Jesstin noticed a couple standing off from the rest. The woman was pressed against the man’s chest, his arms gently draped around her lower back as they swayed to the music. He kissed the top of her head and rested his cheek there as they danced, oblivious to the raucous conversations and the children giggling as they chased each other around the fountain. He couldn’t take his eyes from the way they ruled their own moment. He heard Asterin again, whispering, My heart, my heart, my heart.
“Jesstin! Wake up!”
He snapped out of it and scanned for Elloven. When he spotted her standing on a table, waving her arms, he burst out laughing.
“How?” he asked as he sidled in across from her. She responded with an impertinent shrug. “You expect me to believe you lucked into this?”
“You always believe whatever suits you.”
“Ooh, you never said you were looking for a fight tonight.” Jesstin cracked his knuckles.
Elloven laughed. “All I did was tell the man leaving that I was reuniting with someone special. He was happy to offer his seats to me.”
“Well, who could ever tell you no?” He’d said it a touch too whimsically, judging by the curiosity in Elloven’s expression. An image emerged of him sat upon his dais, receiving pleasure from a woman whose name he knew only as far as he paid her salary, blissed out on his own accomplishments. The shame hadn’t existed then, but it did now. “Have you had anything to eat or drink since you’ve been...”
“Dead? I have. The satiety is more nostalgic than essential.”
“We’re not using that word.”
“Nostalgic or essential?”
“Dead.” Jesstin stretched his arms along the velvety cushion, which was almost as tall as he was. The ribald crowd put him at ease. She’d picked a great spot, one of the few booths tucked into the free-standing walls.
“I assure you, despite our deceivingly charming environs, we are most assuredly in the netherworld.” She gestured around. “Only one of us came here willingly, which is still a mystery to me.” No matter how blithely she spoke, she couldn’t keep the pain from her eyes.
“What mystery? I told you the reason I’m here.”
“People die all the time, Jesstin, sometimes in tragic, terrible ways, and the people who cared for them mourn, which is the natural way of things. Why should my death be any different? Why would you risk your own life to come to a cursed and hopeless place, for me?”
The truth, that he didn’t know, felt like a lie, but life in the shallows prohibited the level of introspection she needed from him. “What’s different? I’m different, for one. You don’t think most would follow their people to the netherworld, if they had my ability?”
“Grief can be blinding, so maybe it’s good the netherworld isn’t so freely accessible,” she answered. “Because my fear, my biggest fear, is that you stormed down here without thinking about the consequences for yourself, and when you try to leave? It won’t let you.”
“I told you before. I’m not leaving until you can.”
She sighed. “And everyone else, I know. I know?—”
“No, Elloven, you don’t know. I’ll help the dead move on if I can.” Jesstin reached his hands across the table as he leaned forward. She accepted them after a cautious silence. “But if my choice comes down to saving you or helping them, I hope your handwriting is better than mine because you’ll be sending my sincerest fucking condolences to everyone else.”
Elloven tucked her hair behind her ear with a nervous, sidelong glance. Of anything he’d seen her do, it left him the most... stirred. Everything about her burned so brightly. Her azure eyes were sparkles dancing upon sea waves. Her fiery hair, wild and untied and flowing around her soft, rosy cheeks, stole the vibrancy from everything around her. She had never, ever looked more alive to him than she did now.
Her small hands nested perfectly into the fold of his larger ones felt... right. But it was why he patted her hands and withdrew. “I couldn’t possibly live without tasting whatever they call ale here.” He raised a finger and caught a barkeep with a smile. She nodded to indicate she’d be over soon. “Get it? Instead of I can’t ‘die’ without?—”
“That joke is for old men whose humor has flown with their youth,” Elloven replied, teasing.
“You’re lucky a table separates us, and I’ll leave it at that.”
“Strawberry, lingonberry, chicory, or bitter wheat?” the barkeep asked.
Elloven leaned up. “What are...”
“Strawberry and lingonberry are ciders, the others ales. What would you like?”
Elloven’s face pinched in concentration. “I’ve never had cider that wasn’t made of apples.”
“Lingonberry then.” The barkeep turned toward Jesstin. “You?”
Jesstin laughed and shrugged. “Same.”
