The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 38: Laughter

This beautiful banner by -baeyonce- is a reminder of our new title! Of course, the cover still says Phoenix Rising, but I'm working on acquiring a beautiful new cover too. All in good time... 

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Nemia was used to meeting Irina during her lunch break now. They weren't particularly helpful meetings-- they hadn't done any real investigating since their trip to the match house-- but they were the best hope she had. She'd considered, again and again, sleepless night after sleepless night, asking the Sage to let her leave the castle and set out looking for Morie herself. But her courage always failed her halfway down the hallway outside her room.

Tobias would say no. Tobias always said no. And he would make her feel guilty for asking and humiliated for hoping.

So she sat with Irina in the shade of a tree a short distance from the training yard and listened to whatever theory the other girl had come up with to placate her for today. Sometimes her courage, or just sheer sleepy tactlessness, pressed her to say something like, "But did you get those ship logs Luca found yet?" and Irina would smile soothingly and give her a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she didn't have them yet that would make Nemia want to tear her hair out with frustration.

And Irina was always smiling. Soothing was just one of the many varieties her all-purpose smile came in. Bright. Charming. Mostly blandly comforting. She had the feeling Irina was just trying to make her comfortable. She must not have realized that to someone like Nemia, being surrounded by smiles was as uncomfortable as she could be.

Today she had to bite her lip to keep from asking about the ship logs immediately. The ache of Morie's absence worsened every day.

"I thought we'd eat in the gardens today." It was unlike Irina to skip a formal hello, and her smile wavered in a way that was almost nervous.

"But..."

"Don't worry about time, you know no one will notice if you're late back."

Someone would notice eventually, Nemia thought. That was proven fact. And then Tobias would send a servant to bring her to his office and exact some small but awful punishment and things were bad enough already.

So instead she said, "Do the gardens have to do with finding Morie?" and Irina winced.

"No, they have to do with you relaxing."

She went silent, as good a tool as any to make Irina backtrack.

"I mean... please. You need a change of scenery, and I need to get away from this training ruckus."

The gardens would be nice, Nemia thought, but what was the point?

She didn't realize she had mumbled that last part aloud until she saw Irina's lack of a smile become a true frown.

"What's the point? Nemia, please. You look awful. I don't know if you're sleeping at all, but it isn't enough. You've let the Thief being missing ruin your life, excuse me, that was rude, but it looks true. The point is you need something in your life that's nice for the point of being nice and nothing more."

Morie being missing wasn't what had ruined her life, but it hadn't helped, and Irina's sudden burst of clarity surprised her into saying, "I'd prefer the orchard."

Several things passed Irina's face in quick succession. Shock that she'd gotten an answer rather than silence or a turned back-- a fleeting blink of genuine happiness for the same reason as the shock-- and then something Nemia couldn't place for not knowing the cause of it. Something like guilt, perhaps.

"I... I had lunch set up for us in the garden."

"Will Savion be there?"

"No, just us."

She couldn't decide if that was a good thing or bad. "I'll come."

Irina's incredulously pleased smile reappeared and they started in the direction of the garden. For a moment, as they walked, Nemia felt that Irina was about to reach for her hand, and she quickly put several feet of distance between them, though afterwards she wasn't sure Irina's hand had reached out at all. She felt off-balance and, though she hadn't realized her dreariness had lifted for a few moments, suddenly miserable again.

She didn't even notice they had entered the garden until there were, without warning, huge pink flowers all around her, their scent thick and syrupy and overwhelming as their color. She blinked, confused. Her feet sank into soft dirt and a jewel-bright bee darted around her head, its buzz trailing after it. Her belated headshake knocked more pink flowers loose in her vision as she tried to process the sudden change from mindless walking to pink-petaled trap and what had happened in between.

Then, without conscious consent of her brain, she let loose a laugh, and Irina turned around in surprise to see Nemia stepping back onto the cobbled garden path. In her tired state her feet had stumbled off the path while Irina continued ahead, making her walk right into a bush of rose-like flowers. She wasn't convinced she hadn't just nodded off for a second, and it was this self-deprecating burst of laughter that caught the attention of the couples drifting around the garden.

When her tiredness and longing were forgotten Nemia's laugh could be an astonishing thing.

The laugh broke off into soft giggles as she righted herself and caught up to Irina to find the other girl stock still and giving her the kind of grin most people had in reaction to Nemia' laugh-- unfortunately, the kind of expression she was only used to seeing on Morie. In an instant her face reflected her usual grimness and Irina's drained into disappointment.

"Where are we going?" Nemia asked, voice sullen.

Irina threw her hands up in exasperation, ignoring the question. "There. What was that? Why do you always cut off any good feeling within five seconds?"

"Where are we going?"

Ignored again, this time in anger. "Forget it, I can answer that myself. God forbid you laugh at anything that isn't the Thief, right?"

She let the silence sit for a moment, then asked again, quieter. "Where are we going?"

Irina looked away. "There's a table that way."

Nemia stepped passed her in that direction, head down, eyes on the path so she couldn't stumble off again. But though it seemed to Irina that she had chosen to ignore her comment as her question had been ignored, a small knot had formed in her stomach that required all of her concentration to keep from growing.

God forbid you laugh at anything that isn't the Thief.

Uncertainty clouded her head.

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Several days late and several hundred words short, I know. My excuse is that if you add the word count of the extra story I updated in The Royal Thief to this they make up a full chapter together ;) plus this is a part of the story I've been excited to get to! Don't forget about the title change and don't be surprised by the cover change, because you don't want to stop reading now!