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Nur blinks. “Hm?”
“The map. You said it helped.”
“Oh, yes.” Nur digs the rolled map out of his pocket and holds it out to Rhys. “You should keep it safe—don’t go handing it over to strange Hellbeasts. Knowledge like this is powerful.”
Rhys laughs. “You’re not a stranger. You’re a friend.”
“As a friend, I’m telling you to hide it away.”
Rhys tucks it away without argument. “So you and him…are you handfasted now?”
“Handfasted?” He frowns.
“Rich people get married, but the rest of us get handfasted,” Rhys explains. “It’s like a promise to each other. Don’t you have something like that in your world?”
They made promises, alright. But in the real world, what does that mean?
“Promises aren’t everything,” Nur says finally.
“Handfasting isn’t aregularpromise. It’s just that you keep looking for him. And you were away for days and days to—um.”
Nur sighs. There’s no getting away from talking about it. “To fuck.”
Rhys’s face reddens.
“Would you promise yourself to someone just because you fucked?” Nur says bitingly, though it’s not the same at all—Rhys is null.
Still, Rhys makes a face and mutters, “Probably.”
“Arsene is an angel, a citizen of a different realm. His home lies there. It’s not like he’s going to bring a creature like me in through the gate to play happy mates in his perfect world.”
“Then he doesn’t deserve you,” Rhys says loyally.
“Maybe we don’t deserve each other,” he mutters.
After all, what does he have to offer Arsene? Years of being an outcast, until Nur succumbs to the aether and abandons him tobe alone. A sense of humor drier than the Deadlands themselves. A long string of ugly actions that disappears into his murky past.
He stays at the fire-pit as long as he can stand, but when night falls he still hasn’t seen Arsene. He can’t bring himself to hunt him down in earnest. Maybe now that the haze of heat is behind them, Arsene is reminded of everything he’d have to give up to stay with Nur. It hurts to imagine. But it’s more likely than Arsene’s whispered promises coming true.
He takes his own tent and sets it up on the far side of the camp. He pretends the shivers are from the temperature and not the sudden swell of fear that overtakes him in the dark.
Alone, Nicephore mutters in his head.Just like always.
It’s harder to fall into the pit of despair when the chatter of the caravan drifts to him through the dark, though. The wind whips the laundry tent and the dogs yap. Rowdy song breaks out around the fire he left. Nur sighs and wraps himself in the bedroll.
See, you old cynic, he tells Nicephore.Not like always.
Arsene doesn’t come wakehim for the next watch. Nur rouses on his own in the middle of the night, groggy, certain he hears something—he catches Arsene’s scent on the biting air. But he’s dragged back down into uneasy dreams, and sleeps through to morning.
He rolls out of the tent with sour emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Enough is enough. But stalking through the tents, he doesn’t see Arsene’s familiar, ragged canvas. The emptiness yawns.
“Where is he?”
Myra gives him a pitying look. “He has his mission. Didn’t he tell you?”
He bites the inside of his cheek. “Did he say how long…?”
She shakes her head. “Long as it takes. If he comes back at all.”
