I get my shit together and lift my head to take him in. The first thing I see is a pink line across his throat. I reach out to touch it, but it’s smooth, like it’s an echo of a wound. I pull my hand back and run my fingers over my own neck. There’s a raised line across my throat in exactly the same place. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and I jerkily pull my hand away, not ready to deal with the reminder of what happened to me.
I focus back on Treno, his long white hair matted and tangled, and a sheen of sweat layers his skin. He looks sick. I reach out my palm to his forehead, expecting to find his skin burning beneath my touch, but he’s cool and clammy instead. I scoot up closer to his head and run my fingers down his cheek. He doesn’t respond to my touch at all.
My first instinct is to try and wake him up, but I stop myself. I’m not sure what’s wrong with him, and if he needs the sleep, I’ll feel like a dick for stealing him away from it. The other issue is that I’m terrified if he does open his eyes to find me, I won’t see relief or happiness in his two-toned gaze, but betrayal and anger instead. I’m not ready for that.
I go full Little Mermaid and just stare at him, while occasionally smoothing some hair back from his face as an excuse to touch him. I fight the urge to start singing “Part of Your World” and instead start monologuing in my head about what the fuck I’m going to say to him when he wakes up.
I have a shit ton of explaining to do. I try not to think about what will happen if he refuses to listen to me, or worse, pulls a Loa and tries to take me out. I hope he’ll give me a chance to try and make my omissions right with him. I go round and round in my mind with all the different ways I can explain it all to him, but it all feels flat.
How do you make betrayal right?
Somehow,“Sorry I lied to you. If I had known you were going to end up my mate, maybe I...would have done the exact same thing because you were Avowed and I didn’t want to end up in a dungeon or dead,”isn’t exactly the begging for forgiveness Treno will probably expect.
The air pressure above me changes, and I immediately move to cover Treno from whatever is about to swoop down from above. I can feel Pigeon slamming against the walls of steel I encaged her in, and I try to ignore the broken pieces rattling around inside of me because of it. Like a missile, tan skin and black wings slam to the ground fifteen feet away. Dust plumes up to make the landing even more dramatic, and Zeph walks arrogantly through the cloud, his gaze landing immediately on mine. He takes in my protective positioning around Treno and growls his disapproval. He looks good. Healed. There’s no blood weeping down his side, or bruises. And the line on his neck that was there before is gone.
Another missile, this one tan-skinned with white and gray wings, slams down to the dirt and rock cave floor. Ryn straightens up, some kind of animal that looks to be a mix between a teenage mutant ninja goat and a llama slung over his strong shoulder. He drops it to the ground as soon as he sees me and comes right for me.
I cringe back, trying to protect Treno and also myself, and Ryn freezes mere feet away from me. I watch as the relief I didn’t notice before bleeds from his gray eyes to be replaced with hurt. He’s healed too. There are hints of bruises still on his face, but he doesn’t look a sixth as bad as he did before. He shoots a look at Zeph, and I’m surprised to see fury flash through his eyes as he does. When his stare lands back on me, the anger is gone, and all that’s left is an aching uncertainty.
“I wouldn’t hurt you, Falon,” he states evenly. “I wouldn’t hurt your mate either,” he adds when my shaky arms continue to cage Treno in protectively.
“Wouldn’t you?” I state simply, my voice cracking from disuse. I’m not sure if I’m asking or challenging.
Fuck, I feel tired.
Ryn takes a deep breath and crouches. The sigh he releases as he gets closer to eye level with me sounds sorrowful and resigned. It tugs at the tatters of my trust, reminding me of how their omissions and lies shredded me like I was nothing.
“I was wrong, Falon. I don’t expect this statement to earn me an immediate pardon; I just need you to know that I’m aware of how badly this all went. I should have trusted my instincts and been straight with you. I will never let anything come between our bond again, I vow it.”
Ryn puts his fist over his heart and bows his head, and I’m not sure how to respond. His words call to the part of me that knows anger will get me nowhere. I can see and feel his sincerity, and yet I’m still so fucking pissed. I can’t help thinking about what it felt like to watch Lazza torture him. I thought he was going to die, and it pummeled everything inside of me to stand helplessly by and watch it.
But all of this is so complicated. I have the painful perspective of what it felt like to possibly lose him, and I also acutely feel the damage of what his secrets and exclusions have done to me; I don’t know what to do with either. We stare at each other for a moment, I suspect neither one of us having the slightest clue about what to do or say now. Luckily, the raging asshole in Zeph rears its head and saves us from having to figure it out.
“We did what we had to do. No point apologizing for it,” Zeph grumbles as he sets a pouch that looks like it’s filled with berries on the floor of the cave. He pulls off another larger bag that has round watermelon looking things in it, but they just so happen to be pink instead of the green I’m used to.
I want to get up and slug him across his dour face, but I’m too tired to move. “Totally,” I snark. “You were clearly just in the mood to redecorate that day you threw a tantrum and destroyed everything in my room. You didn’t stare at my clothes longingly and realize that just maybe you’d made a massive mistake. I must have been imagining that though, because you were just doing what you had to do, right? No biggie?”
Zeph glares at me, but I don’t buy that his cream-filled center is comprised of only heartless asshole. I’ve seen things that prove otherwise. He’s still annoying as fuck though, and I don’t have the energy to engage right now. My arms give out, and my efforts to protect Treno result in me just half lying on him and listening to him breathe. It’s comforting in a weird way, which is good because I can’t move.
“You need to eat,” Ryn declares, and he stands up and moves over to the llama-goat.
He pulls out a long knife and starts doing things that turn the animal from dead carcass into future dinner. Surprisingly, I’m not revolted by the sight of him skinning, draining, and removing and cleaning things. He moves fluidly and with purpose, and I can’t help but recognize almost a soothing poetry to his sure actions. Or maybe I’m just so hungry that I couldn’t take my eyes off of the meat even if I wanted to.
A massive hand places a pile of what look like black berries in front of me, and I look over to see Zeph moving away. I watch him for a beat as he pulls out a long sharp-looking dagger thing and starts peeling the pink not-watermelons. I pop a blackberry in my mouth as I watch him, wishing I could peel back his gruff exterior the same way he’s peeling the fruit in his hands.
Juice fills my mouth as I start to chew the berry, and I quickly realize that these couldn’t be further from the blackberries I know and love. I spit out the rancid fruit and simultaneously gag and try to wipe my tongue with the blanket still around me.
“What the fuck?” I demand as Ryn comes striding over, a concerned look on his face. Zeph just looks offended by my reaction to his offering, but what else is new? “That tastes like raw rotten fish!” I declare, looking at them and the pile of fish berries like they’ve each betrayed me.
Fucking nasty!
“They’re grot fruit. They’ll help you heal faster and get back on your wings quicker,” Ryn explains, as if somehow knowing the name of the nasty, treacherous berries will make them more palatable.
I try and fail not to flinch at the mention of wings. What I’m going to do about Pigeon is filed nicely in theI have no fucking cluecabinet in my brain. It’s right next towhat to do about three matesandhow to recover when you find out your entire life is a lie.
I shove the pile of berries away from me with a shiver and warily eye the fruit Zeph’s peeling. With my luck, it will taste like rotten meat or, worse—grapefruit.
“So are we just going to not talk about what happened?” I ask, hoping the change in subject will make Ryn stop looking at me like he’s trying to figure out how to shove the grot berries down my throat. Where’s a duda fruit when a girl needs one?
