Chapter 118
After another unsuccessful search at a different lake, we made camp on its banks.
I sat outside the tent, watching the fire crackle softly while the stars stretched endlessly across the night sky. My mind, unfortunately, was nowhere near as peaceful.
What had I even been thinking when I bombarded Rhaevan with all those questions? Why had I gotten so angry? And, more importantly, why did I feel so relieved now?
I lowered my gaze to the flames.
He never loved Lysenne.
The thought still felt strange.
If that was true, then why had he avoided me for so long? Why had he always seemed so determined to keep his distance? What was I to him?
And then another question surfaced, one I had spent a long time avoiding.
How did I feel about him?
I had been so focused on convincing myself that Rhaevan and Lysenne were together that I had never really stopped to examine my own feelings.
Whenever something stirred inside me, I had found an explanation for it.
Attraction. Proximity. Friendship. The ridiculous circumstances of being stuck together on this expedition.
Anything was easier than actually asking myself what he meant to me.
But now that I knew Lysenne wasn't the answer, those explanations didn't feel quite as convincing.
Rhaevan mattered to me. More than I had realized.
His presence had become something I looked for without thinking. His opinion mattered to me. When he was hurt, I was afraid. When he pulled away, I felt it. And the thought of losing him was far more frightening than I wanted to admit.
Whatever that meant, I wasn't ready to name it.
Because if I did, another question would follow.
What if I told him? What if I finally admitted how I felt, only to discover that he didn't feel the same way?
He had rejected Lysenne.
What if, one day, he rejected me too?
My chest tightened at the thought.
No. It was safer not to know. Safer to leave the question unanswered than to discover an answer that could hurt me.
I hugged my knees and stared at the lake. Its surface reflected the deepening blue of twilight so perfectly that it looked less like water and more like another world beneath us.
Every now and then, a gentle breeze skimmed across it, scattering the reflection into shimmering fragments before the surface settled again.
Footsteps approached from behind me, and Rhaevan sat down beside me.
I glanced at him and smiled.
For a while, neither of us spoke. It wasn't uncomfortable. Just peaceful.
Rhaevan adjusted one of the logs with a stick, watching the flames rise a little higher.
Firelight flickered across his face, softening the sharp angles that usually made him look so intimidating.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, revealing faint scars that disappeared beneath the cuffs of his gloves.
Even something as ordinary as tending a fire looked deliberate in his hands.
After a few moments, I finally spoke.
"I'm sorry about today. About asking you all those questions out of the blue. I don't even know what I was thinking."
A faint smile touched his lips, though there was something almost pained behind his eyes.
"It's all right. I haven't given it much thought."
"No, it was weird. And stupid of me." I exhaled slowly. "I... kind of heard Lysenne confessing to you that day on the balcony. You two spent so much time together, so..." I hesitated, suddenly embarrassed all over again. "I thought you both were..."
I let the sentence trail off.
Rhaevan was quiet for a moment. Then, as though he had finally put together all the pieces I had been stubbornly refusing to explain, his expression softened.
"I suppose I can't blame you for thinking that," he said calmly. "But you were mistaken."
I looked at him.
"Lysenne and I have never been together. Whatever misunderstanding there was between us has been cleared up."
He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, as though he were correcting a minor detail.
Still, something in my chest loosened.
I nodded slowly.
"Okay."
The fire crackled between us, and somewhere across the lake, a night bird called before falling silent again.
"Do you ever wonder if we're chasing nothing?" I asked.
Rhaevan glanced at me.
"The Heartforge," I clarified. "The fragments. Everything we know comes from stories passed down. What if the fragments don't lead us anywhere? What if the Heartforge is just a myth?"
I picked up a twig and nudged a pebble across the ground.
"If the Heartforge doesn't exist..." I shrugged. "That would be a very embarrassing way to go."
Rhaevan considered that before answering.
"It may be a myth. Whether the Heartforge exists exactly as the legends describe is irrelevant. The Veiled Thorn believes it exists, and they're willing to kill for it. The moment they decided it was worth pursuing, it became worth stopping them."
His gaze met mine.
That actually made sense.
It wasn't about proving the legends right. It was about preventing the wrong people from reaching them first.
I sighed.
"I hate it when your logic is reasonable. You could at least pretend to be wrong once."
He laughed softly, and the sound disappeared into the quiet night.
I found myself fidgeting with the bracelet Lucien had given me. Rhaevan glanced at it.
"You always seem to wear that. I've never seen you take it off."
"Oh, that's my lucky charm."
I turned the bracelet around my wrist.
"Also, it makes me feel like I'm not alone. I mean..." I glanced at him. "Not alone alone. I'm here with you now. But it keeps me grounded."
"Hm."
I looked at him.
"Don't you have a lucky charm?"
His gaze lingered on me for a moment before he answered.
"I do."
"Really? Can I see it?"
A faint smile touched his lips.
"I don't think you would consider it a lucky charm."
"Why?"
He glanced down at his hands before answering.
"Because it isn't something I carry. It's the memories I've made with someone."
His gaze drifted towards the distance, and a faint smile appeared on his face as though he were remembering something from long ago.
I watched him quietly, wondering who this someone was. The question rose to my lips, but I stopped myself. For some reason, I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer.
"Someone important?" I asked eventually.
His eyes returned to mine, and for a moment, he simply looked at me.
"Very."
I nodded, letting the subject drop.
Yet something about his answer lingered with me. Perhaps it was better not to know who held such a place in his heart.
"Okay, leave it..." I said, sitting straighter and turning towards him completely. "Tell me the strangest mission you've ever been on."
He thought for a moment.
"I've had many."
"Tell me the one that still makes you question your career choices."
A faint smile appeared.
"There was a village in northern Eryndor. The villagers claimed a beast had been attacking their homes every night. They described it as a terrifying creature with glowing eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and an appetite for livestock. So I accepted the request."
"And?"
"I spent three nights tracking it. I followed footprints through the forest, found claw marks on trees, and eventually cornered it."
"And?"
He looked completely serious.
"It was a goat."
I stared at him.
"...What?"
"A goat. The terrifying beast was a goat."
I blinked.
"It had somehow wandered into an abandoned shrine and become enchanted."
I frowned.
"Enchanted how?"
"It could open doors. It learned to unlatch gates and entered homes in search of vegetables."
I lost the battle entirely and burst out laughing.
"So..." I wheezed, "the legendary monster..."
"...was stealing cabbages."
"And occasionally carrots."
I laughed so hard my sides began to hurt.
Rhaevan simply watched me with quiet patience.
"You..." I pointed at him between breaths. "The great High Arcanist spent three days hunting a magical goat. I can't believe this."
"It was eventually relocated to a monastery."
I looked at him in horror.
"You made it the monks' problem?"
"They requested it."
I buried my face in my hands.
"I sincerely hope they're happy together."
Silence settled again, comfortable this time.
Rhaevan nudged another log into the fire.
Then, without looking at me, he said, "Your turn."
I looked up.
"My turn?"
"You asked for a story."
"Fair."
I thought for a moment.
"Mine isn't exactly a mission."
"It's... a dream."
"A dream?"
"The strangest one I've ever had."
He waited.
"I've never forgotten it. It felt so real that even now, sometimes I wonder if I actually lived it."
Rhaevan didn't interrupt.
"In the dream, I was in a world where enormous metal carriages raced across stone roads without horses."
His brow furrowed.
"They moved on their own?"
"Apparently."
"How?"
"I have absolutely no idea."
He accepted that answer far more easily than I expected.
"There were buildings so tall you couldn't see the top. And instead of climbing stairs..." I drew a rectangle in the air with my finger. "People stepped into tiny rooms."
"They willingly entered tiny rooms?"
"They had no choice."
"What happened then?"
"The room carried them upward."
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
"...How?"
"I told you. It was a dream. I wasn't exactly conducting research."
He considered that.
"So... a lift spell?"
"I suppose."
"It must have required an extraordinary amount of mana."
"Oh, definitely."
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing.
"And everyone used these?"
"Every day."
He fell silent, clearly trying to make magical sense of modern engineering before finally nodding.
"An unusual dream."
"The strangest one I've ever had."
I smiled to myself.
That wasn't entirely a lie.
Not anymore.
I looked back at the sky.
The stars looked different here. I'd noticed it countless times before, but tonight, I actually stopped to look at them.
There was no familiar North Star. No constellations I'd spent years unknowingly memorizing. No Orion. No Cassiopeia.
A different world.
A different sky.
For just a moment, I wondered what the sky above Earth looked like tonight. Was it raining somewhere? Did the city lights still drown out the stars?
Home no longer felt like a place I could return to.
But somehow, it didn't hurt as much as it once had.
I turned my attention back to the lake.
"It's peaceful here."
The moon's reflection shimmered beneath us.
"The reflection in the water is kind of ridiculous, actually. The moon looks sharper in the water than it does in the sky."
I squinted at it.
"And the stars too. It almost looks like the sky fell into the lake."
Rhaevan stopped moving.
His gaze snapped towards the water, then the sky, then back to the lake.
He stood abruptly.
I blinked.
"What?"
He stepped closer to the shore, staring at the reflection.
Then, quietly, he said, "Moonlight descends..."
His voice was low and focused, the words more thought than statement.
"...and stars sleep beneath unbroken glass."
He continued, piecing the words together.
"Not rivers that rush. Not seas that rage. Waters that keep what heaven leaves behind."
I stared at him.
Why is he reciting the second riddle?
He turned towards me, his face suddenly lighting up.
"Cassiane, you are a genius!""