9. Still Good Things #2
“Don’t.” Imalroc looked swiftly at Etiana, slumped opposite. “I don’t want an explanation.”
Rerdas blinked. “An explanation? For… what?” There was something he ought to be apologizing for, but riffling through his memory of the previous night only left him swallowing down flashes of heat and pleasure that somehow felt wrong now. He cringed back against the cushions.
Imalroc looked at the window, as though if he stared hard enough he could see through the velvet cover pulled across it. “Nothing.”
“It’s clearly not.” Rerdas managed, his thoughts spinning. He hoped against hope that he wasn’t about to hear Imalroc tell him it had been a mistake.
“I don’t want to talk.” Imalroc shifted away from him.
The silence that followed was crushing. Rerdas stared at Imalroc’s profile.
They changed horses in a hamlet on one side of the mountains, and he combed through every possible disappointment he might’ve missed last night.
He’d been so caught up—it felt incredible to want so much and to know he was wanted in return, to have his body pushed over the brink of a wild pleasure he’d given up on ever feeling again.
Maybe not so for Imalroc.
The rain turned to sleet as they made it through the pass, and he realized Imalroc might want an explanation for much more than the night before.
They began a steep, winding descent. If Imalroc was angry about not going South, that deserved a conversation, except that wasn’t at all what Rerdas had been talking about when Imalroc had cut him off.
It seemed as though the problem—the explanation he claimed not to want but so clearly did—had been something about the night they’d spent together.
He couldn’t explain the night before. How was he supposed to explain the way he’d melted at the first note of approval in Imalroc’s voice? What kind of apology did his craving to feel Imalroc close to him demand? What explanation did shameless surrender require?
None of it felt so shameless at the moment. He’d blundered through some carefully constructed web, and he still couldn’t see it even as he felt it constricting all over his skin.
It was almost a relief when the road grew rough enough to provide distraction.
The coach flung them against its walls. Etiana woke with a startled squawk as one of her hatboxes tumbled from an overhead compartment.
Imalroc had his legs spread to brace himself against every violent lurch, and Rerdas clutched the back of the cushioned bench, his other hand jammed against the door.
The wheels groaned through the churning mud. The coach skidded, and Etiana’s face went pale and clammy. Rerdas was sure he didn’t look much better.
“Sweet Eternals, are we even on a road? Or are we just falling down this damn mountain?” Etiana groaned.
“We’ll be fine,” Rerdas tried shakily. “Just have to—Ow!” The trunk under his seat rammed the back of his legs.
“Are you alright?” Imalroc adjusted toward him, but Rerdas waved him back.
“Just startled.” He had to lift his voice over the noise of sucking mud and rocks clacking beneath them. The weather was shaping into a true storm. This was going to get worse.
Etiana closed her eyes. “I think I may be ill.”
“Did you hear that?” Imalroc asked.
Rerdas listened for something beyond the rumbling wheels and the wind shrieking against the windows, driving the rain in sideways rivulets. He frowned, opened his mouth, and then heard a thump. And a thin, high-pitched noise, like someone wailing from far away.
Etiana’s eyes popped open.
Rerdas lunged for the long box beneath her seat, dragging it out into the center of the carriage. He clawed at the loose latches along the top of the box and flipped it open to see the snugly blanketed form of his aunt.
At least, Uralta had been snugly blanketed when they’d left.
The blankets were bunched now, and she was twisted onto her side.
Her eyes were closed, but her eyelids twitched and jumped.
The source of the thumping sound became apparent when she tried to curl her knees up and thudded into the side of the box again.
She hadn’t managed a movement like that in some time. The purging tonic was working. Swaying with the motion of the coach, he leaned down to tuck the blankets around her, with Etiana helping on the opposite side.
Uralta let out a howl that sounded more like a cat than a human. The hair on Rerdas’s nape rose.
“Aunt Uralta?” he gasped. Any moment her eyes might open, she would be back to help him and tell him how to fix the mess they’d made.
But her eyelids only twitched, and her thin wail never turned to words.
“Eternals.” Etiana’s hands fluttered helplessly over her mother’s form.
“We’ve got to quiet her,” Rerdas said, over the rising sound of his aunt’s cry.
“We’ve got to get out of this fucking carriage,” Imalroc muttered. As he spoke, the wheels tilted wildly over a rut.
Trunks rumbled and slid. Rerdas grabbed the sides of the listing box to keep Uralta from tumbling out onto the floorboards.
“Enough!” Etiana whipped around and opened the small panel connected to the driver’s compartment, bellowing something Rerdas couldn’t make out over the noise.
He pulled the blankets up to his aunt’s nose to shield her. Uralta let out another reedy sound, louder than before, but stopped when Etiana slammed the partition shut.
“He’s turning off the road. Says there’s a village ahead.” She threw herself back against the seat, her breath fogging in the dark coach.
It took an eternity, but the carriage eventually swung to the right, and the ground leveled out. The wheels clicked over rain-polished cobblestones, and they creaked up to the front of a plastered white house, its windows dark and narrow.
Etiana climbed out to investigate, leaving Rerdas and Imalroc to tuck Uralta back into her blanket cocoon.
Rerdas bit his lip as he lowered the lid over his aunt’s still form.
It was safer to keep her in her hiding place, but it felt like some kind of betrayal to do this to her.
He checked her pulse and temperature, smoothed the blankets, and hesitated to close the top of the box.
“She’s alright?” Etiana reappeared at the carriage door and glanced back to see that the driver was not near.
“For now,” Rerdas said.
“This town doesn’t have an inn. The closest thing is a merchant’s house; apparently, he’s the only one with a spare room. We have to bring my mother in, but we’ll leave everything else here so we can leave quickly in the morning.”
Rerdas nodded. The three of them hefted Uralta’s box and staggered out of the coach.
The portly owner of the house met them at his door, fiddling with a tasseled dressing gown. Their driver must have indicated that they were important Kirinoll nobility, because he fussed at them as if the queen herself dripped all over his entryway.
The house was humble, but with the wind and rain beating outside the walls, it was more than enough.
Master Cardill, their rescuer, chattered without stopping for breath as he led them to the spare room.
It was a drafty space, sparsely furnished with a large bed in one corner and a washstand in another.
There were two doors set opposite the entrance, and Cardill babbled something about them that Rerdas couldn’t concentrate enough to hear properly.
He was grateful to the merchant, but too miserable with cold to make pleasant conversation.
Imalroc barely grunted anything in response to the merchant’s queries about his history.
Etiana had to manage Master Cardill on her own.
She finally got him to leave with many promises that they would breakfast with him in the morning.
Once he heard Cardill’s steps retreating down the creaky hall, Rerdas helped his cousin lift Uralta onto the bed. Etiana set off for the kitchen to find water for the purging tonic.
Imalroc squatted and lit the solitary lamp. Light wavered over him as he turned to investigate the room.
Rerdas shot a look at the door and blurted, “I know you said you didn’t want to talk to me, but I think we need to.”
The battleboxer continued patrolling the edges of the room without looking at him. Eventually, he said, “I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t speak to you at all. Only that I don’t know yet what I want to say.”
Rerdas bit back the impulse to snap that it would have been helpful to hear that earlier, and took a breath to slow himself down.
“I would like to know what you meant.” The evenness of his voice surprised him.
It didn’t match the feelings raking his ribs.
“Before. What is it you want an explanation for?”
Imalroc’s guarded expression smoothed into an even-worse blankness. Locking himself away. “I said I didn’t want one. I know it’s not worth discussing. We can leave it alone.”
“If it bothers you, it is worth discussing.”
Imalroc looked at him then, his features all drawn tight, something very close to pain crackling close to the surface.
“Please just tell me,” Rerdas said. “I’ve come up with a thousand reasons you might hate me or be disappointed in me, and I know I should wait until you’re ready, but I feel like I’m caught beneath a carriage wheel.”
Imalroc turned almost fully to the wall. “No, it’s not—” He glared at the floor. “You left,” he mumbled. “In the middle of the night. Without a word.”
“Oh,” Rerdas whispered, but it was relief that weakened his voice.
So it wasn’t disappointment or regret, only a hurt he knew well.
The hurt that came from being left behind was etched into his very bones.
“I had to steal away in the morning. I wanted you to rest, and I knew Etiana would look for me.” He took a tentative step closer.
“I’m sorry.” He took a breath, gathered his courage.
“I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you in the morning.
I didn’t tell you how… how much I needed that night.
To feel that much again. I kept thinking about it all morning. ”
“I thought you might’ve regretted me,” Imalroc said quietly.