40. Chapter 40
Vaelin’s hand slipped from Isla’s elbow to the small of her back, his hand nearly spanning its width.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, so quiet that he almost hadn’t heard.
“For what?”
“For doing it again. Working too hard, too long...”
She trailed off as he shook his head. He stopped walking, and she turned to look at him. For a moment, his eyes snagged on those jade green eyes, dark circles marring the fair skin beneath them.
He raised his other hand to the side of her face, gently brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek, wondering at the softness of her skin.
“I won’t begrudge you for who you are, Isla,” he murmured. “You have an incredible gift, and you are called to use it. Even if,” he added, his tone taking on a bitter edge, “I do not always agree with who you’re called to heal.”
She smiled through the mantle of exhaustion she bore and he marvelled at how someone could be so completely wrung out, so drained, and still so strikingly beautiful.
“Spoken like someone who’s known a lot of healers,” she said.
The tension resettled itself beneath his skin like an old friend. He had known a lot of healers. More than she likely realized. The glaring difference in their lifespans dropped between them like a hammer, with a sudden, shocking finality.
He dropped his hand from her face, clearing his throat as he gently urged her toward the nearest room. “You need to rest.”
With one hand still on her back, he pushed open the wooden door, guiding her through it. She made for one of the armchairs next to the hearth, where a fire already blazed, casting flickering lights across the glinting, inlaid glass along the mantle. He made to argue and she waved him off irritably.
“No. If I lie down, I’ll fall asleep immediately,” she said. “I need to stay awake until you find Lyra.”
He frowned, but knew better than to push as he watched her ease herself into the armchair.
That she had agreed to rest at all was a small miracle.
He dropped to a knee before her, reaching for one of her boots.
He tugged at the laces, easing it off her foot and she groaned in pleasure.
His eyes snapped to hers, the sound sending a flare of heat through him.
Her eyes were closed, her head tipped back, and he dragged his eyes along the expanse of her neck, swallowing the answering groan he felt building in his throat.
He reached for her other foot, pausing with one hand wrapped around her lower leg, the other cupping the heel of the sand-crusted boot.
Her breath hitched softly and he looked up again to see her watching him, a soft flush colouring her cheeks.
He knew his own pupils were blown wide and he saw it echoed in her eyes too — the wanting.
With each passing day, the pull they felt towards each other had grown stronger, as though they mounted some precipice together.
Now, they teetered on the edge of the cliff.
It felt increasingly impossible to stay away from her, to stop thinking about her.
And the more time he spent with her, the more he yearned to touch her.
His hand slipped up her leg, moving to cup the back of her knee through the thin material of her britches.
Her lips parted. The tension built, the air between them thick and charged.
He felt like he was going to detonate. The fire in the hearth behind him roared suddenly.
You speak about it like you were there.
The memory crashed over him like a wave of cold water. He slipped the boot from her foot and stood abruptly.
“I’m going to go find your sister,” he said, turning for the door.
“You said you wouldn’t do that again,” she said. Her voice was lower than usual, edged with a desire he felt echoed in his bones. He halted, as though her words tethered him to the spot.
“You’re shutting me out again,” she said.
He winced inwardly at the stab of guilt that ran through him. He turned, just enough to catch her eye, “I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t,” she said, simply.
“I’m going to go find your sister,” he repeated.
“She’ll be in the library,” Isla said, sighing as she stared into the fire.
“It’s dark,” Vaelin said, glancing at the windows on the far side of the bed chamber. “She said she’d only be there until nightfall.”
The corners of Isla’s lips twitched upward. “She’ll be in the library,” she repeated.
He nodded, then stepped into the hallway, drawing the door closed behind him.
***
He stood outside the door for longer than he cared to admit. One hand curled around the doorframe, fighting the urge to go back inside, trying and failing to tamp down on the pull he felt toward her, the need to be with her at all times.
You’re shutting me out again.
He grunted, shaking his head as though he could shake off the guilt, too. He scrubbed a hand roughly over his face, pushing off the doorframe as he started down the hallway.
Soon, they could talk about everything. What they had seen on the bridge, their opposing lifespans…
It had been one thing after another, with hardly any time to breathe, danger lurking around every corner.
Now, at least, they had four walls around them, with most of the immediate threats behind them — unconscious Shifter notwithstanding.
A growl of discontent rumbled through his chest at the reminder of the living, breathing threat of death and destruction lying only a handful of doors down the hall. She has no idea, Evric had snarled.
Suddenly, echoes of steel blades crashing against each other, the Shifters’ unearthly snarls mingling with the screams of the injured rang in Vaelin’s ears.
Images of the fallen, his fellow soldiers, lying in pools of blood, flesh torn apart - shredded - by claws and teeth.
An entire village, burnt to the ground, nothing but bones and ash remaining.
Not only soldiers - those who had joined the fight willingly - but civilians.
Families… Evric on his knees in the mud and viscera.
Vaelin flinched violently at the memory.
He was right — she had no idea. It wasn’t her fault. But it wasn’t Evric’s fault, either.
He banished the painful memory as he crossed the main atrium and passed through the gilded doors of the renowned Great Library.
This was not Vaelin’s first time in The City, nor the library.
And yet, he still marvelled at its ethereal beauty, all glass, metal, and stone, welded together so artfully it seemed it had surely been built by the Gods themselves.
Not for the first time, he wondered at the longevity of a place like this, given the hostile environment it was subjected to.
He was certain the structure must be imbued with a similar magic to what ran through the veins of The City's surrounding walls.
The shielding magic the fae had lent the Seers to reinforce The City's perimeter a century ago was surely the only reason the settlement stood today, while the bones of the others lay crumbling in the desert. Even still, the unpredictable hostility of the sands had intensified since the fortification of the wall. Even two decades ago, the desert hadn’t been nearly as hostile as it was now.
He passed by endless rows of bookcases lined with leather bound tomes and tightly rolled scrolls.
Scholars shuffled between the stacks, most ignoring him, some catching his eye before quickly averting their gaze.
None seemed terribly interested in his presence.
He peered down each row as he walked soundlessly along the library’s stone floor, seeking a glimpse of the same shade of chestnut brown that had become so familiar to him.
At last, he found her sitting at a desk in the farthest corner, all but buried in books.
An artful, stained glass window next to her stretched from floor to ceiling, casting beams of tinted moonlight across her strangely familiar profile.
Her quill scratched across parchment as she narrowed her eyes at one of the many texts before her, unaware of his approach.
The lantern next to her had nearly guttered out, its flame burned down to the wick.
Her eyes were familiar, but were not quite the striking shade of jade that Isla's were.
Her skin was the same fair shade, albeit paler, presumably from spending most of her time here in the library.
Their hair was the same chestnut brown, but where Isla's fell tangled and unruly when it wasn't bound in a utilitarian knot, Lyra's was smooth, every strand tucked in place, woven in a tight crown around her head.
He marvelled at how two people who looked so similar could be so very different, indeed.
He cleared his throat quietly.
She glanced up at him with a familiar expression of annoyance that quickly faded into something akin to horror as she scanned him from head to toe.
"You're filthy," she said. "Did you track all that sand in here?"
He blinked.
"Hello, Lyra."
"Hello," she responded.
He managed to stop his lip from twitching at her bluntness — barely.
"It's late, but Isla was still hoping to see you tonight."
Her nostrils flared slightly as she exhaled sharply. She cast a brief look out the window, as if to note the late hour. "I'm surprised she's not sitting up with him all night."
Him. The Shifter.
Vaelin drummed his fingers on the pommel of his weapon. "Aurelia is taking the night shift."
Lyra turned back to the desk, huffing a humourless laugh. "That's unlike her," she said as she began to close the ancient-looking texts.
Vaelin cocked his head. "What is?"
"Delegating."
Vaelin said nothing for a moment, considering his next words.
"She finds it difficult to accept help. She thinks it makes her—“
“—weak," Lyra finished for him, turning to fix him with a piercing stare. "I know. And so do you, it seems.”
Now it was she who tilted her head, and he thought he saw a faint curiosity there.
A moment of relative quiet passed between them as Lyra gathered up the remainder of her texts, forming a burdensome stack that she piled awkwardly into her arms.
Vaelin reached to help and she waved him off with a sharp gesture.
"Gods, no, do not touch anything. I've never seen anyone who needs to bathe more."
This time, he didn't attempt to hold back the low chuckle that escaped him. She looked at him, brows pinched.
He dragged a hand through his hair, feeling the grains of sand nestled against his scalp.
"I think you're right," he conceded.
"I often am," she said simply.
He huffed his amusement again and she looked at him again, seemingly bewildered. They made their way back through the library. As they passed the spiral staircase that split the room like a column, she spoke suddenly, her words more rushed than he'd yet heard.
"Most people are offended by me, the things that I say. The way that I say them.”
Vaelin raised one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t find you offensive.”
He meant it, too. In fact, after all the secrets and politicking in the fae courts, he found Lyra's bluntness to be a breath of fresh air.
He had neither the stomach nor the patience for court.
To have a straightforward conversation based on logic and fact felt like one of the easier things he had done of late.
Blunt honesty, even if it sometimes lacked tact.
Lyra turned away from him, her expression suggesting she wasn't quite convinced.
A few moments passed before Lyra spoke again.
“You plucked my sister from Rowanmere and managed to convince her to travel halfway across the continent with you, leaving all her patients behind, in addition to my Grandmother and Cael. Even Oren.” Lyra shook her head, brows drawn. "How did you manage it?"
“I didn't. I tried to convince her and failed. She made the decision herself.”
Lyra shook her head. “That doesn't make sense. Isla would never leave her patients. She puts them before everything — everyone.”
The words were twinged with a bitterness Vaelin knew better than to pry into.
“There was a death. A child.”
Lyra looked up sharply at his words.
“The illness is resistant to treatment, and it's spreading. When she lost the child despite her best efforts—”
“She came for a cure,” Lyra said. “She thought the Scholars would have the answer. Thought she could do more good by finding a cure for the many than by struggling to staunch the flow of the few in Rowanmere.”
Vaelin inclined his head, agreeing with her conclusion.
They walked along in companionable silence, making their way back to the Scholars' wing. Perhaps Vaelin was imagining it, but it seemed as though Lyra’s steps had quickened.
They reached Isla's door and he bade Lyra goodnight. She reached for the door handle, then turned abruptly, clutching her stack of books to her chest with one arm.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” Vaelin asked.
“For being there for her,” she said.
He paused, considering the weight of those words. Lyra stared back at him, impossible to read. “I’m glad I was able to get her here. To you,” he said, finally.
She tilted her head slightly, eyes scanning his face as though he was an equation she hadn't quite solved. “You care about her,” she said.
He swallowed the emotion in his throat. “I do.” More than he’d ever intended to. More than was wise.
“Hmm,” she said, pushing against the door, and slipped inside.