He puffs out a breath, pushing past me to set a tray on the table.
“You’d do well to leave those thoughts on the ship when you disembark. That look on your face screams of vengeance. Leanna may have been overconfident in your ability to mask your true feelings.”
I bristle at the assumption. “I like you enough not to suggest to Leanna that you are second guessing her choices.”
“Thank foc for that,” he laughs, tearing off a piece of bread and shoving it in his mouth as he motions for me to take a seat opposite him. “All jesting aside, I have no doubts about your abilities. There is no one in allof Terr better suited to accomplish this task than you.”
“So I have been told.” And I have been, my entire life I have heard exactly that from every soul that had a hand in my training. “Care to expound on that?” I ask dryly.
“No,” he replies flatly.
No one ever has.
We eat our rations in silence, likely each pondering the future and the many possible outcomes of the next few weeks. I wonder about the mission Vakesh is on, knowing it will do no good to ask him about it. Such things are never discussed. Vakesh, however, is privy to all missions under his purview, including mine.
My eyes wander to the daggers sitting at the head of my cot.
His eyes track my gaze to the dark obsidian blades, and he sighs. “I shouldn’t have given them back to you. They are a crutch. One you are soon to be without.”
“Then why did you leave them for me?” I ask curiously.
“Maybe I like watching you fight against the darkness inside you.” He shrugs and looks up with a sad smile.
I can’t help but wonder about his own personal demons. Demons he keeps from me, secreted away beneath his tranquil surface. I lift the blades, turn them over in my hands once more, then offer them to him.
“Don’t ever give me a crutch again,” I say, trying to temper the anger in my voice. “What good are you to me if you have nothing left to teach me?”
His head shifts back as if I have struck him, and he raises an eyebrow thoughtfully. He has only ever encouraged me to be completely honest with him, unfiltered and raw. I’ve always wondered how he endures it.
Still, I can’t bring myself to tell him that his friendship means more to me than any lesson he will ever teach me. That even when there is nothing left for me to learn, he will always be valuable to me, simply because of the man he is.
“Tell me about them. Your dreams,” he says around a mouthful of bread.
He’s never asked before and I can’t help but debate just how much I want to share. I know he won’t push if I tell him I don’t want to talk aboutit. Vakesh always made it abundantly clear that he will respect whatever boundaries I choose to set between us.
Sighing, I sit back in my chair. “The dreams have always been the same.”
I tell him of the woman who reaches for me and the man who mourns her before following her into the afterlife. I conveniently leave out that the dreams have begun to worsen, occasionally spilling over into my waking life.
As I tell the tale, the loss of the blades beneath my pillow nags like an itch on a booted foot. I know I can’t take them with me when I leave the ship. That knowledge continues to haunt me more than any other part of my mission. Though I know they cannot fend off the terrors that plague my mind, they have always been an anchor when I fear my demon might pull me out to sea in a torrent and crush me beneath the raging waves.
“These people in your dreams, do you know them?”
“It feels like I do,” I admit, “Like with each of their deaths a piece of me is torn away and I’ll never be whole again. Then I wake and every bit of that emptiness fills with a growing darkness that I can barely contain.”
It is the closest I will allow myself to get to telling the full truth of it.
“But you do keep it contained.” He tries and fails to sound comforting.
I nod my head, a reassuring lie, though I am sure it is a rhetorical question.
“And the daggers calm you down?” he asks, puzzled.
I shake my head again. “Not really. I just feel better when I have them. Sparring helps. It takes off the edge and burns off a bit of the lingering darkness.”
He huffs a throaty laugh and leans forward, scratching the back of his neck, hesitating to say all that is on his mind.
“Out with it,” I encourage him.
