Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 71 - Leavi

Everything feels dead. After days of storms, now the wind won't blow. The clouds stay full but refuse to snow, like they're frozen in the sky. One day blends into the next, their similarity stretching time into an eternity.

Somehow the week still passes too fast.

After the night we have tea, Aster and I don't talk much. I don't know what to say, and he spends most of his time in an empty room he's claimed as his. The few times I try to coax him downstairs, he doesn't even bother opening his door, simply telling me he's busy. When he does make an appearance, he's drawn, face a silent storm. It's like he shut off.

I wish I could open his brain and find all the heavy secrets weighing him down. If I could, I'd give them wings and watch them fly away. His wide, easy smile would replace his pensive brood, and everything would be okay again, easy as that.

But it doesn't matter. He leaves in the morning.

The sun falls tonight like the blade of a guillotine. I watch from the upstairs window, hands pressed against the frame, as the sky flashes blood red and then cuts away, dead and fixed in its finality. The stars appear one by one, hopeless rebels against the ever-expanding darkness. They'll fade and disappear from the heavens one day, and they know it. Still, they wave their shining banners, hoping they can overcome their fate, hoping it's not so, that they can avoid the inevitable. But endings come for everything.

Even stars.

He's in his room right now. I drew the evening watch today, but after dinner, I didn't hear the door shut or his feet creak up the stairs; I never do. All the same, I know he's in his room. He never stays up very late anymore.

I'm sure he probably wants to get good rest, even though, as far as I understand, his journey won't tax him any tomorrow. I imagine he'll have a full day ahead of him, though, attending to whatever it is his country needs him so badly for.

Idyne comes to relieve me, and I close the door behind, wandering down the hall.

I shouldn't bother him. I certainly shouldn't knock on his door and risk waking him up. Besides, what would I say? I've had countless opportunities for meaningful conversation and allowed them all to flit away, too scared to reach out and grab one. Tonight won't be any different.

Tomorrow, he leaves and walks into a war zone. The last war in the High Valleys was centuries and centuries ago, back when our people were all topsiders. All I can imagine of war is storybook depictions. Skies know what's waiting for him.

My fingers rub the shield charm of my necklace. Will he get hurt? Do princes in Morineaux lead their people to the battlefield? Perhaps, there's not a battlefield, though. That word he used—siege—I looked it up. It's different than the scene my mind conjures up of warriors fighting in sweeping valleys, two sides charging toward each other. Either way, there will be fighting, and he could be in the midst of it.