It was good there was so much immediacy in their situation, because it kept his thoughts from drifting for too long. Their lovemaking. How easy it had been to surrender a vow that seemed nonsensical in hindsight, when compared to how full Elloven had made his strange existence. Of all the memories Mathias had stolen, it seemed the cruelest to have taken the one that had given him one of his first safe places, in a garden playing frogs with the girl who would one day save his life and give it purpose.
Jesstin scratched his head as he marked a few more X’s on the map, another potential route. A fresh clap of thunder jostled the table, and a rock rolled off, sending the corner of the map curling inward. He stuck the quill in his teeth and replaced the stone, but a sound drew his attention outside.
At first he thought, fiends, but those were always there, shrill and violent. What he heard was soft and haunting. He capped the ink and settled the quill and inched closer to the arched opening leading to the rainy courtyard.
Elloven was hunched over on a bench under the gazebo, sobbing quietly into her hands.
He had only once before seen someone cry the way Elloven was crying. Rhiain, after she’d thought her best friend, Tyreste, had died. Slack-jawed, bleary-eyed, chest shuddering, barely upright...
Jesstin’s splashing announced him, but she didn’t look up until he climbed the three steps into the shelter. When she did, her stare was fixed on something in the distance.
Jesstin wrapped her in his arms from the side. She flagged like a doll, numb and listless. “El, hey, hey.” He kissed her temple, already formulating potential answers before he asked the question. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Elloven moved her arm to her nose, but he replaced his sleeve with hers and cleaned her up. He used his other one to blot some of her tears. She seemed surprised, but it was a muted response, no different than how she’d reacted to being held. “You don’t see him?” She sounded like she was lost to a dream, in the process of waking.
“See who?” He smoothed her hair back. “Who?”
“Fabrien.” The name sounded like it had been crunched through gravel. Her voice was nearly gone.
“You had a nightmare?”
“He’s no nightmare.” Elloven licked her dry lips. “I’ve been so upset with you keeping secrets...” Tears raced down her cheeks, along the paths he’d dried. “While I’ve kept one of my own. Fabrien is here. He’s a fiend. He comes to me every night.”
Jesstin was entirely knocked back, though he shouldn’t have been. It seemed inevitable that the monster who had haunted her life would infiltrate her death. He wouldn’t ask why she hadn’t told him. That, too, was obvious. “He can’t hurt you here,” he said, but they both knew Fabrien could steal her flame after he grew bored of tormenting her. “He won’t hurt you here.”
Her head lolled as she cried, gazing into the forest. Jesstin finally saw him. He couldn’t make out enough to have understood who Fabrien had been as a man, but his intent rolled off him like smoke coming down a mountain. “Promise me, Jess... please...” She couldn’t finish.
Jesstin didn’t need her to. Her fears were plenty valid because he’d been thinking of how to destroy the fiend from the moment she’d mentioned him. “If he comes for you, I won’t even remember I made a promise. I’ll destroy him. I’ll steal what’s left of his flame, and I’ll destroy him. Then I’ll leave this place, travel to Whitechurch, and burn his fucking family and all their bloody trees to ash.” He rested his head to hers and prayed she couldn’t feel his anger as keenly as he did. “But I promise I won’t provoke him. Is that enough?”
Elloven nodded and melted against him. In the distance, Fabrien’s glowing eyes remained a constant. “You didn’t have to come out here.”
“I will always find you when you need me.” He tilted her chin toward him. She allowed it, but her eyes remained downturned.
“I was afraid you’d do something impulsive, yes...” Elloven gently peeled his fingers from her chin. “But what do you see when you look at me, Jess? That man crushed me, but I murdered him for it. And now look at what he’s become. Even if you free the dead, do you suppose... Do you suppose fiends like him will have a place wherever the others go? Have I not damned a man, who tortured me for just seven years, to an eternity of suffering? Is there any crime that deserves such a sentence?”
“An eternity isn’t half as long as the bastard deserves.” That she could, for even a moment, consider herself anything but the survivor of hell ripped his heart straight out of his chest. “What do I see, Elloven Hawthorne? When I look at you, what do I see?” Jesstin dropped to his knees in front of her. “I see the sea. The sky. The clouds. The river. The world. I see you in everything. I see my heart in your soft, warm hands.” He gathered them in his and kissed them. “I see you and nothing else, not even the sun, because my love for you is blinding.”
Elloven pressed her face to their knotted hands and cried more freely. He let her have her moment. He could feel she needed the catharsis, and if he could hold even a little of her pain for her, he would. He’d take it all. He prayed to whomever was listening to just let him take it all.
“We can’t go back to the market,” she said. She wiped her tears on their hands and sat up. “Because I did something that will cause a lot of trouble for us if they ever find us.”
Jesstin had no idea what she was talking about. “You were with me the entire time.”
“You were busy signing your soul away,” she said. “I watched the Conductor take her fee and place the vial alongside another one. Both had your name etched on the glass. When she went to retrieve the map, I grabbed one without looking.” She reached into her dress and withdrew a glowing vial. “I could only take one. It was all I had time for. I don’t know which fragment this is, but when she realizes what I’ve done, she won’t just come for this. She’ll come for everything.”
Jesstin stared at the murky glass, stunned. He couldn’t believe she’d done it. He’d considered doing it himself when they had been there but decided it would have been too dangerous, and it was more important to get her out of there safely. But then she’d done it anyway. For him. “You beautiful little thief,” he whispered. “You tricked the bitch out of her own scam.”
“I don’t know which vial I stole,” she said again, and the notion seemed to genuinely distress her. “I don’t know if you’ll return to a family who doesn’t know you, or you’ll die and be forever a curio of that witch.”
Jesstin took the vial. He held it up to the moonlight, regarding the violet swirl. Which piece of himself was pinched between his fingers? Which piece had he forever left behind?
“I could go back and steal the other one?—”
“No, you’re right.” He nodded, swallowing. “You did a brave thing, and I’m in your debt. Forever.”
“Our debts to each other have already been cleared,” she said with a sad smile. “Go on, open it.”
He wasn’t completely sure what would happen, but he removed the cap, and it did the work for him. The wispy curls traveled toward him, then into his nose, his mouth, and he gasped as he received them, his entire body going stone stiff. It was like being punched by light itself, but the sensation was gone as quickly as it had come on, and he felt no different afterward.
