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He had waited all day to eat dinner with me and that fact made something in me smile.

We ate in silence mostly, the comfortable kind. The fowl was good. I ate more than I expected to.

When the plates were cleared I sat at the small table with the cloak still around my shoulders and the room he had quietly rearranged while I slept and thought about what it meant to be loved by someone who showed it in tables and cut meat and remembered things you had said in passing months ago about wanting to eat together.

"I have to go," I said.

"I know."

I stood. He stood with me.

"I will come back as soon as I can. Hopefully tomorrow but if Teorin is suspicious⁠—"

Colsar's face darkened. "If I think he has harmed you I will⁠—"

"You will stay right here," I said, squeezing his hands. "Because we both know that you entering Morrath will destroy the future we have."

He was quiet. His jaw worked. Then he nodded once, the way he nodded when he had accepted something he did not want to accept.

I rose onto my toes and kissed him. He kissed me back slowly and then let me go.

I pulled the cloak tighter and went back through the ward.

I passed through the ward without any issue, just the small resistance I had felt when I had pushed through it the night prior. The tunnel was cold the way it always was. I moved through it quickly, my legs unsteady and my head a bit foggy. The path to the shoreline was quiet tonight.

Halfway there the coughing began. At first the mucous was black. Then another fit of coughing came, this time dark red came up and as I looked at it on the ground beneath my lantern, I realized that tonight there was certainly more blood than mucus.

He was already there when I arrived, standing at the water's edge, his back to me, looking out at the dark water. He turned before I reached him.

"You're here," he said.

"I am," I said.

He nodded once and turned toward the hut. "Come on then.”

Corsets and Comfort

ERAVIC

Eravic watched her carefully, sure to keep his expression as unreadable as possible. Not an easy feat for a man with Vaelor blood, but he made a valiant effort nonetheless.

She removed her cloak. "What happened?" he said, one eyebrow raised.

You know what happened, you shit, he told himself.

The dress was quite literally lopsided, and was the same one she had left him in yesterday.

"I am no good with the leather fashions of Morrath," Asharin said with a shrug.

He wondered if she knew she was a terrible liar, or if she simply did not care. He had known she was a terrible liar since the first time she came out dressed as a boy that did not look like a boy at all.

Eravic focused on keeping his face blank. Inside he was seething, although he had no right to be. He knew exactly what had happened. She had clearly found a way to reach Colsar. Despite his warning that she should not exhaust herself she had pushed through the wards to get to him.

The thought annoyed him. Exasperated him, even.

Eravic did not get angry often. But her appearance tonight made him angry. She was weak and exhausted after fighting for her life for weeks.

Fighting for her life.