Chapter 8 #4
Jesstin noticed a couple standing off from the rest. The woman was pressed against the man’s chest, his arms gently draped around her lower back as they swayed to the music.
He kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek there as they danced, oblivious to the raucous conversations and the children giggling as they chased each other around the fountain.
He couldn’t take his eyes from the way they ruled their own moment.
He heard Asterin again, whispering, My heart, my heart, my heart.
“Jesstin! Wake up!”
He snapped out of it and scanned for Elloven. When he spotted her standing on a table, waving her arms, he burst out laughing.
“How?” he asked as he sidled in across from her. She responded with an impertinent shrug. “You expect me to believe you lucked into this?”
“You always believe whatever suits you.”
“Ooh, you never said you were looking for a fight tonight.” Jesstin cracked his knuckles.
Elloven laughed. “All I did was tell the man leaving that I was reuniting with someone special. He was happy to offer his seats to me.”
“Well, who could ever tell you no?” He’d said it a touch too whimsically, judging by the curiosity in Elloven’s expression.
An image emerged of him sat upon his dais, receiving pleasure from a woman whose name he knew only as far as he paid her salary, blissed out on his own accomplishments.
The shame hadn’t existed then, but it did now.
“Have you had anything to eat or drink since you’ve been. ..”
“Dead? I have. The satiety is more nostalgic than essential.”
“We’re not using that word.”
“Nostalgic or essential?”
“Dead.” Jesstin stretched his arms along the velvety cushion, which was almost as tall as he was. The ribald crowd put him at ease. She’d picked a great spot, one of the few booths tucked into the free-standing walls.
“I assure you, despite our deceivingly charming environs, we are most assuredly in the netherworld.” She gestured around. “Only one of us came here willingly, which is still a mystery to me.” No matter how blithely she spoke, she couldn’t keep the pain from her eyes.
“What mystery? I told you the reason I’m here.”
“People die all the time, Jesstin, sometimes in tragic, terrible ways, and the people who cared for them mourn, which is the natural way of things. Why should my death be any different? Why would you risk your own life to come to a cursed and hopeless place, for me?”
The truth, that he didn’t know, felt like a lie, but life in the shallows prohibited the level of introspection she needed from him. “What’s different? I’m different, for one. You don’t think most would follow their people to the netherworld, if they had my ability?”
“Grief can be blinding, so maybe it’s good the netherworld isn’t so freely accessible,” she answered. “Because my fear, my biggest fear, is that you stormed down here without thinking about the consequences for yourself, and when you try to leave? It won’t let you.”
“I told you before. I’m not leaving until you can.”
She sighed. “And everyone else, I know. I know—”
“No, Elloven, you don’t know. I’ll help the dead move on if I can.
” Jesstin reached his hands across the table as he leaned forward.
She accepted them after a cautious silence.
“But if my choice comes down to saving you or helping them, I hope your handwriting is better than mine because you’ll be sending my sincerest fucking condolences to everyone else. ”
Elloven tucked her hair behind her ear with a nervous, sidelong glance.
Of anything he’d seen her do, it left him the most..
. stirred. Everything about her burned so brightly.
Her azure eyes were sparkles dancing upon sea waves.
Her fiery hair, wild and untied and flowing around her soft, rosy cheeks, stole the vibrancy from everything around her.
She had never, ever looked more alive to him than she did now.
Her small hands nested perfectly into the fold of his larger ones felt.
.. right. But it was why he patted her hands and withdrew.
“I couldn’t possibly live without tasting whatever they call ale here.
” He raised a finger and caught a barkeep with a smile.
She nodded to indicate she’d be over soon.
“Get it? Instead of I can’t ‘die’ without—”
“That joke is for old men whose humor has flown with their youth,” Elloven replied, teasing.
“You’re lucky a table separates us, and I’ll leave it at that.”
“Strawberry, lingonberry, chicory, or bitter wheat?” the barkeep asked.
Elloven leaned up. “What are...”
“Strawberry and lingonberry are ciders, the others ales. What would you like?”
Elloven’s face pinched in concentration. “I’ve never had cider that wasn’t made of apples.”
“Lingonberry then.” The barkeep turned toward Jesstin. “You?”
Jesstin laughed and shrugged. “Same.”
“What’s a lingonberry?” Elloven asked in a loud whisper when the woman had gone.
“Who knows?” Jesstin answered, and they both laughed. “Probably comes from one of those other ‘worlds’ I keep hearing about.”
“Strange, isn’t it? All our lives, people have whispered about them, but anyone who took it with a grain of earnestness was called crazy. If only they knew.”
“Our societal structure hinges upon us believing there is one uniform way to think, act, believe, worship... Those who don’t are forced to the fringes of society, because if others followed them, the cages they built for us would crumble.”
Elloven’s eyes widened. “I didn’t realize I’d be getting a side of politics with my cider tonight.”
Jesstin felt suddenly insecure about his outburst. He’d never shared his beliefs like that before. “Apologies.”
“Don’t apologize for saying what you mean. I’m not surprised you feel that way,” she said with a thoughtful tilt. “How different the world must seem from the perimeter.”
Jesstin shrugged. “I suppose.”
Elloven started to say something else when the barkeep slid two sloshing ciders at each of them and left to help another table. “These look interesting.”
The burgundy liquid was not as thick as an ale, and it smelled... well, fruity. He raised his mug, and she did the same. “To your resilience.”
“And your persistence,” she said.
“And your stubbornness...”
Elloven grinned. “And your recklessness.”
“And to us.” He clinked his mug against hers. “We did it. We found each other.”
They both took a sip. Elloven wrinkled her nose and discreetly set her mug aside, but Jesstin found he enjoyed the sharp tang of the berry.
There was no risk of him overindulging though.
The last time he’d consumed drinks so sweet, he’d woken the next day with bile fastening his face to the courtyard stones.
“You found me. I wish you’d tell me how you got here so fast.”
He couldn’t stop studying the details of Elloven.
Her dreamy blinks, the glitter of her hair under the hanging lanterns.
.. the fullness of her lower lip, which creased into her upper lip as she observed him.
Her tentative eyes suggested she expected a lie, and the thought of losing her faith made him answer with as much honesty as he could afford.
“I bartered in a sepulchral market. They have other means of passage across the Infinitum, quicker ways. It just took some time to work through what they asked of me. And you? Did you find anything interesting in the library?”
The redirect worked, but she sank slightly lower against her bench. “I confirmed who my real parents are. You were right about Esme, by the way. And then I met my father.”
“You met him?” Jesstin recoiled. It seemed strange she hadn’t mentioned it until then, but he supposed it was no stranger than him holding onto his meeting with Shioven. “Where?”
“Magna Annalis. I was caught in the time change, and the fiends tracked me to a dead end. His sentinels rescued me and took me to him, but I wish they hadn’t. I wish I’d never gone to the archives at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“Before I’d met him, I could believe he was a victim, both he and my mother—my blood mother. Now I know he had no fight in him. Not for her. Not for us. If it wasn’t for Esme, Gen and I wouldn’t have survived as long as we did.”
Jesstin fully intended to tell her about his encounter with Shioven, but the mention of her father had really distressed her, and Shioven’s context would make it worse.
Giving her one night without sadness or regret was a gift, not a deception.
If he could keep her smiling and laughing, it would spark the courage they’d both need for the days ahead.
The music leaped into a lively melody that sent patrons out of their seats. Jesstin watched Elloven watching them, her head lightly bobbing with a joyful smile and her foot tapping the ground.
“No,” he said firmly.
Elloven turned her face his way in protest. “What?”
Jesstin crossed his arms and leaned back. “I don’t dance.”
She tilted her head. She was playing him, and it was unspeakably sexy. “Not even for me?”
“Not even for... Fuck it, why not? When will we ever be back here again?”
She clapped her hands together with glee, then held one for him to take.
He gave her exactly what she was after: a gentleman’s kiss atop her soft hand, a sweeping bow, and the offer of his arm.
As they made their way to where others were dancing, it felt nice to walk her to the dance floor, to feel her arm tucked into his.
“All the women are staring at you, Jess,” Elloven said. “Even the ones with their own men.”
“Don’t even notice anymore.”
“Add ‘modest’ to your list of many charms.” She laughed. “Who knew this shy little boy would become a professional breaker of hearts?”
“Women should pick better men if the one they have leaves them unfulfilled.”
“You’d know a thing or two about that, I hear.”
He scooped an arm around her back and held her hand in his. “You think I’ve ever left a woman unsatisfied?”