Page 65 of Heart’s Rescue

“I just— I recognize that,” Arryn says, raising her mittened hand and pointing at a rock outcropping in the distance.

My heart tugs at the inside of my chest.

“Yeah?” I reply, not wanting to give my heart any say in this particular conversation. Or my cock. Or any other body parts, for that matter.

“Isn’t that on your chart?” she asks. “I thought it was a key, at first. But it’s that rock, isn’t it?”

“Heh. Yeah,” I answer, reaching into my jacket and pulling out the map.

Stars, how I’d wanted to share this with someone. I had shared it with Phaedron, of course, but he’d never wanted to actually travel with me. He hadn’t wanted to leave the World’s End undefended, he’d said, and I’d chosen not to push the issue with the man who’d literally changed my diapers when he’d been a kid himself.

And, of course, when I finally do get the chance to share my charts, it just has to be with this damn woman who’s going to leave as soon as she can. I rub my fist over the pulsing ache in my chest, then tug off my mittens and unfold the chart. Arryn’s eyes gleam like I’m opening some sort of present, which does nothing for the conspiracy between my cock and my heart that I’m actively trying to suppress.

“There!” Arryn says, with a note of triumph.

She tugs off her mittens and points to the little drawing on the chart. Three rounded bumps in a line, biggest to smallest. The key, I call it.

“Yeah,” I say, and I can’t stop the stupid, stupid smile that’s spreading over my face like warm honey. “But you need more than one to navigate. You see anything else?”

Arryn frowns at the chart, then looks up at the lump of rock I’ve always called the key. She raises her hand to shade her eyes, a funny little custom she must have picked up in the Worlds Above. I don’t think she’s going to get it; the other landmark is far away, and it’s subtle. She turns back to the chart, then runs her fingers delicately over the parchment in a gesture I really should not find arousing but that pulls every part of my body taut anyway.

“That one,” Arryn finally says, tapping gently on an illustration that looks like a scribble that’s been impaled on a pointed spike. She looks up at me with an eyebrow cocked. “Right? It’s there, isn’t it?”

She raises her fingers again and points to the mess of dead trees just over my shoulder. One pine stands above the rest, rising far in the distance, its trunk stabbing into the gloom like a pike.

I exhale slowly, then nod. “That’s it.”

Arryn grins like she’s just been crowned Queen of the Lands Below. I smile back at her. I can’t help myself; her good mood is infectious.

“So, what does it mean?” she asks, turning back to the chart.

“Well, I haven’t taken any readings yet,” I say, letting my finger trace the same path across the parchment that Arryn’s had just followed. “But it looks like these two are moving closer together, the key and the sentinel. See the circles on the chart?”

She nods. A puff of steam rises from beneath the hood of her cloak.

“This close to the void, everything shifts,” I say. “But it shifts in patterns, you see?”

She nods again. “Like a tide chart,” she says.

“Well, maybe,” I answer, not wanting to confess that I have no idea what a tide chart is. “It shifts in ways you can predict, at least. If you can measure where two things are, you can kind of guess the patterns.”

“So, we’re… here?” she says.

Arryn places her finger next to mine on the chart, and my cock makes a desperate plea for me to kiss the soft, dark skin on the back of her hand. I ignore the bastard.

“Yeah,” I say. “Or somewhere around there, at least.”

Arryn lifts her head and looks into the forest. It’s getting thicker now, as we travel away from the void.

“And we’re going…” she asks, her voice trailing off.

“To Fringe,” I answer, raising my finger. “Just through there. The town’s abandoned, everyone who lived there moved to the Crystal City ages ago, but there’s still a teleportation hub. And hopefully some food, too.”

I’d thought mentioning food might make her smile, but instead, she’s pressed her lips together into a tight, thin line. She rubs absently at the void-touched cut on her left arm; I wonder if she’s aware of how often she does that.

“There’s something in the trees there,” she says. “A— a void beast, I think.”

“I know,” I say.

I fold the map and then, before I can stop myself, raise my frozen fingers to brush her cheek. She gives me a look like she’s trying desperately to smile.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “There’s nothing in the void that would fuck with me.”