I whisper, and he clenches his fingers into the muscle of my thigh in a way that nearly makes me forget everything I wanted to say. Especially when his tongue finds the skin of my neck.
“Why— why—” I inhale deeply and force my thoughts to organize. “Why does Sephran hate me?”
He goes still so abruptly that it feels profound. His hands are heavy against me, but it’s like he’s frozen. I draw back to look at him, and he straightens, pulling his hands back into his lap. My eyebrows knit together.
Jax frowns, then looks down. When he speaks, his voice is small. “Sephran doesn’t hate you.”
“Jax.”
“He doesn’t.” Then he grimaces. Exhales. “Well . . .”
“But . . . why? I know he’s upset about Malin’s rank, but that’s not my doing.”
“No.” Jax is quiet for a moment. “Though . . . maybe that’s some of it.” He hesitates. “Sephran has been a good friend. I was so . . .” His voice goes soft. “Alone. I was so alone. I don’t know if this makes sense, but he . . . he saw it. He saw my sadness.”
That tugs at me and makes me think of Malin, who saw my sadness. “It makes sense,” I say. “But . . . why does he hate me?”
Jax’s eyes glitter in the darkness, and his mouth twists. I watch him battle with what to say.
And in his silence, I think of the hair tug this morning. That quiet tone when Sephran speaks to him. The way he carefully translated after I was so sharp, or the way he said same when Jax ordered tea.
The way Jax went so still when I mentioned his name.
“Ah,” I say softly, drawing back farther. Something inside me curls into a painful knot. “He’s not just a friend.”
“No,” Jax says sharply. “Tycho. Stop. He is a friend.”
Maybe I’m a complete idiot, but this is a conversation I didn’t see coming— and now that it’s here, I’m reevaluating every moment, every glance, every word. “He touched your hair. He ordered the tea.”
“We had . . . we had a misunderstanding.” Jax draws a frustrated breath. “He wanted more, but I didn’t.”
I’ve instinctively pulled away, but Jax grabs my arm, and his grip is tight, his fingers digging in. “Tycho.” His eyes are dark with censure, holding mine. “Sephran was a friend when I had no one. He was here when you were not.”
That hits me like another blow.
In his voice, I hear the depth of his pain. I see a shadow of how difficult those months must have been.
The worst part is that I understand it. I remember my first months in Syhl Shallow, when no one trusted me. I didn’t speak the language, and I had no friends. I was miserable and lonely and scared, and I spent every moment I could hiding in the infirmary with Noah.
He was here when you were not.
And now Sephran resents me for it.
It doesn’t take the sting out of it, but it shifts. Changes. A dull ache instead of a stab.
Until I fixate on the rest of what Jax said. I tilt my head and peer at him in the shadows. “What do you mean, you had a misunderstanding ?”
He’s pulled his legs up to sit cross- legged on the step, and now he’s fidgeting with his bootlaces, his expression fully in shadow.
My heart feels like it’s plummeting through my chest, but there’s nothing to catch it.
I cannot believe the sheer spectrum of emotions I’ve gone through in the last fifteen minutes.
I let a breath out through my teeth and stare back at the darkened road again.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I want to say.
Honestly, I don’t know if I have a right to say anything at all.
Because I did leave. It wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t his either.
I think of something Prince Rhen said to me months ago, when I challenged him to sparring in the arena.
Maybe it’s time to leave old wounds behind.