21. Chapter 21
Isla awoke suddenly for a reason she couldn’t quite place. Instantly tense, she sat up abruptly, blanket pooling in her lap.
Pulse quickening, she listened closely in the darkness for any sounds that might have awoken her.
She turned her head slowly, wincing as the dried blood on her clothing crackled, scanning the darkness for signs of unrest. The fire had died down to glowing embers, casting a faint, orange glow throughout the room.
The silence stretched — nothing but the wind.
The wind.
Her eyes drifted across the room to the closed window. There shouldn’t be any wind, and yet, a restless breeze threaded through the room. As though remembering where she was, Isla’s gaze snapped to the dark shape stretched out beside her.
His large form was imposing, even in the dim combination of the glowing embers and the moonlight that spilled through the window.
He lay on his back, one arm across his bare abdomen, the other cast above his head.
He jerked, as though flinching away from something, and a sudden gust of wind sent strands of Isla’s hair whipping across her face.
She watched as his eyes raced beneath his eyelids, his brow drawn in pain as though he’d been pulled into sleep against his will.
You were tired. I wasn’t.
Had that been the truth? Or had he been avoiding the pull of sleep as she so often did, worried it would drag him down into the depths of this devastating memory? How long had it been since he had last allowed himself to truly sleep?
It felt like the most natural thing in the world for her to reach for him.
She laid her hand on his forehead, his brow damp with sweat.
His motion calmed slightly, and she trailed her fingers down to his clammy cheek, the dark stubble that now inched closer to a beard coarse against her hand.
Her hand slipped further, settling in the centre of his bare chest, the tips of her fingers just brushing his collar bone.
His breathing came rapidly, sharp and distressed, as she murmured words of quiet comfort, gently guiding him out of whatever nightmare he battled.
Vaelin screamed.
He screamed until his throat felt raw and an excruciating pressure built behind his brows and the bridge of his nose, like his grief fought to escape the inside of his skull. He screamed at himself to move, to go to her, to do something.
Sereth lurched backward, steam rising from her dark skin. Blood slipped from her nose, a single drop hitting the stone floor with a deafening finality. The fissures of light crawled across her face hungrily, and then she was burning in a pyre of star fire.
The flames seemed to lick his face gently, a soft murmur weaving through the room, muffling the screams that rose around him.
No… that wasn't right.
He blinked as warmth bled into his chest. A strangely familiar scent, an earthiness threaded with sage, drifted over him. The memory began to fade, like burned parchment curling at the edges. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
For a moment, he just looked at her, his eyes adjusting to the dark as the tension ebbed away, magic calming. He blinked as he stared into her eyes, swimming with concern.
Threads of her hair shifted in the breeze that wound through the room.
His eyes trailed along her arm, to the hand splayed across his chest, the warmth of her touch.
His breathing began to come easier as the dream faded into blackness.
It was disarming, how easily she quieted the storm inside him.
The thought lodged itself in his chest like a thorn, the clarity momentarily stunning him.
He flinched away from it, sitting up abruptly and throwing his legs over the side of the bed, angling himself away from Isla.
The wind in the room died like a candle snuffed out as Vaelin flinched away from her touch. He dropped his head into his hands, thrusting his hands through his hair, damp with sweat.
"Sorry," she said quickly, fisting her hands in her lap. "I woke up and it looked like you were having a nightmare and—“
He looked back at her, a confusing mixture of emotions crossing his features.
"And?"
She blanched, stung by the defensive sharpness in his voice. "I was worried."
He turned away from her, ducking his head as he raked both hands roughly through his hair.
Her temper flickered and she clung to it — the anger was so much easier.
"And I was right to be," she snapped. "You almost thrashed your way right off of the bed.”
"Why do you care?" he murmured, glaring at the ground as though trying to carve a hole in it.
The temperature in the room seemed to cool, sending a shiver through Isla as she clenched her jaw. "I have no idea,” she lied. She rose from the bed abruptly, crossing the room to the bath chamber.
"Isla..."
She halted sharply, a hand on the doorframe, as though something had physically rooted her to the spot. It was the first time he'd said her name, she realized. The syllables rolled off his tongue with an emotion she couldn’t name, something curling in her chest in response.
"It's fine," she murmured quietly.
"It's not." He replied firmly, and she watched as he dragged a hand over his jaw, squeezing his eyes shut against whatever memory haunted him so deeply. His eyes met hers once more, clear, but shadowed with buried anguish. “I’m sorry.”
Isla held his gaze for a beat, sliding her hand from the door frame and wrapping her arms around herself. His tone was heavy with genuine apology, and full of a remorse she didn’t quite understand. She should walk away. She should—
“I have them too,” she heard herself say.
Backlit by the moonlight in the darkness of the room, she saw him tilt his head. Slowly, she padded back across the floor. She sank onto the bed again, hugging her knees to her chest. She felt him turn toward her. In the darkness, it was somehow easier to say.
“I dream of the day my parents left. I try to make myself force them to stay, force them to listen, but it always plays out just as it did. I relive the day that Windborne lieutenant knocked on my door and shattered my world. Sometimes I hear his footsteps outside the way mothers hear phantom cries when they’re away from their babes.
” She paused, wincing as the admission collided with the hidden parts of her, sharp and jagged.
“Sometimes I don’t even need to be asleep. ”
He held her gaze quietly as the barest hint of twilight began to seep through the window.
She blew out a breath. “How long has it been since you last slept? Truly slept, I mean.”
He dropped his gaze to his lap as if she’d caught him in a lie.
“I don’t really,” she offered, shifting slightly.
“Sleep, I mean,” she clarified. The words fell out of her like they were being pulled by some unseen force.
As though she’d weakened some dam inside her that now threatened to buckle entirely.
“That’s why I… push so hard. If I’m tired enough, exhausted enough, they don’t come.
It’s just… darkness. Not that I’m recommending that, or—”
“Isla,” Vaelin interrupted.
Her stomach flipped at the sound of her name and she hugged her knees tighter. He held her gaze for another long moment before he spoke again.
“Thank you.”