Chapter 122
I went looking for Rhaevan.
At first, I told myself I was only searching because we still had a mission to complete. Then I reached the cavern entrance and realized I was walking faster than necessary.
A small, unreasonable part of me had begun to wonder whether he had simply left me behind.
After everything that had happened, surely he wouldn't.
Probably. I hoped.
I heard a faint shuffling sound coming from the stone steps above us.
I stopped to listen more carefully.
The sound came again.
I hurried up the stairs, emerging from the cavern into the cold night air.
Rhaevan was there, leaning against the stone wall beside the cavern entrance, already changed into dry clothes. The parchment was unfolded in one hand, while the Star Compass had been tucked back into the satchel which slung across his shoulder.
I slowed down.
So he hadn't abandoned me.
Good. Not that I cared though.
I quietly approached and peeked over his shoulder, trying to see what he was doing.
He noticed me almost immediately.
His eyes shifted toward me.
I looked away.
He didn't say anything. Neither did I.
Instead, I crossed to the other side of the entrance and sat down on the flat stone surface there.
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The night had grown colder. Moonlight spilled over the mountains, silvering the rocks around us, while the wind moved softly through the trees below.
Rhaevan remained on the opposite side of the entrance.
Neither of us spoke.
Every now and then, I caught him glancing in my direction.
Whenever I looked back, he was suddenly very interested in the parchment.
I pretended not to notice.
Time passed, I had no idea how much.
I also had absolutely no intention of breaking the silence first.
Then my stomach growled, loudly. My eyes widened.
I slowly clutched my stomach and closed my eyes in humiliation.
Why did my own body always betray me at the exact moment I was trying to maintain an intimidating atmosphere?
There was a brief silence.
Then I heard movement from the other side. I opened one eye to see what Rhaevan was doing.
He reached into the satchel and pulled out a neatly wrapped food packet.
"Here." He held it out toward me.
I stared at it. Then at him.
I was angry with him. Very angry. But I had never been angry enough to refuse dinner.
Especially free dinner. I snatched the packet from his hand.
"I'm still mad at you."
"I know."
I opened it. Inside were several pieces of herb bread filled with roasted meat and soft cheese, still carefully wrapped to keep them warm.
I picked one up and took a bite.
Then another. And another.
Within seconds, I was eating with the enthusiasm of someone who had apparently been starved for several days rather than a few hours.
Rhaevan quietly watched me.
I narrowed my eyes at him while chewing.
"What?"
"Nothing."
I continued eating. After a moment, I noticed something.
He wasn't eating. I glanced at the remaining food in my hands, then at him.
He was sitting there with the parchment folded beside him, apparently content to let me finish everything.
I sighed. Of course.
I stood and walked over to him, holding out the packet. He looked up at me. I tried to maintain my stubborn expression.
"You almost died," I said. His expression softened at my words.
"You need to eat."
For a moment, he simply looked at me.
Then he smiled, a small, tired smile.
"Thank you, Cassie."
He took one of the pieces of bread.
I sat beside him, leaving a respectable amount of space between us.
We ate in silence.
It wasn't uncomfortable anymore, not entirely.
Eventually, curiosity overcame my stubbornness.
"How did you enter the lake when it repelled you before?"
Rhaevan lowered the food in his hand and looked toward the dark waters below.
"I'm not entirely sure," he admitted. "But I have a guess."
I waited.
"I think the enchantment holding the lake in place broke when the fragment was removed from the altar. Whatever was preventing me from entering may have been tied to it."
He glanced toward me.
"When the fragment was taken, the enchantment weakened enough for me to break through."
I frowned.
"That was a dangerous thing to do."
"I know."
"You could have died."
"I know."
I looked at him.
He was quiet for a moment before lowering his gaze to the food in his hands.
"I was worried. I waited. I told myself you would come back. That you knew what you were doing. That I only needed to wait a little longer."
He looked at me then.
"But I couldn't stay on the shore with you down there."
I didn't know what to say.
He looked away again.
"I didn't jump because I didn't trust you, Cassiane."
His expression was unusually open.
"I jumped because I was afraid something would happen to you."
I stared at him.
For once, I had absolutely no sarcastic response ready.
The wind moved between us.
And somehow, the silence that followed felt completely different from the one we'd shared before.
(Third person POV)
The moon shone high above the cavern entrance, its pale light spilling across the rocky floor in thin silver streaks.
They had eventually moved deeper into the cavern, toward a warmer section where the stone retained some of the heat from the underground springs. The cold had become unbearable, especially for Cassiane after she had spent so long soaked in the lake.
They had continued discussing the clue.
Or, more accurately, Cassiane had continued trying to solve it while Rhaevan listened to her increasingly ridiculous theories.
At some point, she had grown quiet.
Rhaevan glanced over when he noticed she had grown unusually quiet, only to find that she had fallen asleep.
One moment, she had been sitting beside him, frowning at the parchment and muttering about how the map was deliberately refusing to cooperate.
The next, her head had settled against his shoulder, as naturally as though that had always been where it belonged.
He looked down at her.
One hand was wrapped loosely around his arm, her fingers resting against his sleeve. She had probably done it without thinking.
Cassiane had always been careless about the small ways she reached for him, perhaps because she had never realized how much those little gestures affected him.
He remained still.
He had become very good at being still around her.
It was one of the few things he could still control.
Cassiane mumbled something in her sleep and shifted closer, her cheek pressing against his shoulder.
Rhaevan's expression softened before he could stop it.
She had been furious with him earlier.
The thought almost made him smile.
No one had ever been angry with him for putting his life in danger.
Most people simply assumed that was what he was supposed to do.
He had spent most of his life believing that protecting someone meant placing himself between them and danger. It was what his position demanded. What his training had taught him. What everyone expected from the High Arcanist.
It had never occurred to him that one day, the person he was trying to protect would repeatedly step in front of him instead.
Cassiane had changed that without even trying.
She had changed many things without trying.
People had always treated him according to what he was.
The High Arcanist.
A powerful mage.
Someone to respect. Someone to admire. Someone to fear.
He had grown accustomed to the distance that came with it.
But Cassiane had never cared.
She had never looked at him and seen his title first.
She saw the man who forgot to eat when he was working too long.
The man who could spend hours studying a magical artifact and still somehow miss the obvious.
The man who had apparently needed to be called a moron with the brain of a toad before understanding that throwing himself into a dangerous lake was not, in fact, an acceptable response to seeing her in trouble.
She had no hesitation about telling him exactly what she thought of him.
And somehow, that had become one of the things he cherished most.
They had already found two fragments.
Only the third fragment remained before they could begin searching for the Heartforge itself.
Their journey was nearing its end.
And so was the time he had given himself.
He had made a silent promise long before this expedition began. He would help Cassiane find what she was searching for. He would make sure she reached somewhere safe, somewhere peaceful, far away from the people and circumstances that had made her life so difficult.
Then he would let her go.
He had thought that was what she wanted.
Perhaps it still was.
But now, sitting beneath the moonlight with her sleeping against him, Rhaevan was no longer certain he could keep the promise he had made so easily before.
His gaze drifted over her sleeping face.
He remembered things he had never intended to remember so carefully.
The way her eyes brightened whenever she became excited about something.
The smile she tried to hide whenever she was eating something she particularly liked.
The expression she wore whenever something irritated her, which was often followed by an increasingly elaborate explanation about why the universe was personally conspiring against her.
Her clumsiness.
Her ridiculous observations.
The way she sometimes forgot what she was saying halfway through a sentence because another thought had suddenly occurred to her.
He remembered waking one morning to find his arms wrapped around her waist, and the quiet, unreasonable wish that he could simply remain that way.
He remembered her asking about his lucky charm and how badly he had wanted to tell her that it was her, and that the memories he had made with her had become the moments he treasured most.
He remembered her standing before a powerful dragon and snapping at it as though she were scolding an unruly servant.
Only Cassiane could do that.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
He looked down at her again.
Slowly, carefully, he leaned his head against hers.
She didn't wake.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
He loved her.
He had known it for some time.
What this expedition had shown him was not that he loved her.
It was how deeply he had fallen.
Every danger had given him another reason to fear losing her.
Every quiet moment had given him another reason to want her beside him.
Every day had made the thought of returning to a life without her more difficult to imagine.
He had thought he was preparing to give her freedom.
Now he understood the truth.
He had been preparing to break his own heart.
Rhaevan opened his eyes.
He wanted her to be safe.
He wanted her to have the peaceful life she had always deserved.
But he wanted, selfishly, to be the one who gave it to her.
He wanted to wake tomorrow and hear her complain about the cold.
He wanted her to argue with him about the clues.
He wanted to hear another ridiculous observation that would irritate him far more than it should.
He wanted to see her smile when she discovered something she had been searching for.
He wanted to watch her magic explode spectacularly at the worst possible moment and pretend not to be impressed.
He wanted to keep finding her asleep beside him.
He wanted all the ordinary things he had never allowed himself to want.
And that was the problem.
Somewhere along the way, returning to Cassiane had become something he looked forward to without even realizing it. She was no longer simply the person beside him on this journey. She had become his home.
His chest tightened.
The third fragment was waiting for them. Their journey was nearing its end.
And for the first time, Rhaevan found himself wishing that it wasn't.