He had to believe in thatwhen, not in anif, so he picked up the spoon again.
She gave his shoulder a squeeze, and then her footsteps faded down the hall of the Dew Drop Inn.
Reeve ate, one bite and then a second. By the fifth, he could stomach no more, but he continued to watch.
Celeste lay before him beneath Halfrida’s thickest quilt, unmoving save for the gentlest rise and fall of her chest. Sometimes that rise and fall looked to stop, so he had to keep a close eye in order to call for Ima’riel. The elf would come running, but each time she had assured him Celeste was still alive.
“She’s just…empty,” Ima’riel had whispered at some point over the last three days. Reeve expected he was not supposed to hear, but didn’t ask after an explanation because he knew she was wrong. Celeste was not empty—not the woman who had taught him how to knead bread, that being cared for was more than merely an obligation, and that the world was not just light and murk but the complexity of shifting shadows.
If only she would open her eyes again and show the rest of them.
Reeve hadn’t broken free of the noxscura the night of the festival despite his constant struggle, it had abandoned him. It rushed away all at once and descended into the chasm of Briarwyke’s destroyed well. In the same moment that he was freed, the tangle of vines covering the circle had instantly withered. Gasps and groans rose from the villagers as they woke, but Reeve could only stumble forward on hands and knees, disoriented, exhausted, and devoid of his arcana. Just as he reached the fissure, he was caught by a set of bloodied hands a moment before plunging in himself to go after her.
He knew she had killed Syphon, he felt the murkiness vanish from existence. But there too was a dimming in his chest, and when Celeste was retrieved, bloody, barely breathing, and refusing to wake, he knew it would never glow again without the opening of her eyes.
Reeve offered the rest of his stew to Plum who hadn’t lost his appetite. The wyvern kept vigil with his meager heft on Celeste’s chest, head nestled under her chin, and wings spread like a second blanket. He croaked and scarfed what was left, then returned to his duty.
Darkness spread through the room of the inn with the slow creep of coming night, and if Reeve’s count was correct, the sun was setting on his third day without her. He’d sent a written plea for help to Bendcrest, but wouldn’t leave Celeste to deliver it himself. Gods knew how long it would take a Valcordian healer to come or if their skills could even wake her.
Ima’riel was drawn thin visiting nearly everyone in the village daily. Recovery was slow but the rest of the villagers progressed while Celeste remained as lifeless as the sweetbriars. He was not proud that he had begged the elf to forsake the others who were at the very least conscious to tend to Celeste instead, but Ima’riel swore she was doing all she could.
Sleep still came for Reeve whether he wanted it to or not. Many hours later, his eyes opened without his permission to have ever closed, and the fuzzy haze of a new day was blanketing the room. A slant of light carved over the treetops and through the small chamber’s window. He sat back from resting his head on her bedside and blinked down at Celeste.
Even sickly, she was beautiful, the rosiness of dawn’s light warming her skin. How dare it even touch her, he thought, for all the good it otherwise did.
Reeve had pleaded with his god, he had cried, he had prayed, and he had waited. There was only silence in return, the same silence he had always heard, though this time there was no light in his chest, no knowing sense to counter the quiet.
He lifted his head back to the window and then stood. His hands tightened into fists and his teeth clenched as the golden brilliance blinded him. “It was not my destiny to lose her,” he said, going to the window and gripping onto the sill.
The sun continued to rise because that is, after all, what it does—all it does, wings unneeded—and his grip nearly splintered the wood.
“I am finished asking,” he said to his god, to every god, to whoever or whatever would listen. “Give her back.”
There was a flitting shadow in the brightness that spilled over Briarwyke’s surrounding forest. Too fast to track, Reeve lost it, but then it was there again, and when he blinked down at the sill, a chickadee had landed between his hands. It’s little, black-capped head twitched, grey wings giving a flutter, and it dropped something pink from its beak before just as quickly flitting away.
Reeve lifted the pale petal, almost too delicate to hold. He’d seen no flower with petals like it in the town or the forest, but as he stared at its minuscule size in the midst of his palm, he could suddenly smell its source on the breeze as if he were rolling about in a field of roses.
How he’d not seen them before was a thing, like many other things, he could not fathom, but there were suddenly dozens of pale pink buds dotting the side of the Dew Drop Inn. The sweetbriar vines had shriveled in the wake of the festival, barely clinging on yet still shrouding the village, but now were thick with life and budding blooms. Dawn’s light crawled over Briarwyke, and as each bud was struck, it unfurled with a burst of life, and with the rising sun, the village was covered in Kvesarian sweetbriars.
“Oh, hello, my sweet boy,” came a whisper of a voice.
Reeve turned back to the bed, and Celeste was weakly scratching Plum’s neck as he headbutted her chin. Then her silvery eyes fell on him, and she smiled.
“I can’t breathe.”
“Ah, sorry, sorry.”
Celeste took a deep inhale, and it was filled with the scent of flowers, swiftly followed by sweat, but since it was Reeve’s and he was embracing her, she didn’t mind at all. She did mind that he was tearing up though, and that he looked so exhausted. “Are you all right?” she asked, throat as dry as the Accursed Wastes.
He nodded, swallowing hard and pulling her against him again but gently. “Please stay with me, Celeste. Don’t go back to that place you can’t wake up from. I need you,” he mumbled against the side of her face.
She leaned into the warmth of his body from her spot on the bed, still exhausted though she knew she had been asleep for a long time. She’d been trapped in a dream, lying curled up on her side in the midst of a dark and cold nothingness, cradling something precious and delicate and small, but Reeve’s touch made the memory of that frigid, empty place quickly wane. “Of course I’ll stay.”
“Promise me,” he croaked.
“I swear it. With credence and the sun and Earlylyte,”—and then there was a wyvern wedging himself between them, and she laughed weakly—“and I promise on Plum too.”
“Cutting me out?”
