Chapter 37
?rim
?rim returned home after the day’s lesson and saw S’samph leaving as he arrived. S’samph’s tail thrashed from side to side as he advanced with purposeful haste.
“Good, you are here. I don’t have to track you.”
“Is everything okay?” ?rim asked, slightly panicked at S’samph’s unexpected appearance.
“I didn’t have it in my calendar that you were coming to my home today.
” He didn’t see Cassie on S’samph’s levibike, and the plasma shield wasn’t activated around their domicile, which meant she hadn’t gone inside.
“The IA sent news about one of the others rescued from the Aviary. A female named Rhea." S'samph’s frill rippled along his neck. “Your mate is distraught. She ran off. I don’t know where she went.”
“What kind of news? You let her run off?” ?rim was torn between wanting to better understand the situation and wanting to rush to start looking for her. “Is someone with Cassie? Where is she?”
“She disappeared. I have Arz out looking for her. She’ll let me know when she’s found.”
“No. I need to go to her now.”
“You know where she is?”
“I have suspicions.” ?rim grabbed his levibike helmet. “What made her run off?”
S’samph glanced at a notification on his wrist interface before returning attention to ?rim. “Rhea was taken. The community around her did nothing to protect her, and now she can’t be found, despite the IA deploying resources to get her back.”
“Sokt,” ?rim cursed, finding more eloquent language abandoning him. He knew who Rhea was. The younger female with blue hair. “You told Cassie.”
“I told Cassie.” S’samph’s frill pressed low along his spine. “I did not anticipate how distressing she would find the information. My intention was to reassure her that we won’t allow the same thing to happen to her. Cassie seems to think Rhea won’t be found.”
“I need to go.” ?rim started his levibike.
“Do you require accompaniment?”
“No. I’ll go myself.” He started to rehearse things to say to her in his mind, but they all felt horribly inadequate. But first he had to find her, had to see for himself that she was safe.
“Wait. She may be injured when you find her.”
“Injured? You said she was safe.”
“Talk to your mate. If you don’t know about Cassie’s behavior now, that is a failing on your part.” S’samph’s frill fell flat as he gestured to his own arms. “Talk to Cassie. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m leaving.” ?rim kicked his bike into gear.
It wasn’t fast enough to manage the mounting dread he felt as he approached the canal.
Cassie might be injured. S’samph had been vague about Cassie’s physical wellbeing multiple times.
The closer he got to the dock, the more he suspected he was missing.
He saw Cassie’s dark hair and slight frame between the slats of the dock.
Her body was shuddering. He had failed. Cassie didn’t feel safe.
He had let her suffer again. Alone. Sokt, he shouldn’t have left her alone.
As soon as he had the opportunity, he would go to Pyo and request personal leave from his teaching responsibilities until this had all blown over.
“Cassie?” ?rim got down onto his knees to get closer to her. “I’m here, Cassie.” Words failed him when he saw her arms. Deep red grooves scored into her skin, welling with bright blood in some places and scabbed over in others.
“Tell me what happened to you. S’samph said you were hurt.” His voice was filled with gravel as he reached for her hand.
Rhea. Rhea is gone. She snatched her hand away from him.
“Tell me how to help. Do you need to go to the clinic? My knowledge of functional medicine is limited.”
Cassie pulled her arms tighter to her body. Nothing. Not safe. She repeated the same sign.
“You’re safe as long as someone else is with you. This, what you’re doing here, isn’t safe. Either K’kaen or S’samph needs to be with you when you’re not home. The Aviarist is a being like any other. He has no power to harm you as long as you are protected.”
Rhea had people around her. Rhea is gone.
“I’m sure they’ll be able to find her. The IA has considerable resources.” ?rim could taste the lie as soon as he said it. Cassie didn’t know about the two other passeri the IA had found dead. But he did. He knew, and he hadn’t told her.
Cassie fixed him with a blank stare. They won’t find her. She’s gone. The same way as Dove. Robin. Lark. Canary. Her fingernails dug hard into her arms, spilling more blood from the wounds. He tried not to recoil. He failed. Cassie flinched.
Now he understood. Cassie was unwell. He knew of some teosians who could not cope with high pressure to succeed and would bash themselves into surfaces until their bodies cracked.
This seemed similar. But Cassie wasn’t teosian.
Her body couldn’t restore itself. The pieces started to fit.
Her preference for clothing that covered her arms. The bandages on her arms after he’d nearly killed her.
Her excuses about falling during practice.
The old wounds she hadn’t been able to clearly explain.
S’samph’s repeated warnings and oddly coded language.
But he was as much at fault. He’d accepted her excuses.
He hadn’t pressed. When it mattered most, he hadn’t noticed her drowning.
“You did this to yourself. Because of Rhea?”
She refused to look at him, and ?rim only became more frantic.
“Cassie, please. I need to know. How long have you been hurting yourself?” Was this what Eleri had been alluding to at the clinic after the incident with her voicelock?
Had she hurt herself then too? Had she been hurting herself this whole time?
In their home? Under his protection? Without asking, he already knew the answer.
The reality made him clutch at his wrist nodes, overwhelmed with the implications.
Cassie started to wail. Her face contorted into a horrible, twisted expression, only made worse by the lack of accompanying sound. He hadn’t realized. It was there the whole time, and he hadn’t realized.
Because he hadn’t been looking.
?rim wanted her to be well, so in his mind she was.
She was fierce and resilient. His perfect aoseria.
She agreed to let him love her. She agreed to try.
And he’d been so wrapped up in his own euphoria that he’d never peered beyond her surface.
The hard and glittering astelide of her exterior obscuring the truth of how she was coping.
But only a fool would think her healed and whole and well. And he was certainly a fool.
?rim knew what happened to the cracked ones. They cleaved themselves open and threw themselves into the lightning fields, letting bolts sear through them until they overcharged their energy cores. He wouldn’t let that happen to Cassie.
?rim reached under the docks to pull her out into the sunlight. This time, she didn’t struggle away. She was featherlight in his arms. All hollow bones and bits of hair and sinew. But each gasping, shuddering sob set fissures into his shoulders as he rocked her.
“My aoseria. Why? Why are you carrying this hurt on your own?” He received no response other than the tight clutch of her arms around his neck.
“Hurt me instead. I’m a lot less fragile than you.
I can take it. I can always be fixed and reseeded.
You are precious, and your body does not repair itself the way a teosian’s does. ”
Sometimes I hate being here.
“Being where? In Laurus? We can leave. I can take you back to Teos with me. Or we can go to any IA planet. I have resources.”
Cassie shook her head. Here. Here breathing. I hate it. Her eyes welled with water, and ?rim understood her words, her meaning, but he wished he didn’t.
But neither of them could stay out in the sun like this. His body felt the strain of heat against his sensitive eyes, and Cassie was starting to dampen with sweat. “Let’s go home, aoseria. We can talk more there.”
She clung to him as he situated them both on his levibike.
?rim recognized she was in no state to respond to requests to wear a helmet or to sit properly on the passenger seat of the bike, so he drove like his venerable fossilized ancestor was on the seat with him.
And all the while, Cassie wept. Her tears bled through the fabric of his shirt as he pulled up to their home.
He lifted her off the levibike and carried her inside, where he was grateful for the cool and dark.
With all the gentleness he could manage through his maelstrom of anxiety, ?rim removed her boots and then placed her on her nest of bedding.
“I’ll go get the wound-care kit.” ?rim was reluctant to leave her, but Eleri’s warning about infections and possible death rang warnings in his mind. He would not be able to comfort Cassie appropriately if he was concerned for her health.
Stay. Cassie signed. ?rim couldn’t. Not while she was bleeding.
“I just need to go to the other room for a moment.” ?rim ran.
He ran because he feared what he would find when he returned.
With unusual careless haste, he snatched the medical kit from their shared lavatory and then hurried back to Cassie.
She sat glassy-eyed in the center of her nest, scratching absently at her already torn arms.
“Cassie, no. Please. Cassie, look at me!” He dropped the kit and reached for her. It was his fault. She’d asked him to stay. He’d left anyway. But the sight of her hurting herself was more than he could bear.
?rim sank down beside her nest. His chest node had already broken for her once. But it was precariously close to cracking again. He gathered her close again, and Cassie made no attempt to flee. “Come back to me, please. You’re somewhere else, I know.”
Cassie shook her head against his chest. I don’t want to be here anymore.
“You have to stay. I’m a greedy, selfish male; I need you to stay here with me.” ?rim felt the franticness of trying to evade an incoming storm. She was already fractured. He wouldn’t let her fill herself with more lightning.
Not safe. Never safe.
“I will keep you safe. But I need you to stay. Cassie. I need you to promise me you’ll talk to me or someone else if you feel like you can’t stay.”
Rhea is dead. I failed.
“No.” ?rim clutched her tighter, afraid she’d evaporate from his arms if he gave her half a chance. “You are not responsible for any sokt evil. Do not let the Aviarist take anything else from you. I won’t let him have you. Don’t give yourself to him.”
I don’t know what else to do. If it will save Piper and Swift, he can have me.
“Cassie. The Aviarist wants all of you. Giving yourself to him won’t protect Piper or Swift.
” He smoothed a hand through her hair, grateful at least that she’d stopped attacking herself.
Her hands had gone slack against her thighs.
“Can we clean your injuries?” ?rim asked, even though he knew it was probably terrible timing.
But he couldn’t handle her bleeding and injured without spiking his own anxiety.
Eleri’s warnings about human infections rang loudly in his head the longer Cassie went without treatment.
When she didn’t protest, ?rim retrieved the medical supplies he’d dropped in his haste to reach her.
Cassie sat exhausted in the center of the pillow nest, her eyes were clear though, not glassy and distant as they’d been previously.
?rim pulled on gloves and then searched for the antibiotic ointment, slathering it over Cassie’s arms before wrapping them in bandages.
She only winced slightly at the sting of the antiseptic.
Her blood had speckled down onto her clothing and dotted the blanket serving as the base of her nest. ?rim would wash it after she was sleeping.
Now hardly seemed like the time to mention it.
?rim removed the gloves and knelt in front of her, waiting to see if she would share anything with him.