24. Magnolia
24
MAGNOLIA
A pparently I’d been hit by a train and no one had bothered to tell me. I lay, feeling bruised everywhere, head pounding, mouth dust-dry. I tried to swallow, and that was a bust. So I just stayed still, breathing slowly, trying to figure out how I’d been hit by a train when there weren’t any trains around here.
Maybe I’d gotten hit by a bracku. Or a rockslide. Or an especially effective Garrek glare.
Garrek.
Just the thought of him gave me the strength to force open my eyes. I became aware of the fact that I was now panting. Where was he?
Where was I?
“It’s alright!”
My burning eyes tracked the voice.
“Garrek?” I blinked. Then I squinted.
Had… Had Garrek always be en green?
“Not Garrek, I’m afraid,” the man with a face so much like Garrek’s said. “I’m Oaken.”
Oaken. My fiancé, for all intents and purposes.
Horror gripped me, because I was now nearly certain that the things I’d experienced with Garrek were a dream. Had he already left? Had I been here with Oaken the whole time?
Had I ever told Garrek that I loved him?
My vision blurred with tears. I took a moment to close my eyes and compose myself as best I could. When I opened my eyes, I could see more clearly now that the man before me definitely wasn’t Garrek. Oaken looked a bit like a younger version. Same hair, same jaw, same broad-shouldered build. But where Garrek’s jaw was nearly always tight with tension, Oaken’s wasn’t. His posture was more relaxed, something about his countenance easier and more open. His eyes were a lively green, brightening to a searing mint in the middle.
“Garrek isn’t far.”
“Oh.” The word slipped out of me, a near-sob of sound. “OK.” I tried to swallow again, with a modicum of success this time. “Water?”
“Oh! Of course! Forgive me.” Oaken snatched at a cup that was on a table near the bed I was currently lying in. “Here! Oh. You can’t drink it like this. Alright.” He put the cup back down, then got to work adjusting and fluffing pillows before helping me very slowly to sit up. My whole body screamed with the effort, even as he assisted me.
He gave me a sympathetic look. “I know what that’s like. I was bitten by an ardu once, too. Of course, I was not lucky enough to wake up in a bed like you. No, I woke up in a puddle of my own piss in a field in the dead of night. I had to crawl home. Ah.” He gave his head a small shake. “You don’t care about any of that. Sorry.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I just had absolutely no idea what was going on. Not the barest hint of a clue. My brain felt like sludge even attempting to figure it all out.
“I think Garrek is just helping Killian with something outside. He won’t be gone long.” He gave me a rueful sort of smile. “He’s never gone long from you.” His smile faded, replaced with an expression much more serious. “Magnolia,” he said gravely, “I would like to formally end our engagement.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Empire! I’ve forgotten your water!” He picked up the cup again, sloshing a bit of it on the bedspread in his haste to get it to me. He used his tail to swipe the water off the bedspread before it fully absorbed, muttering curses as he did so. If I hadn’t been so exhausted and overwhelmed I would have smiled at how charming it was.
He guided the cup to my mouth, and I drank gratefully, wincing as the water coated my dry throat.
“There, now,” he said, putting the cup back down. “Humans must stay hydrated. I read that in my book.”
“Book?” I croaked.
“Well, the digital copy. The warden could not get a hard copy to me as he gave the others. But he sent the file to my data tab, as mine is the only one whose screen still works.”
“Right…”
“Anyway. Garrek told me everything.”
Everything. What even was everything? How much had actually happened?
How much had been a fever dream?
I had no recollection of getting here. No recollection of an ardu bite, if that was even what had happened to me. All I knew now was that I was lying in the bed of the man I was supposed to marry.
And he was now… breaking up with me?
“I figured I’d save you the trouble of having to say it yourself,” Oaken went on. “So I am ending our engagement. I do not expect you to fulfill your obligation and marry me.”
“I’m… I’m so sorry.”
I was. I’d only just met him, and Oaken was already giving off major good boy vibes. I thought I remembered Garrek telling me that. That Oaken was a good man. I didn’t want to hurt him.
But if he was hurt, he didn’t let on one bit. He just smiled kindly at me.
“You don’t need to apologize. I’m happy that you and Garrek have found each other. I’ve always wanted happiness for him. Ever since he saved me.”
“Saved you?” It was becoming easier to talk now. My mouth felt better after the water, and my brain was slowly but surely coming back online.
“Yes. Saved me. Did he not tell you the story? ”
“He said… you were convicted… for his crime. That’s all.”
His gaze shadowed.
“My uncle was a terrible excuse for a male. Violent. Garrek got between us once, and as a result, my uncle died. I tried to take the fall during the trial. But as neither of us would blame the other, we were both convicted.” Oaken’s mouth thinned. “He never told you he was protecting me?”
“No. He didn’t.”
Oaken huffed out a little laugh.
“Typical.”
We both said the word at the exact same time. Oaken’s face lit up with a grin that, even in my slightly pulverized state, I couldn’t help but return.
I had so many questions bubbling to the surface of my brain. Like how did we find you? And how did we get here? And how long was I out for?
I settled on, “How’s your foot?”
Oaken’s expression brightened further, as if he were just pleased as punch that someone had thought to ask after him.
“It will mend! Garrek helped me make a splint!” He hauled his right leg up to show me, smiling widely. Then, his expression softened into something bashful. “I hope that once it is healed, I may try again for another bride.”
My heart squeezed.
“But next time,” he said with mock sternness, “I will make sure I am well enough to go and get her myself. So that some strapping, growling, blue-tailed rider does not woo her away from me before I even get the chance to meet her.”
“I really am sorry, Oaken. I never meant to-”
“Don’t be sorry.” He patted the mattress. He was just a little too polite, I guessed, to pat my leg or my hand when we’d only just met and I clearly wasn’t feeling my best. That tiny courtesy touched me deeply.
“I have a feeling,” he said, “that things worked out just as they were meant to.” His green ears twitched. “Speaking of which…”
Must have been that legendary Zabrian hearing. Because Oaken turned towards the bedroom doorway a full three seconds before I heard the heavy fall of boots approaching at rapid speed.
Garrek nearly fell through the doorway. His body was chaos and beauty and motion. Motion that stopped when the piercing white of his eyes landed on me.
“You’re here,” I whispered. Even though Oaken had said he was, a paranoid part of me hadn’t truly believed him. A part of me still couldn’t disentangle my memories from dreams.
“Of course I am.” He swallowed, thick throat bobbing. “I heard your voice. I ran.”
Garrek came all the way into the room and sank to his knees beside the bed. Oaken discreetly got up and moved away. Or, he would have been discreet if he hadn’t hopped and hobbled and nearly knocked over the chair, swearing under his breath the entire way.
He closed the door behind him.
“What happened? ”
With Garrek’s hands cupping mine and his thumbs pressed to my wrists – as if he needed to feel the rhythm of my pulse – he told me. He told me about the ardu bite. About Oaken coming upon us and then the mad dash back here. About Oaken’s miraculous cure. About the fact that I’d been asleep for a full day, a full night, and most of the next day after that.
“Killian brought our things and the animals here,” he told me. “They’re safe in one of Oaken’s pastures. And he’s been helping me construct another small cabin on Oaken’s property. We can stay here while you recover. And while Oaken recovers, too. Killian and I are assisting him with his herd and his chores.”
“Oaken told me… He told me the wedding is off.”
Garrek didn’t look surprised by this.
“Yes.”
“You know I love you, right?” I blurted. “Because Oaken said you told him everything, but I don’t know what everything is. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. And I’m afraid that maybe I’ve just dreamed the past few days, or-”
Garrek swallowed my words with his own mouth. I jerked in his arms, then melted, my tired muscles relaxing instantly against him.
Relaxing because he felt like home.
His lips moved over mine, both comforting and pleading. I wasn’t strong enough to kiss him back the way I wanted to. The way that would tell him I understood. I weakly squeezed his fingers, tears gathering in my eyes, hoping that he’d know it anyway .
“I love you, Magnolia,” he rasped against my mouth. “I have since that very first night I met you.”
“You… You have?” I felt dizzy, and it wasn’t from the ardu bite. He’d acted like he barely tolerated me in the beginning. “But… You never let on…”
“My eyes did,” he said cryptically.
My head swam. I was too tired to figure out what he meant about his eyes.
“Magnolia.”
I focused my hazy gaze onto his face.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful.
“I want to marry you,” he said. “I want to build a life with you. Family. With you and Killian both.”
My battered heart took flight.
“I’m not Oaken. I’m not the man you came here for. But I can be the man you need. And I’ll work every day to be the man who deserves you.” His jaw flexed. His eyes searched mine. “If… If you’ll have me.”
“Why, Garrek,” I murmured, happiness warming every inch of me, “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Asking. Pleading. I’ll beg you if I have to,” he groaned. “Get down on my knees and… Wait. I am already on my knees.”
I laughed, and he stilled.
“I thought I’d never hear you laugh again.”
The grief in his voice was unmistakable. The echoes of his fear. The abyss of what could have been.
I hated that I hadn’t been there when he was so afraid.
“Well, you’d better get used to that sound,” I said softly, “because like it or not, you’re pretty damn good at making me laugh. And you’re going to hear it every single day. When we’re married.”