Page 92 of Hearts Lost

I pull the door shut behind us. This is a one-room cabin with a pump against the far wall, a wide fireplace, and a single bed in the back corner. Ithronel wanders the empty room like a ghost, running her fingers over the wooden beams and the thick fabric blocking the windows. I lean back against the door and try to look at anything but her; words stick to the inside of my throat like tree sap, heavy and sticky. Voids help me, I don’t know where to begin.

“When—” Ithronel begins.

Her voice pinches tight. She clears her throat, shakes her head, and turns back to me with an expression that really doesn’t resemble a smile in any way.

“When are they coming?” she asks. “Rowan’s brother and, uh, Arryn?”

I shrug, then glance at the fabric-covered windows as if checking that it’s still as black as oblivion out there.

“When the glowsoft orbs light up,” I reply. “They’re going to make it look like they’re doing their sentry rounds. In case they’re being watched.”

Ithronel makes a little noise in the back of her throat, glances around the cabin, and then sits stiffly on the edge of the bed. Her eyes skate across the floor, and her hands twist together in her lap.

“Aloserin,” she begins, in a voice that’s little more than a whisper. “I’m— I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flicker up to mine, then dart back to the floor. Something inside my gut twists in on itself. In all the time we spent together, have I ever seen Ithronel hesitant? Then, as if she’s dismissing my thought, Ithronel shakes her head and makes a sound like an explosion in her mouth.

“But, I’m the assassin who attacked the teleportation hub,” she says, bitterness dripping like acid from her words. “Who would believe me?”

My words. She’s throwing my own words back at me. I cross my arms over my chest like I’m trying to hold myself together.

“Should I?” I ask. “Believe you?”

Her eyes jump back to mine. There’s something angry and wounded and vicious in her gaze that slides through my ribcage like a blade. My heart aches from behind the wall of my arms; the door is cold against my back.

It would be so much easier to leave. I let myself imagine it; the door swinging open behind me, the cold embrace of the Outer Ring’s darkness. Ice crunching beneath my feet. The teleportation stone against my palm, cool and rough, promising transport to anywhere at all in the Lands Below. I could run and run and run. But something bitter rises in the back of my throat, and Orryen’s voice howls from somewhere deep inside my brain, screaming at me to just bloody talk to her.

Fine, I think as I press my jaw together. I tried running, and it was miserable. I’ve tried to drown these feelings in manic, punishing exercise and alcohol and miserable, miserable nights spent staring at the ceiling of my little room in the palace, wishing I could turn my magic in on myself and bury the hole in the middle of my chest under a mountain of unconsciousness.

Talking can’t possibly be any more painful than waking up in Rowan’s cabin with a brutal hangover, right? It can’t be worse than the slow realization that Ithronel had gone to my parents’ estate without me, or the feeling of the hours dragging by with exquisite agony after she’d vanished through the portal with Rensivar the Wicked.

I huff out a sigh and let my arms drop to my sides. My entire body feels jangly and nervous, like the magic of the portal is buzzing just beneath my skin. Ithronel glances up at me, then quickly back at the floor. There are tears in her eyes.

“Ithronel,” I start.

Her name catches in my throat. I force myself to cross the room and sit beside her, then bring my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Fuck,” I mutter. “This would be so much easier with heart magic.”

Ithronel narrows her eyes at me, and I get the feeling she thinks I’m trying to tease her. Something hot stings the back of my eyelids; I feel the heat of the void rising like a fortress between us. How did we go from being so close that I could taste her breath to this?

“What I mean is,” I say, “Orryen had it easy. You do heart magic, then boom, everything is laid out before you. It’s all clear. Whereas us, I mean, me. I have to— To talk about it.”

Voids damn it, I’m not making any sense. I grit my teeth together as Ithronel twists her hands in her lap.

“Heart magic doesn’t actually sound very easy,” she says, in a whisper.

I huff in reply.

“None of this is easy,” I say.

She tilts her head up to meet my eyes, and voids, she’s so beautiful it hurts. I can feel the ache of every day we’ve spent apart, the gaping loneliness I didn’t even realize was there until she made it vanish. I didn’t know what I was missing until I woke up in the void with a woman who laughed like she was home, who could spread her arms and smile at the violet skies of my childhood nightmares.

Somehow, she’d made me braver. Stronger. I was a better person when I was with Ithronel, slower to react with fear and more willing to laugh. To play. And this will all still be true, some horrible part of my mind whispers, even if everything she did was part of an act.

Well, so what? She may have been playing a role, but did it matter? She’d still made me stronger, braver, and more voids-damned fun, whether she’d wanted to or not. And, I realize with a slow curl of awareness that feels like the first tendrils of smoke rising from a fire, I’m grateful. Whatever happens between us now, I’m thankful for this woman. I’m thankful for the time we had, even if the memories ache and burn inside my ribcage for the rest of my life. It hurts, and maybe it will always hurt, but it's a pain I can live with.

“Ithronel,” I begin again.