I hesitate. “I’m not sure. It’s technically daylight, so her gold-touch shouldn’t be dormant anymore, but...” My words trail off.
“But she just snapped like a rabid animal and turned the castle into a giant mouth of gold that swallowed everything up during the night even when she shouldn’t be able to?” Lu quips.
“She didn’t gild any of the blankets or the sofa.”
“Too bad. I hate that green color,” she says, gaze drawing over the cushions before she passes over a pair of thick fur-lined leggings and socks. “These are for her.”
“Thanks.”
She turns to Ryatt and slaps him on the arm. “Come on, let’s go make ourselves useful by lighting the fires in the bedrooms and getting more wood. I don’t think this storm is going to break for a while.”
The two of them disappear down the hall, voices muffled. Slipping on my gloves again just in case, I carefully pick up Auren’s feet one at a time, feeding the soft leggings onto her legs. I move her gently, especially when I need to maneuver her to pull them the rest of the way up. When I’m done, I carefully prop her up on her side again so that all her weight isn’t resting on her back.
Then I put the socks on her feet before covering her up with the blankets once more. One delicate hand is hanging off the sofa, and that’s when I spot the tattered remains of her cut ribbon still tied to her wrist.
Emotion, hot and heady, suffocates my skull, my sorrow pressurized and congested.
With the barest of touches, I pick up her hand, my fingers skimming over the cut end. It lies unmoving and leaden, a severed, silken corpse.
Use your ribbons.
I can’t.
Oh, she didn’t tell you? She lost that privilege.
A tic in my jaw pulses, rot pushing at my neck like punishing whips.
Gently, I untie the ribbon and slip it into my pocket—the only part of me that stayed dry. Then I tuck her hand back beneath the blanket before I slump down to the floor again. I don’t know how much time has passed when Lu comes back into the room. She smells of firewood and smoke and looks tired, but that doesn’t stop her from sitting down on the floor next to me.
If she asks me why I can’t fix Auren, I might just snap.
Instead, she’s quiet. We both just stare at the flames, listening to them crackle as the storm wails outside.
When she does talk, I almost flinch, so lost in my thoughts that I forgot she was here. “Do you remember when I first joined your army?”
I go still, glancing at her from the corner of my eye, studying the ridge of her contemplative brow. She never talks about this, never talks about herself back then. We’ve always respected her silence on the matter, because we sure as shit have things in our past we don’t like to speak on either. The few times one of us has brought it up, she’s shut it down, so I’m shocked that she’s bringing it up now.
Feeling like I’m treading on ice that can split at any moment, I carefully nod. “I do.”
With wrists balanced on her knees, she shakes her head. “I was a hissing cat who couldn’t go through a single conversation without picking a fight.”
My lips tilt up when I remember that scrappy, vicious girl who used to spew some of the meanest, crudest shit I’d ever heard, and she was only fourteen. “I was surprised you never sprouted claws.”
She snorts and flicks at the wooden piercing in her lip, the firelight making the set-in ruby gemstone glint. “I walked right up to you, looked you dead in the eye, and told you that your captain was a bony-assed whiner who couldn’t dodge a wad of spit, and that you needed soldiers with better judgment.”
The memory makes a chuckle slip out of me. “All while he had you by the collar until you kicked him in the knees.”
“Bastard shouldn’t have wrongfully accused me of trying to steal shit.”
“You’re right. Which is why I gave you a uniform and told you to get your ass to the barracks.”
Her lips tilt up. “You said if I was going to try and replace one of your captains, I needed to at least learn how to swing a sword.”
“And look at you now,” I reply. “Captain of the right flank.”
Lu rubs a hand over her shorn hair, finger lingering over the shape of the blade cut into the side. “Let’s be honest. You saw a half-starved and feral girl on the streets that day and felt sorry for her.” Her tone is nostalgia topped in something bittersweet.
“On the contrary,” I tell her honestly. “I saw a wicked sidekick and a person unafraid of a fight, who could be a great leader if only she was given the chance to learn.”
