23. Orthopedic Trauma #2
“I think she looks perfectly at ease. Come on. While they’re not paying attention.” Ciarán ushered me through the tavern’s seating area, and when I stopped to stare again, he hooked me by my elbow and pulled me after him towards the back door.
The back halls of the inn lit in a faint orange glow as Ciarán brightened his eyes to better see and guide us towards our rooms. I was happy for Orla, but worry nagged at the back of my mind.
One, because Iseult was Iseult, but also—
“I thought that wasn’t allowed,” I said.
“What’s not allowed?” Ciarán stopped in front of a door and slipped a key into the knob.
“Sovereigns and guards. Doing…that.” I followed him into a small single-bed room when the door swung open. “We aren’t going to both fit on that.”
I pointed at the twin-sized bed, where both my and Ciarán’s old clothes had been left folded neatly and cleaned.
“I’ll be sleeping in front of the door, keeping you safe like I always do.”
“Right.” I dropped my backpack on the bed and lifted Liam’s blue hoodie from the folded laundry. “Because Sovereigns and guards and…”
I trailed off but bobbed my head back in the direction of the tavern.
Ciarán sighed and joined me at the bedside to collect his things.
“Orla is a Sovereign, yes,” he said. “But Iseult, to my knowledge, hasn’t taken the oath of a Quillguard.”
“Oh. Right.” I sat back on my bed, still holding the hoodie, and then blurted, “But why can’t Grimguards and Saergrims be together?”
Ciarán frowned down at me. “Why are you asking?”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “It just seems like an arbitrary rule. There’s only been one Saergrim until recently anyway. It’s never actually mattered.”
“It did matter. The first Grimguard, Darragh, loved your grandmother.”
I stared at Ciarán in horror.
“Gams?” I clarified. While I understood that Gams was absolutely a catch, the thought of anyone, especially Ciarán's great-great-great-grand -uncle, seeing her that way was more shocking than the discovery that she was the Frozen God.
Ciarán laughed softly and sat next to me, the bed creaking as it took his weight.
“Yes. Gams. I don’t know if she loved him back, but he was opposed to her being the one to seal the Rift.
She waited until he was away, and then had the other three Magicians seal her.
The stories say when he returned and found her encased in the glacier, he was devastated.
He forgave her, but died hating the other three Magicians.
It’s probably what caused the disconnect between the Grimguards and the rest of the Riftkeepers. ”
“Darragh loved Gams,” I repeated, still trying to get used to the idea of Gams being of romantic interest to anyone. “But then why forbid all Grimguards from being with Saergrims?”
“Darragh was devastated by your grandmother’s decision, but he understood why she did it.
The Saergrim’s duty is to keep the Rift.
It’s a position of sacrifice. Darragh forbade all Grimguards from engaging with Saergrims that way because he had prioritized his own feelings and desires over what was best for the worlds.
He didn’t want the rest of us to make that mistake. ”
“Oh.” I wrapped my arms around myself and looked around the room, pretending to take it all in so that Ciarán wouldn’t know I was thinking about Liam.
“What’s your plan?” Ciarán stared at the hoodie clutched against my chest as he asked it. “After all this is over.”
“Get into school,” I said simply. “And everything else will go back to normal.”
“Everything else?” he repeated in a soft whisper. “Like me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, you’ll probably come back to Skalterra when Gams is refrozen, right? This is your home. But then Gams will probably call you back as Liam, but that’s—”
“Back to normal. There it is.” He nodded. “But Grimguards and Saergrims, Blue, they can’t be together. Not the way you want.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Because you like Liam, don’t you?” He pulled the hoodie from my grasp and ran a finger over the bit of his cloak he’d used to suture the hole. “I can tell because of how you talk about him. How you look at me when I know you’re thinking about him.”
My breath hitched. He knew. Of course he knew. We’d nearly kissed in a bath not that long ago.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
“And Liam is a Grimguard, so the rules apply to him too.”
He was rejecting me on behalf of a part of him that didn’t really exist anymore. It was humiliating.
“But he doesn’t know that he’s a Grimguard,” I whispered. “So really, if anything were to happen between me and Liam, and I’m not saying it would, I’d be the only one knowingly breaking the rules.”
“That’s not fair.” Ciarán let the hoodie fall to the floor. “That’s not fair to me or you.”
“How?”
“If I end up on this side of the Rift when this is all over, I’ll still remember you. I’ll know what you’re doing and I’ll be left jealous of a version of me that will always be better than what I really am,” he hissed.
“Jealous?” I scoffed. “What’s there to be jealous of?”
“Are you really that insecure, Wren, that you don’t know?”
I shook my head, unsure of what he meant. He laughed, but the sound was unkind and harsh.
“I broke all ten of a man’s fingers tonight, and I don’t even feel a little bit bad about it. You really think your bagel boy is capable of that?”
“‘Bagel boy’?” I rose to my feet. “He was not a bagel boy!”
“Oh, no?” Ciarán rose too, and he tore my backpack from the bed to shove his hand inside and procure Gams’s blue painted chicken.
“Because of this I remember enough to know exactly what Liam was. He was soft, but he was happy and would never break a man’s fingers, and he made bagels for you, and I shouldn’t even know what a bagel is but I do! Because of this damn thing!”
He shook the chicken at me, and my heart beat rose into my throat.
“He wasn’t soft. He got impaled through the chest for me.”
“And how am I supposed to compete with that?” Ciarán’s voice rose in volume and pitch, but I still didn't understand what had him so agitated.
“Why do you have to compete with him at all? He’s you!”
“Clearly he isn’t!” Ciarán snarled. “You like Liam. But how do you feel about me?”
I clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t have an answer. Of course Ciarán and Liam were the same person, but did I like Ciarán? Or did I only like the parts of him that reminded me of my friend back home?
And why did Ciarán care?
“See? You know we aren’t the same,” Ciarán said.
“You are.”
“We’re not. You know we’re not. You were a Nightmare too.
Don’t tell me that during all the time this summer you never, not once, wished you could remain that version of yourself.
Because you know there’s a difference. You’re saying you never woke up and wished you could still be that Wren instead of—”
He cut off, but the way his eyes roved over me made my stomach flip.
“Instead of what?” I hissed.
He stared at the chicken in his hand instead of responding.
“I don’t want to remember Liam because I don’t want to remember something I can’t have.
I’m stuck like this. This is the real me, and Liam is everything I wish I was but can never be.
And the twenty-four hours of Liam held in this damn chicken, Wren, it’s torture because every minute I remember is a reminder of everything I’m not. ”
“But you can be—”
“No,” he growled. “Let Liam die, Wren. For both our sakes.”
He dropped the chicken, and it shattered against the wooden floorboards.
“No!” I fell to my knees, reaching for bits of porcelain, but Ciarán's boot fell next, crushing what remained of the chicken and grinding it into dust.
“What did you do?” I looked up at him, and his orange eyes swam behind a film of luminescent tears.
The last bit of Liam had been in that chicken.
Ciarán’s chin quaked as he pressed his mouth into a thin line.
“Why,” he hissed, “why the hell is he still there? Why can’t I just forget?”
Relief washed over me, but Ciarán’s expression was dangerous.
“Ciarán—”
“And why can’t you—” He knelt in front of me to take my chin in his fingers. The fire in his eyes softened into something more sad than angry. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“I’d love to, but you won’t let me,” I snarled. “You’re the one who tethered our damn minds and won’t get out of my head.”
He let go of my face and straightened up. “Fine. I’ll take my leave and keep watch in the hallway. Sleep, my Lady. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
I stayed on the ground, hovering over the porcelain dust of the chicken as Ciarán stood and left without looking back at me.