29
Nes
There was no sound as Nes slid back through the window and into the bedroom on the third floor of the Siren’s Hair.
It was a packed house on the ground floor. She didn’t have to see the waitresses in their feathered bodices flitting about like birds or the coins on the tables skipping like stones or the patrons harrumphing with every unexpected move. She could hear it all perfectly.
Maybe that was why she didn’t hear Toran.
“You left.” His voice came from the bed, and she startled.
“I did,” she said plainly.
“Why?” Ire ricocheted in his inflection.
“There was something I needed to do.”
“I thought—” He cut off, and she took a hesitant step closer. “I thought you wouldn’t come back.”
In a rush, he was standing. He crossed the room to the window. “You left me, and I thought something happened to you. I thought you died out there, all alone, and you left me unable to do anything but grieve and curse your name.”
With his back turned, she saw the way the muscles in his neck tensed. This wasn’t because she’d gone after Phineas without him. There was more, so much more, buried in his bones.
“What happened to you, Toran?” Her voice came out a whisper, softer than the swish of sheets.
“I lost…” He trailed off. He gripped the window ledge, knuckles turning white. “I lost nearly my whole legion—my closest friends—on a mission I was in charge of.”
She knew that. Everyone knew the tragedy of the Aeos mission. But she hadn’t realized the guards killed had been his friends.
“Then I came home and found out—” He stopped again. Against the window frame, his hands shook.
She strode forward and put a hand on his back. Beneath her touch, muscles settled, and nerves paused.
“I found out the person I thought would be with me forever—the one person I didn’t want to live without—I learned I’d lost her, too.”
The anguish that gripped him was visceral. She could feel it overtaking him, feel it slithering around her own heart, squeezing it. Nes let loose a trembling breath and wrapped both arms around him until her cheek pressed into the space between his shoulder blades.
“After that, I wanted to die. Like Malia and Bastian and Kai and Safie. Like Loriana.” His hands came down on hers, his fingers clutching her tight. “I started drinking. And I didn’t stop.” He nodded to the nightstand, where she noticed, for the first time, a pair of shots waiting. “When I drank there was only me, the drink in my hand, and the one I would get next. I had no past, no wrecked future. I became…I don’t know what I became. Lost, I guess.”
She shook her head. “You weren’t lost,” she said into the waves of his wool cloak. “You were waiting.”
“Waiting?” She could hear the skepticism in his tone, the ring of it like an errant sharp in a melody. “Waiting for what?”
“For someone to help you.”
He shuddered against her cheek, and she hugged him tighter, taking in the vibrations of his sorrow, the spasms of his guilt. They stayed like that for a long moment.
“I won’t leave you,” she whispered. “Not again.”
She could find a way. To stay in Gadore after her father was freed. With Toran backing her, she could find a way.
And she wanted to. She wanted nothing more than to stay here, tucked inside his embrace. No matter the consequences. With him, she could believe there’d be none.
Toran turned in her arms until they were face-to-face. His hand cupped the side of her neck. Her body flushed with heat, quick and strong.
She broke their circle, spinning away from him. She made for the nightstand and snatched up the two shots. When she turned back to him, he was frowning.
“We’re not drinking,” she said. She walked back to the open window, the night air filled with the sounds of life. They stood there together, looking down onto the thin line of dirt and debris that was the dumpstreet behind the Siren’s Hair.
