Chapter 32 #2
Draven claims one last kiss and then pulls back. However, before he can reply to Alistair’s comment, Lyra reaches us as well.
Her hair sways, brushing her shoulders, as she skids to a halt after the brisk jog and draws in a breath. “Alistair! You’ve gotta come meet my grandma. You’ll love her. She’s like me. But older. And, well, a little crazier.”
“Lyra,” Draven says before he can reply. He points towards a building on the left. “First, we have to handle—”
“I know, I know,” she hurriedly says. There is still a wide smile on her lips and a bright sparkle in her eyes as she looks between Draven and Alistair. “Just give me a minute.”
Draven lets out a huff of amusement and then gives Alistair a look that seems to say, good luck. Then he flashes me a quick smile and starts walking towards the building he pointed at.
“Oh, and you have to meet my brothers too!” Lyra exclaims before Alistair has even had time to reply to her comments about her grandmother. “Did I mention that I have five older brothers?”
Next to me, Alistair’s face pales visibly.
“They’re not soldiers, though, so you don’t have to worry,” Lyra continues cheerfully.
“They’re farmers.” She scrunches up her eyebrows.
“Though generally, farmers are actually stronger than soldiers. So maybe worry a little. Anyway—” Cutting herself off, she grimaces as she glances towards where both Draven and Galen are already disappearing.
“Shit, we’re already leaving.” She turns back to Alistair.
“Okay, we’ll talk more about this later. Okay? Okay!”
Then she starts jogging off again.
Alistair, who still hasn’t been given the opportunity to get a single word out before now, just blurts out, “Wait!”
Turning around, she continues walking backwards while looking at Alistair and raising her eyebrows in silent question.
“Draven said that they would be celebrating tonight or something,” Alistair calls after her. “What will you be doing tonight?”
“With any luck, you.” She winks at him.
Alistair practically catches fire. His entire face is a red so bright that it puts the setting sun to shame. Lyra just laughs and twirls around before jogging after Draven and Galen.
I try, and fail, to suppress a smile.
“So,” I begin, drawing out the word. “You and Lyra, huh?”
His face gets impossibly redder. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Right.” I grin.
He desperately fans his cheeks, trying to bank the heat in them. But his eyes never leave Lyra’s back, and the sigh he lets out is so full of longing and fear that my heart clenches. Seriousness settles over us as we just stand there, watching Lyra disappear into the crowd.
When she’s gone, Alistair lets out a miserable sigh.
“I thought she was like the sun?” I prompt in a gentle voice, leaving the rest of the question unfinished to see if he wants to talk.
For quite a while, he doesn’t. Only once the blush on his cheeks has settled does he finally reply. “She is like the sun. I’ve never met anyone like her. But I just…” He drags his hands through his curly blond hair and heaves another long sigh. “I don’t know how to trust people.”
Ah, so that’s what the issue is. Lyra has been flirting like this with Alistair for months now.
And he obviously likes her as well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be blushing practically every time she so much as looks at him.
But he never reciprocates the flirting, and I haven’t been able to figure out why. Now, I understand.
Alistair has been deeply betrayed by almost everyone in his life.
When his fire magic manifested, his friends and neighbors and everyone around him suddenly turned on him.
The Red Clan hated Alistair because he was able to wield fire, which is their sacred element.
So to appease the dragon shifters and prove to them that they were good fae who were on the dragon shifters’ side now, Alistair’s friends and other people he used to trust held him down and burned him with torches.
It must have destroyed practically his entire ability to trust.
“Do you trust me?” I ask softly.
He is silent for a while, chewing his lip. Then he surprises me by replying, “Yes.”
“You do?” I stare at him in surprise. “Why?”
“Because I humiliated you, almost burned your face off, and encouraged several people to kill you during the Atonement Trials, and you still risked your own freedom to save me from the Ice Palace.” He glances at me from the corner of his eye.
“If you were going to hurt me, you would’ve done it already. That’s why I’ve… let you in.”
“And Lyra?” I ask gently. “You’re worried that Lyra will hurt you if you let her in?”
“Yes. No.” He rakes his hands through his hair again and lets out another absolutely miserable sigh. “I don’t know. I just… I don’t know how to trust people.”
Letting his hand drop from his hair, he instead undoes a few buttons on his fighting leathers and pushes the fabric aside. Vicious burn scars are visible below his collarbones.
“People who I thought were my friends did this to me,” he says.
“Just to prove to people who hate them, who hate us all, that they’re good.
Because that’s what people are like.” Releasing the fabric, he lets it fall back to cover the scars.
Then he tilts his head, leaning it against the wall behind us, and stares up into the sky, looking lost. “And I just… I just don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t think I could survive it.”
Grabbing his chin, I tilt his head back down and turn it so that he is forced to look at me. It startles him enough that he doesn’t resist.
“You’ve been pushing Lyra away for months now,” I begin, my voice as serious as my eyes. “For months, you’ve been giving her the cold shoulder.” I hold his gaze steadily. “And guess what? She is still here.”
He blinks, looking stunned.
“Do you seriously think that someone, and especially someone like Lyra who has the attention span of a puppy, would spend months pursuing a guy who gives her absolutely nothing back, if she was planning to betray that guy?” I shake my head at him.
“If she was going to walk away and hurt you, she would have done that months ago.”
Desperation floods Alistair’s eyes. “I just…”
“You’re scared that she will hurt you because of what other people did.
But look at her for who she is. Not for who they were.
” Releasing his chin, I motion towards where Lyra is already walking back towards us through the crowd with a wide smile on her face.
“I think you will find that she is exactly what you see. A reliable person.”
Alistair lets out a shuddering breath, and deep longing fills his eyes when he looks at Lyra. But that fear still flickers across his face as well.
After what he has been through, I understand that his trust issues won’t disappear overnight. But I really hope that he will be able to work through them soon. He deserves to be happy. And so does Lyra. I’m just worried that he will take too long to admit how he really feels about her.
Tomorrow is never certain. Not in this war.
And before we know it, it might all be too late.