06-25-2023, 08:15 PM
Arikan let them go, though he didn’t look pleased about it. Nythadri bit down on the urge to fire a scathing retort at his final comment, but instead ignored him entirely.
She led Jai to the room she had shared with Elly, too exhausted to deliver them anywhere safer. His grip peeled away. Literally. Nythadri daren’t pause to look down at her own hands. She knew blood also soaked her skirts where she’d knelt to urge Jai from the m'hael's body, but the moment she considered it was the moment the frayed edges of her control would begin to unravel with the proof of what she’d done. Jai remained silent as the grave. Meanwhile she summoned a servant, who she spoke with quietly on the threshold for a few moments, employing the last armament of icy, shuttered expression she could muster. When she closed the door, Jai was occupied with routine and ritual, scrubbing his hands like he’d prefer to flay the skin from them. Light knew she understood the need.
She did not flinch when he wrenched himself from the coat, though it pained her to see the lines of self-revulsion and failure in his expression as he abandoned it to the floor. But words wouldn’t reach where he dwelt now, even if she could find them.
Nythadri didn’t look down until she finally pressed her hands in the dirty water. She had never been phased by gore, but this was a man’s lifeblood; a man she had looked in the eye, and known she would not fight to save. A man who had looked back and known his deliverance, even as he spat in the Dark One’s eye to the very last. Worse, maybe; it was a man she had hated for what he had taken from Jai. Such cold thoughts were what she tried to focus on, like she could cast herself remote from the act. But it didn’t work. She couldn’t control the tremble once it started. Her burning, tired eyes blurred as the water soaked into her cuffs.
After Tashir’s murder, the innkeep’s wife had sluiced the blood from her hands, speaking to her softly while they awaited the city guard. No one knew who she was, or that a noble’s corpse lay out on the cobbles. But after the battle of Tar Valon she had been alone over a basin just like this in the novice halls. It’s not mine, she had told the harried Yellow Aspirant working triage before she had been allowed to seek her own privacy, and it had only been half a lie. The girl had moved on with a tired nod. This was not so harrowing as that, she told herself, and she had survived it, but reason had plunged from the precipice, and even Nythadri had limits. Blood crusted the scales of the ring she twisted free under the pink water. She tried to breathe through it, disturbed by how badly she was shaken, and knowing bleakly that this was the peril of burying things too deep to feel. Ghosts never settled quietly forever.
Tonight she’d nearly lost everything that mattered. That was the crack chinking and fracturing across her composure, letting loose everything else inside. A scald of heat lanced down her cheek before she stitched herself back together. She squeezed her eyes shut; waited for the moment to pass, because it had to.
When Jai finally spoke, the words hurt as sharply as an accusation. In them she heard the shadow of her own failure, and the one mistake she regretted. But she heard his pain too. The helplessness of what he clung to first in this storm. She sought the shape of him in the mirror’s reflection, bowed over himself, and she wished she knew if the soft slur was shock or something worse. Who had told him that was set aside for now, for it felt like a weight of iron in her chest. The betrayal she already suspected must wait. The fate of the Towers must wait. Just as the light-forsaken dreadlord must wait.
The rags were sodden, the water too bloody to do much but leaven the worst from her hands. She abandoned the effort despite the turn in her stomach, and dried them as best she could on the bodice of her dress. “I should have come myself. I was afraid, and it seems I am destined to learn every bloody lesson the hard way.” Her voice sounded less shaky than she felt, despite the raw nature of her confession. Of the fear or the lesson she did not elaborate as she closed the distance to where he sat. “Though did you really need to do something quite so dramatic just to get my attention?” The brief edge of a sharp smile, tired sarcasm. She knelt before him, allowed herself to look at him properly for the first time since the Tower. For a moment her hands remained clenched in her lap, unsure if her body would betray her. But then her touch smoothed the line of his forearms. Her hands rolled over his, like so simple an affection might have any hope of protecting him from the thoughts laying siege to his head.
He’d professed to her being an obstacle to duty, once, and she knew he feared what he might leave behind if that duty ever demanded the worst sacrifice. But she wondered if he’d ever paused to consider before now the reverse. The not knowing. Being the one left behind. She accused him of the same thing the night he turned up at her door snow-soaked and blank-eyed, determined to sever the cord between them. For the risk he’d taken and the punishment he’d faced alone. Never realising how carelessly she might inflict the same injury.
Nothing since her Raising had transpired as she might have intended, and neither had she been absent from the Tower with anything close to choice, but intention meant little. When he’d needed her, he’d not known where to find her. When she’d realised, she’d not known how to find him either.
“I went to the palace after I heard about the treaty, but I arrived too late. I couldn’t find you either,” she told him. Light but she wanted to cup his face, lift his eyes to hers and seek connection. To understand too if she needed to worry. Or at least how much. But she was concerned the remnants of blood on her hands might only make him flinch, in disgust or panic or shame. “It won’t happen again, Jai.” The words were soft with promise, coaxing his attention.
She led Jai to the room she had shared with Elly, too exhausted to deliver them anywhere safer. His grip peeled away. Literally. Nythadri daren’t pause to look down at her own hands. She knew blood also soaked her skirts where she’d knelt to urge Jai from the m'hael's body, but the moment she considered it was the moment the frayed edges of her control would begin to unravel with the proof of what she’d done. Jai remained silent as the grave. Meanwhile she summoned a servant, who she spoke with quietly on the threshold for a few moments, employing the last armament of icy, shuttered expression she could muster. When she closed the door, Jai was occupied with routine and ritual, scrubbing his hands like he’d prefer to flay the skin from them. Light knew she understood the need.
She did not flinch when he wrenched himself from the coat, though it pained her to see the lines of self-revulsion and failure in his expression as he abandoned it to the floor. But words wouldn’t reach where he dwelt now, even if she could find them.
Nythadri didn’t look down until she finally pressed her hands in the dirty water. She had never been phased by gore, but this was a man’s lifeblood; a man she had looked in the eye, and known she would not fight to save. A man who had looked back and known his deliverance, even as he spat in the Dark One’s eye to the very last. Worse, maybe; it was a man she had hated for what he had taken from Jai. Such cold thoughts were what she tried to focus on, like she could cast herself remote from the act. But it didn’t work. She couldn’t control the tremble once it started. Her burning, tired eyes blurred as the water soaked into her cuffs.
After Tashir’s murder, the innkeep’s wife had sluiced the blood from her hands, speaking to her softly while they awaited the city guard. No one knew who she was, or that a noble’s corpse lay out on the cobbles. But after the battle of Tar Valon she had been alone over a basin just like this in the novice halls. It’s not mine, she had told the harried Yellow Aspirant working triage before she had been allowed to seek her own privacy, and it had only been half a lie. The girl had moved on with a tired nod. This was not so harrowing as that, she told herself, and she had survived it, but reason had plunged from the precipice, and even Nythadri had limits. Blood crusted the scales of the ring she twisted free under the pink water. She tried to breathe through it, disturbed by how badly she was shaken, and knowing bleakly that this was the peril of burying things too deep to feel. Ghosts never settled quietly forever.
Tonight she’d nearly lost everything that mattered. That was the crack chinking and fracturing across her composure, letting loose everything else inside. A scald of heat lanced down her cheek before she stitched herself back together. She squeezed her eyes shut; waited for the moment to pass, because it had to.
When Jai finally spoke, the words hurt as sharply as an accusation. In them she heard the shadow of her own failure, and the one mistake she regretted. But she heard his pain too. The helplessness of what he clung to first in this storm. She sought the shape of him in the mirror’s reflection, bowed over himself, and she wished she knew if the soft slur was shock or something worse. Who had told him that was set aside for now, for it felt like a weight of iron in her chest. The betrayal she already suspected must wait. The fate of the Towers must wait. Just as the light-forsaken dreadlord must wait.
The rags were sodden, the water too bloody to do much but leaven the worst from her hands. She abandoned the effort despite the turn in her stomach, and dried them as best she could on the bodice of her dress. “I should have come myself. I was afraid, and it seems I am destined to learn every bloody lesson the hard way.” Her voice sounded less shaky than she felt, despite the raw nature of her confession. Of the fear or the lesson she did not elaborate as she closed the distance to where he sat. “Though did you really need to do something quite so dramatic just to get my attention?” The brief edge of a sharp smile, tired sarcasm. She knelt before him, allowed herself to look at him properly for the first time since the Tower. For a moment her hands remained clenched in her lap, unsure if her body would betray her. But then her touch smoothed the line of his forearms. Her hands rolled over his, like so simple an affection might have any hope of protecting him from the thoughts laying siege to his head.
He’d professed to her being an obstacle to duty, once, and she knew he feared what he might leave behind if that duty ever demanded the worst sacrifice. But she wondered if he’d ever paused to consider before now the reverse. The not knowing. Being the one left behind. She accused him of the same thing the night he turned up at her door snow-soaked and blank-eyed, determined to sever the cord between them. For the risk he’d taken and the punishment he’d faced alone. Never realising how carelessly she might inflict the same injury.
Nothing since her Raising had transpired as she might have intended, and neither had she been absent from the Tower with anything close to choice, but intention meant little. When he’d needed her, he’d not known where to find her. When she’d realised, she’d not known how to find him either.
“I went to the palace after I heard about the treaty, but I arrived too late. I couldn’t find you either,” she told him. Light but she wanted to cup his face, lift his eyes to hers and seek connection. To understand too if she needed to worry. Or at least how much. But she was concerned the remnants of blood on her hands might only make him flinch, in disgust or panic or shame. “It won’t happen again, Jai.” The words were soft with promise, coaxing his attention.