Page 106 of Under Restless Skies

“Follow me.” He climbs the steps one more floor, then opens the door leading to the hallway.

We pass by a few doors, then he opens one, some kind of office with a desk, some chairs, and a beautiful painting of a dragon.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Somewhere we won’t be bothered,” he says as he locks the door.

If this wasn’t Marcus, I would be afraid to be alone with a man in a strange, locked room, but I know him too well for that.

He crosses his arms and stands before me. “Is it true? You never got my letters?” There’s no anger in his voice, just curiosity, pointed by a tinge of sadness, and I realize he wants to finish the conversation we started at the star nectar party, when Alayel interrupted us.

“I never got anything.” And I’m still not sure if he’s even telling the truth. “Did you write to me?”

I had no idea he could even write, but I’m not going to say that and offend him even more.

He rests his forehead in his hand and takes the deepest, saddest breath I’ve ever seen anyone take. “Not many letters, I suppose. At first, I told you how things were going, how I was adapting. I thought you’d want to know. I took note of everything. Anything that could help you survive, help you do well here, since you wanted it so much. I was sure you’d apply again. I knew you’d get in. You weren’t replying, and I figured you were busy. I asked you if you’d like to see me on my day off. And the answer never came. It never came.”

I take in his words, and something still doesn’t make sense. “Couldn’t you have passed by the restaurant? It’s not far.”

“I feared you didn’t want to see me.” His voice breaks.

It breaks something inside me as well. All this time, I thought he had forgotten me, thought he deemed himself too important for me… and he was writing letters? But it makes no sense. Maybe I want to believe he’s lying, so that the version of events I’ve clung to for the last year makes sense, so that the person I became when he left stays intact.

“Where did you send them?” I ask. “How did you…”

“The academy has a message service. Letters to villages far away are sent only once a month, but to Dracolius City, they send them twice a week. I sent them to your restaurant, Mayara.”

I look at the wooden floor, at the tiny gaps between the wood panes. “I never got anything.”

He nods and closes his eyes. “It doesn’t make sense. Why?”

I’m glad I can focus on solving this question, on finding this answer, rather than having to figure out how I feel.

Only one possibility crosses my mind. “Laristella might have hidden the letters.”

He huffs in disbelief. “She adores you, Mayara!”

“But she didn’t want me to join the academy. Perhaps she thought that if I didn’t know anyone here…”

“It wasn’t her. But I… don’t know. Don’t understand.” He runs a hand through his golden hair and swallows. “I thought… you had… moved on. Gotten tired of me. And yet I didn’t understand why I didn’t deserve the courtesy of a single note. A single goodbye. Were we that meaningless to you?”

“I thought the same. And I didn’t understand.”

He lets out a bitter chuckle. “You can’t really think I would just… walk away? Why would I do that?”

Because he never loved me, never cared for me. At least it’s what I always told myself. I shrug. “Why would I not answer your letters?”

The pain in his eyes is the answer I need. Similar doubts. Similar fears. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Sorry I thought the worst of you. And if you’ve ever spent a night wondering, like I did, wondering and asking why, let me tell you. I did love you. I would have married you and would have been happy, even if I kept working with my family, if you kept working at the restaurant. You were all I wanted.”

A strange, alternate future flashes before my eyes. I’m a cook, he’s a fisherman, and I raise his children. The image fills me with dread, but the problem is not Marcus, but being smothered at the restaurant until the end of my days. In any case, that future would never happen. “And yet you joined this place.”

“Because you were obsessed with it! What was I supposed to do? Watch you enlist in this dangerous academy, become a sentinel, and watch you from afar? No. And even when you didn’t get in last year, I told myself it was for the best. I would guide you. I would help you. Together, we would survive.”

My vision gets blurry, and I realize that tears are pooling in my eyes. I blink, and let some of them fall.

All this time, I kept telling myself I never really loved him. I tried to keep my heart caged, afraid to love again, afraid to feel again, when in fact, the truth was that I did love Marcus once. Maybe the future I imagined wouldn’t involve me working at the restaurant, but I thought we had a future together.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “If I made you think I would forget you like that. I… would have replied to your letters—if I had received them. And I would have been happy to see you on your days off.”