When at last I could breathe normally again, my chest felt hollow. As I pulled away from Caliza, sitting back into little more than a heap, familiarity settled. I knew this feeling. This heavy emptiness, as if there were nothing real inside to hold me steady, but a thousand shackles pulled me down, down, down.
Res shifted forward, his wings spread, and flopped across my lap in a mess of feathers and soft coos. He simply lay there in the silence, his mere existence a false promise of new chances.
No matter how many chances I had, this was always where I would find myself: broken.
Eventually, I stopped shaking. I shifted, my limbs stiff and sore, until my back was pressed against the wall. Res moved with me, our bond thrumming with his calming energy, and I latched on to it. It was like being washed out to sea, carried farther and farther out by each retreating wave.
I looked to Caliza. “How?”
Caliza sat back against the wall beside me. “She came to Aris on the night you left Sordell. She didn’t say where she’s been or why she left, only that she’d heard about the engagement. I told her you’d be in Eselin by Belin’s Day, and she left for Trendell that night.”
“How is that possible?” I croaked.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I thought she was dead.”
I traced the scars on my left hand with a finger, memories of the searing bite of fire and acrid smell of burning flesh pressing in. The world wobbled, my stomach rising into my throat, and I clenched my hands so tight, my nails dug into my palms, forcing deep breaths until everything settled.
Whatever reason Estrel had for abandoning me, it would never be enough.
Someone knocked gently on the door. Caylus stood there, his broad shoulders taking up much of the frame, a cup of steaming tea in hand.
I almost laughed. Of course he’d found tea. In a kingdom that never drank it, in a military complex he’d never once set foot in, he still managed to find a cup.
Caliza squeezed my arm and stood, leaving me with Caylus, who took her place beside me. He handed me the tea, and I held fast to its warmth, sitting in the comfortable silence Caylus always brought with him.
This had always been how it’d been between us.
He took my hand in his like I’d done for him, and I felt the rough lines of his many scars, the places where his body had broken alongside so many other things. But I also felt the calluses he’d earned from his workshop, the small burns that came from baking muffins in the morning or absentmindedly touching a still-steaming teakettle.
He’d begun to rebuild his life, to rebuild himself. Piece by piece. Day by day. Like I had. Like I still did. This feeling was a part of me, but it wasn’t all of me. I couldn’t just will it away, but I could learn to work through it, and I had. With the help of my friends and family, I had.
Maybe together, we could actually do it.
I am more.
More than this feeling of darkness. More than the urge to give up. More than my pain and my past.
I let out a soft breath. Estrel was alive.
It still didn’t feel real, even as my insides felt as though they’d been carved out with a jagged knife. Somewhere, deep beneath the pain and confusion that had threaded through me, relief flickered. She was alive.
Alive, and waiting for me in Trendell.
Ten
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kiva asked again as I emerged from the barrack office dressed in my flying leathers.
I gave her a flat look, but I couldn’t really blame her. She’d been there for me through a lot the last few months, and she knew me better than anyone.
“Honestly, not completely, no,” I replied. “But I will be, and for now, that’s enough.”
Once, the news about Estrel would have towed me beneath the current. Now, with Kiva here, with Caliza and Caylus and Res, with all that I’d worked through in the last few months, I knew I had the support to find my way through this too.
Res hopped along beside me, trilling excitedly. He kept “accidentally” buffeting Kiva with his feathers and urging me on with the tip of his beak. I latched on to the elation thrumming through our bond and let it fill me as we entered the main lobby.
Caliza waited with a bridle and leather saddle bundled in her arms and a smile on her face. “I’m so happy I get to see this!”
“What?” Kiva asked. “An adolescent duck falling on its face?”
