The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 74: Complicated

This isn't edited but neither is my life so what gives? Have this weird-ish chapter and my unending guilt for taking so long to update and let me go to bed i'm so tired you guys

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I leaned against the wall and let the cold of the stone sink through the fabric of my shirt and into my skin. It was cool enough to make me shiver, and the gold of the Guardian Mark on my shoulder almost itched with the sensation. The seams there, where my skin meshed with the not-quite-skin that made up the mark, could feel strange and foreign if I focused on them for too long, so normally I tried to ignore the feeling. Now, however, I wanted a distraction from what was down the hall.

Caer's cell.

This was the Assassin Court's cold, underground dungeons, and Caer was trapped somewhere in the shadows on the other end of the hall. I hadn't been able to make myself go any farther, and it was killing me.

It was just that I'd been in this situation before. Standing in front of Caer's door and stewing in a little guilt and lots of anger, deliberating whether I should see him or not, ashamed that I couldn't make up my mind. But last time, I had been standing in a warm castle hallway, in front of the door to Caer's apartment, after a spat that seemed almost trivial in retrospect. It had been normal. It had turned out fine.

Now I was cold and getting progressively more miserable with every minute that passed. Caer had lied to me, kept things from me... and he knew I'd done the same to him. But like always, I ended up needing something from him.

Once I would have asked him sarcastically if he had the answers to everything, and he would have said yes. Now I couldn't find it in me to face him through the bars of a cell.

Maybe I could have asked Roman to handle it. I was sure they had been trying to get information from him anyway. But Caer wouldn't talk, not if he was as important to the spies as they said he was. He'd be too well trained.

And, fine, he was even less likely to talk to me, but for different reasons, so maybe that made me think I had to do it myself to get results. It certainly felt like I had to face him eventually.

I conjured Jaden's teasing in my head for a moment —Are you a Thief, or are you a coward?

Damn all your lessons, I thought. Sometimes a person just wants to be a coward for a change.

Scale the wall. Meet Caer's eyes. The challenges in your life shifted as you grew older, I knew, but I don't think I realized before just how much more comfortable I was with heights and blades and darkness than with people. Never underestimate how much more terrifying things that aren't dangerous can be than those that are, Jaden had told me once, possibly trying to be comforting.

God, thinking about these things was never going to help. I wouldn't feel better until it was over with. Muttering curses under my breath, I pushed off the wall and rolled my stiff shoulders.

Wasn't Caer the one who had tried to teach me how powerful Guardians are? I shouldn't have felt this intimidated. So I clenched my hands out of sight in my pockets, and strode down the hall.

"Finally." Caer's voice echoed in the shadows as my footsteps did. "I thought you were going to stand there forever. Is trying to unbalance the prisoner by watching them creepily from afar the new interrogation technique?"

I clenched my jaw as I found the right cell. Caer lay on floor with his legs crossed and one arm across his chest, the other splayed out with a thick cuff around the wrist and a chain snaking across the ground. His eyes were closed. I could look him over without giving myself away just yet, and I did: the bruises from my lashing out were faded, and there were no other obvious injuries, but plenty of grime.