Healer

Chapter 39

     The tent had been emptied of almost everything except for the low table where Talia lay, covered in a warm white sheet. Soft faelight created a strange, too-kind glow around her. Her face was covered, and just inside the entrance, Azriel thought she looked strangely small that way, covered head to toe reverently but as if she were just another fae. Her face covered so that anyone could be under there and he wouldn't know. If he let himself, he might convince his heart that it wasn't her after all. That it couldn't be. As if he couldn't still catch her scent wrapped in her hair and on her now clean skin. As if she weren't the beginning and end of his entire world. He shook his head. He couldn't blame anyone for seeing her as less. No one knew her like he did.

Outside, when Cassian had mentioned reentering the tent, Azriel had thought that it seemed crazy, obscene, like he didn't deserve a final goodbye after failing to protect her not once, not twice, but now three times. And this third and devastatingly final time had his name all over it. But now, now that he was before her, it would have taken a much stronger force to remove him. This last sight, this last time together, he thought that blinking was too long a time for his eyes to be off of her. But he didn't uncover her yet. In the warmly lit space, his shadows danced around him, searching for any bit of her, thirsty for any of her essence that was left.

He forgot them as he walked to the corner, where someone had neatly folded her clothes and laid them on a chair. He stared at them for a long time. On top of her leathers was her undershirt, ripped cleanly in half. Had....had that really been today? He swallowed unsuccessfully. He questioned time and reality and existence and whether he had given her enough. Whether it was a worthy goodbye. He didn't have time to decide as he caught the glint of the blue stone from her necklace where it lay atop the pile. A flash of hot anger pulsed through him at whoever had taken it off of her. It was gone as soon as it came and he picked up the delicate chain and ran it through his fingers. They were just doing their jobs, but the only place it belonged was on her. He had been so himself that day. So unguarded, so true. So happy. He had the incredible urge to rip the thing in half. He heard the shop owners voice "Illyrian silver. Nearly indestructible", but he would bet money on his own ability to shatter its innocent, delicate structure into a thousand tiny pieces. He closed his eyes for a second, knowing how it would hurt her if he did. He slipped it into his pocket.

He turned back to the table where she lay. She had saved his life many times and he failed to save her even once. He pulled back the sheet. Her face was no shock except in its pallor. It looked exactly like her, like maybe she was sleeping. Peaceful.

"How dare you." He whispered harshly, unsure if he was speaking to her or himself but the anger he had intended was lost as the words tumbled down the deep, dark well of his sadness. He felt himself on the edge, as though he would fall in after them. The tattoo on his wrist burned, reminding him that it wouldn't be a possibility, searching for his own end. He hated her for that, and himself for agreeing to it. He hated that she left him after forcing him to agree not to follow her. The war would wage on. Maybe by some mercy it would claim him anyway.

He unbuckled his weapons and lay them on the ground. It felt too warm, the space too small as he shrugged out of his heavy cloak and hung it on a hook just inside the entrance. He had always been so quiet, his voice had never been his power, but he felt a cry rising in him now. He wanted it, to shout at the sky, to shake the earth with his fury, to demand answers with screams like the creatures in stories when they had to face such injustice and tragedy. But nothing came out of him besides a strangled groan of defeat. And she lay perfectly still. He clenched his eyes shut, slapping himself mentally, as if to wake himself up. She was gone. Really. She was still and silent because it was only her body left in stark relief beneath the plain white sheet. It was her flesh and her broken bones, but she was not inside. Her green eyes wouldn't track him around the room, her voice wouldn't reassure him that he wasn't ruined.