44. Cassiel #2
“No,” I say quickly. “No. The idea is that you stay here. Safe. But…” I hesitate.
There’s been no mention in my readings of anything happening to the anchor.
Wren might know more, when she gets here.
I won’t frighten her with theories. “If I get lost… if for whatever reason I can’t come back…
I need you to understand that it would never be your fault. ”
Ru goes very still. I hate myself for saying it, for voicing the thoughts I hope will never haunt her.
“I see,” she murmurs.
She looks down at her hands, then back up at me. There’s something different in her eyes now—not just hope, but thought. The kind no child should have to carry.
“You said anchors can be people,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And Wren doesn’t have anyone else.”
“No.”
“So you’re hers,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “I suppose. If it works that way. You pull me out, I pull her.” I hope.
Ru exhales slowly, then swings her legs off the chair so they dangle, her heels knocking lightly against the wood.
“Do you want me to choose?” she says. “If you go, or if you stay? Do you want me to make the decision?”
“I—” My throat tightens. “You don’t have to. I can decide for you. I should decide for you—”
She shakes her head immediately. “No,” she says, more firmly than I expect. “I’m glad you’re telling me. That you’re treating me more than just… something to protect.”
“You are something to protect,” I say, louder than intended.
“I know,” she replies, softer. “But you and Mama are deserving of protection too. And I want to help you.”
The words land uncomfortably against my chest, but I force a weak smile. “Mama would be so angry if we knew we were planning to risk ourselves for her.”
“Maybe,” Ru agrees. “But she’s not here to tell us off.”
“Yet,” I add.
“Yet.”
She holds my gaze, steady in a way that feels eerily like Evander’s. Maybe a mix of him and Mother. She’s always looked more like them than me.
“I would do anything to get Mama back,” she says. “You know that.”
I do. Saints, I do.
“And if it was you,” she continues, “and I was older… you wouldn’t even ask. You’d just go.”
She isn’t wrong.
“That’s different,” I say weakly.
“Why?”
Because you’re nine. Because you’re all I have left. Because I can’t lose you too.
But the words won’t come.
Ru tilts her head slightly, studying me.
“You’re afraid,” she says.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Not of the dream.”
“No.”
“Of leaving me.”
My chest tightens. “Yes.”
She nods, gaze sad and bright. “I’m afraid too,” she says quietly. “Of losing you.”
The room feels smaller somehow.
“But if we don’t try,” she adds, “we’ve already lost Mama.”
Her words land harder than anything else. If we don’t try, and Wren’s theory is correct, then Mama is never waking up. Then I have to be king, now, and alone, and our family, which should always have been five and never has been, will remain at two forever.
Ru slides off the chair and sits on the floor beside me, her small hand slipping into mine.
“I want to help,” she says. “Even if it’s scary. Even if it’s dangerous.”
Her fingers squeeze mine, surprisingly strong.
“I trust you,” she adds. “And Wren.”
My throat burns.
“You don’t have to be brave,” I murmur.
“I know,” she says. “But I want to be.”
I let out a slow, unsteady breath, staring down at her—this child who should be worrying about lessons and scraped knees, not impossible choices and dream-walking into the unknown.
Saints. What am I doing? What have I done?
“Once we start,” I say carefully, “there may be no turning back.”
Ru nods.
“And if anything feels wrong—anything at all—you tell someone immediately. Imogen, Dain, Edwin, anyone. You don’t try to fix it yourself.”
“I won’t,” she promises.
I search her face for hesitation, for doubt—something I can use to call this off.
I find none.
“…All right,” I say finally, the words tasting sour on my tongue. Nothing is all right about this. I’m quite certain nothing will be all right again.
Ru’s shoulders lift slightly. “We’ll get her back,” she says, with a certainty I don’t possess.
I manage a small, fragile smile. “I hope you’re right.”
She beams at that, just for a second, before throwing her arms around me. I hold her tightly, closing my eyes, and pray to whatever fates that might be listening that I haven’t just made the worst mistake of my life.
Tears start to leak from my eyes, and pretty soon, they’re falling in earnest. I hate that it has to be my sister of all people that see me this way.
I wish Evander were here. Or Mother. Or Wren.
Always Wren. I don’t want to have to make this choice, I don’t want to be asking my nine-year-old sister to shoulder this with me.
I’ve shouldered so much for so long so that she wouldn’t have to.
Ru doesn’t seem to care, though. She pulls away, takes a paint-splattered handkerchief from her sleeve, and starts to dab at my tears like I’ve dried hers a dozen times before.
That just makes me cry more, but I also start to laugh because she’s smiling, and it’s so silly to be ashamed of my tears around someone who once urinated in my lap when she was a baby.
I’ve had every single bodily excretion of Ru’s on me at one point. Tears are the least problematic.
I pull her back against my chest and stroke her hair as if that might stop the onslaught of tears.
It doesn’t.
“You’re a very good sister,” I murmur.
“Thanks,” she says, fingers curling into my clothes. “You’re a very good brother.”
She starts to sniff.
“I never had a favourite,” she whispers.
“Or if I did, it changed every day, or within the hour, depending on who I was with or who was annoying me more. You and Evander, that is. You were both my favourite. It never mattered all that much that I didn’t have a dad, because I had you.
How could I ever miss anyone I’d never met when I had you and Evander? But now…”
She starts crying in earnest, tears trembling down her cheeks. “I miss him,” she sobs. “I miss him so much.”
“Me too,” I admit, clutching her harder. “If I had a way to bring him back, too—”
“You’d risk it,” she says. “I know. You’d have to.”
She pulls away, taking her handkerchief back to mop her own eyes. “We can’t bring him back,” she says, not crying now. “But we can save Mama. We have to try.”
I hate how right she is.
I hate how much we have to risk.