Fear That Knew Him

The inn kept striking the battle into the floorboards.

Cups hit tables. Voices rose beneath Maeril’s feet, followed by another cheer for a fight no two people downstairs remembered the same way.

She sat on the edge of the bed with her fingers locked between her knees.

Rishi’s staff leaned beside the door. Soot darkened the pale livingwood near the grip. The carved channels held no light now. Nothing in it showed the white-gold curve that had taken a giant’s blow and driven the same pain through her bones.

Maeril looked away.

Smoke folded inward again. Fire guttered. Guards stepped back before they understood why. Rishi came toward them with black eyes and ragged darkness spread behind his shoulders.

Her body remembered the half-step.

Then another memory surfaced beneath it: morning light on Loviatar’s nine-tailed whip, inked across old scars at Rishi’s ribs.

What else did he carry beneath his skin?

Maeril pressed her thumbs together until the nails hurt.

Did she want to know?

Someone knocked softly.

She did not move.

“Rish?”

The door opened just far enough for him to enter. He carried their two chipped travel cups, mismatched and steaming.

Rishi closed the door with his heel and stayed beside it.

He waited.

Maeril’s mouth almost found a smile. Then the smell of poor tea reached her and failed to make anything easier.

Rishi saw that too.

She unlocked her hands and held one out. He gave her a cup.

“Not the best I have tasted,” he said.

Steam warmed her face. “Then why bring it?”

“Bad tea is sometimes better than no tea.”

“That sounds like something monks say after failing at tea.”

One breath left her more easily.

Then the room went quiet again.

Rishi did not rescue her from it.

He sat beside her and left a careful span of blanket between them. Both hands closed around his cup. Maeril watched steam move through the space he had kept open.

“I knew it was you,” she said.

He waited.

“I stepped back.” Her shoulders drew tight. “I knew you, and I still could not understand what I saw.”

Rishi took one slow breath.

“I saw.”

She heard no anger in his voice.

Maeril stared into her tea.

“It was not only the wings. Or your eyes.” She tightened her grip until heat pressed into her palms. “It was knowing there may be more I cannot see.”

His thumb moved once along the chipped rim of his cup.

She made herself look at him.

Ash marked the edge of one sleeve. His robe was torn beneath the ribs. His sandals rested squarely on the floor, and pain held one shoulder lower than the other.

Rishi. Every visible part of him.

“I don’t know if I want to see it.”

He met the words without turning away.

For several breaths, voices below filled the room.

Then Rishi placed his cup on the floor.

“I am afraid as well.”

Maeril went still.

He said, “I know how to train. How to suffer and endure. I know how to make myself useful.”

His empty hands rested on his knees.

“I do not know how to hold it away from you.”

Maeril set her cup beside his.

She reached across the blanket and touched the back of his hand.

Rishi went still.

Her fingers almost lifted. She left them where they were.

Slowly, he turned his hand beneath hers until their palms met.

They sat with the space still between them and their hands joined across it.

The fear did not leave.

After a while, Rishi said, “Thank you.”

Maeril blinked. “For what?”

He looked toward the staff.

“For saving my life.”

The tree trunk fell again in her memory. Rishi set his feet beneath it because no open ground remained behind him. The ward answered through wood, distance, and terror.

Maeril’s fingers tightened around his.

“I wasn’t going to lose you today.”

He held her hand gently.

Maeril crossed the span of blanket first. She leaned against him. Rishi waited until her weight settled against his chest before he rested his temple against her hair.

Below them, Nashkel kept telling the story wrong.

Beside the bed, their tea cooled.