The Indifferent Stars Above #2
Lark wanted to say something. To tell him it would be all right, that he would heal, that the people who had done this would pay for what they had taken from him. But the words wouldn't come, and before she could force them out, Rion slowly pushed himself to his feet.
“I need to sleep,” he said without looking at her. His voice was distant again, unreachable. “Which tent?”
“You can share with me,” Lark said quickly. “There’s room.”
He hesitated. She saw something cross his face, some internal struggle she could not read. Then he shook his head.
“Darian’s tent,” he said. “I think …” He trailed off, unable or unwilling to explain.
He didn’t need to. Lark understood, even as the understanding crushed the many fragile things inside her.
He couldn’t bear to be close to her now.
Couldn’t bear the intimacy of sharing a tent with someone who saw him like this, diminished, damaged, and stripped of everything he had been.
Darian was safer. Darian was a friend and a comrade, but not … whatever she and Rion were. Had been.
“Of course,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too bright and accepting. “Whatever you need.”
Rion nodded once and walked away toward Darian’s tent. His steps were slow and careful, the gait of a man navigating the enemy territory his own body had become. Darian rose from his place by the fire and followed without a word, ducking into the tent behind him.
Noctis whined softly and looked at Lark as though asking permission. She gestured toward the tent, and the wolf trotted over to settle himself just outside the entrance, his dark body curled protectively against the canvas.
Lark remained where she was, kneeling in the dirt with the medical supplies scattered around her and the bitter taste of rejection thick in her throat.
“Lark.” Pippa’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “Come sit by the fire. You’re shivering.”
She hadn’t even noticed she was cold. Gathering the supplies, she tucked them back into their proper places in her pack and moved to join Pippa by the flames. The heat helped, though it did not reach the chill that had settled deep inside her.
They sat in silence, watching the fire burn. The sounds of the night forest surrounded them: insects, distant water, and the whisper of wind through oak leaves. Somewhere above, the stars burned cold and indifferent in a sky untouched by the suffering of those below.
“He chose Darian’s tent,” Lark said finally. The words came out stripped of the emotions roiling beneath them.
“I noticed.” Pippa’s voice was gentle. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“What do I think it means?”
“That he doesn’t want you anymore. That whatever was between you is broken beyond repair.” Pippa shifted closer, her shoulder brushing against Lark’s. “You’re wrong.”
Lark shook her head. “You didn’t see his face when I offered. You didn’t see the way he looked at me. Like I was something he couldn’t bear to be near.”
“He can’t bear to be near himself right now. You’re just caught in the aftermath.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, it’s supposed to help you understand.
” Pippa was quiet, choosing her words delicately.
“What they did to him, whatever happened in that cell, it didn’t just hurt his body.
It broke him. The Rion we knew, the one who was confident and steady and always knew exactly what to say, he’s still in there.
But he’s buried under so much pain and fear and shame that he can’t find his way back to the surface. ”
Lark stared at the fire. The flames blurred and swam, and she realized she was crying, tears sliding silently down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
“I don’t know how to help him,” she said. “I don’t know how to reach him. Everything I try just makes it worse.”
“You can’t fix this for him. That’s not how trauma works.” Pippa reached over and took Lark’s hand, squeezing gently. “What you can do is be patient. Be present. Let him know that you’re here, that you’re not going anywhere and that whenever he’s ready to come back to you, you’ll be waiting.”
“What if he’s never ready?”
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with all the fears Lark could not bring herself to voice.
What if the Rion she remembered was gone forever?
What if his body healed, but he never recovered the part of himself that had reached for her, that had kissed her, that looked at her like no one else ever had?
“He’ll be ready,” Pippa said firmly. “Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But eventually. Because he’s Rion, and underneath all of this damage, he’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.
” She paused. “And because he cares about you. I saw the way he looked at you before all of this happened. That doesn’t just disappear. ”
“It feels like it’s disappeared.”
“It feels like a lot of things right now. Most of them aren’t true.
” Pippa leaned her head against Lark’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort that required no words.
“Give him time. Give yourself time. We just pulled off an impossible rescue and escaped an army. You’re both exhausted, traumatized, and running on nothing.
Things will look different when we’re safe. When we’ve had a chance to recover.”
Lark wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that time, safety, and patience would be enough to bring Rion back to her. But she had spent too many years learning that hope was a luxury for others, that expecting good things only made the terrible things hurt more when they inevitably arrived.
Still, Pippa was here, at her side. Rion was alive, damaged but breathing, sleeping in a tent twenty feet away instead of dying in a cell beneath the Ashen Citadel. They had done the impossible once. Perhaps they could do it again.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?”
“For being here. For not letting me do this alone.”
Pippa squeezed her hand again. “That’s what friends are for.”
They sat together until the fire burned low, two women keeping watch in the darkness while the men they cared about slept fitfully nearby.
The mountains rose around them, ancient and impenetrable, and somewhere far below, the Ashen Enclave’s soldiers searched for the prisoner who had slipped through their fingers.
Tomorrow, they would keep climbing. Tomorrow, they would face whatever challenges the High Greenwood had in store for them. But tonight, for a few hours at least, they were safe.