“Was this your home?” Arthur asks quietly.
Shae rests the bucket of water on the edge of the well, gripping the edge of the bucket so tightly that his knuckles turn white under his rings. “Yes.” He forces himself to let go. “Do you have a spare shirt I could ruin?”
Arthur hesitates, then yanks his sun-blazoned tunic from under his belt and pulls it over his head. “Here.”
Shae takes it hesitantly. “I’m serious about ruining it. Don’t you...”
“I don’t need it,” Arthur says calmly. His stubbled jaw visibly tightens, then relaxes.
There’s something more hiding under his words, but if Arthur doesn’t want to talk, Shae doesn’t have the right to ask. His first priority is patching up the injuries he caused. As if that will make it any better. He draws his knife and splits the tunic in half, then starts using one of the pieces as a towel to sponge the blood from Arthur’s cuts.
He moves slowly, methodically. He doesn’t flinch when Arthur asks, “What happened to the orchard behind the house?”
“I did,” Shae answers quietly. He half-kneels on the side of the well to get a better angle to clean the cuts on Arthur’s back. They’re shallow. The leather armor blunted the worst of it. “I told you I tried to revive my parents.”
Arthur hisses in pain, but doesn’t move away. “Yes.”
“And I told you it didn’t work.” Shae moves to the deeper cut in Arthur’s left arm, high up by the shoulders. He hesitates, then grabs his knife again to widen the tear in the sleeve, to give himself more room to work. “I lied about it not working.”
Arthur exhales sharply. “Radiance, Shae.”
“I had already buried them, and I had to dig them up again. I sat them up against the tree in the middle of the orchard, so they wouldn’t have to wake up in their graves. My father’s favorite tree.” He takes his time cleaning out the cut, pausing every time Arthur flinches. It starts to bleed sluggishly again, and he wipes away the fresh blood too. “They’d been dead for a month at the time. It took me that long to summon Izen, and to learn enough magic from him. So, Mom and Dad had already started to rot.”
Arthur hands Shae the needle, thread, and denseed oil. “Have you stitched a wound before?”
“Yes. But you should probably see an actual healer when you have a chance.” He dabs some oil into the cut to prevent infection, then threads the needle. Continues talking, because if he doesn’t finish now, he never will, and somehow he feels he has to. “It took me three tries to get the resurrection spell right. It finally worked at sunset, and the force of the spell killed the entire orchard. But I didn’t care about the orchard, because Mom and Dad woke up.”
He pulls the edges of the wound together and starts the first stitch. It’s easier to talk about this when he’s doing something. It’s easier to do this when he’s talking about something. “I was worried they wouldn’t come back right, but they did. It was them. They knew themselves. They knew me. I was so happy to have them back.”
Arthur stays still and silent as Shae continues stitching and talking.
“But they weren’t happy.” He takes a deep breath, waiting for his eyes to clear before making the next stitch. “The first thing Mom said when she woke up was, ‘Send us back.’” He can hear her voice as clearly as if she stood here now. “They were angry. They wanted to rest. But I refused to break the spell.”
The stitches are done. He cuts off the thread and places the needle back in its case. Arthur takes it from him without speaking.
“Mom was a hedgewitch, and she still had her own magic,” Shae says quietly. “She burned out Dad’s heart, then her own, so they could die again. I buried them, then left.” He can still smell the dead flesh burning. Suddenly unable to sit still, he stands up.
But Arthur stands up too, seizing his hands. Running his thumbs over his rings. “You still blame yourself,” he says slowly.
“Of course.” Shae’s eyes sting. “It was my fault. I hurt them because I was selfish.”
“Can you feel them here?” Arthur asks, pulling him a little closer.
“What?”
Arthur squeezes his hands. “Do any of your rings detect anything?”
His touch is so safe and comforting, even though Shae doesn’t deserve it. He tries to pull his hands away, but Arthur holds him fast. “No. I don’t feel them. Is that supposed to—”
“Then they’re at peace now.” Arthur looks down at him, an impossibly soft expression in his green eyes. “There are no resentful spirits here, no restless ghosts. They’re not angry anymore. It’s okay to forgive yourself.”
Something fractures inside Shae. He doesn’t know if Arthur’s right. He’s spent so long hating himself for this. But hewantsto believe, and that’s closer to forgiveness than he’s ever gotten before. Maybe it’s fitting that he had to come back and hear that here, in front of the house his parents built. He needed to taste the ashes again.
He needed to tell the story out loud to release it from his heart.
After managing to free one hand from Arthur’s stupid hot grip, he rubs his stinging eyes. “I really hate you,” he mutters. “Fuck. We don’t have time for this, I need to—”
“Yeah.” Arthur leans down and steals a kiss. A feather-light blaze against his lips, searing him to the core. “Let’s banish that demon.”
