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“Myra told me. I’ll lend a hand with the wagons.”
They spend the day apart, Arsene carrying barrels from the far end of camp to the wagons and Nur helping to prepare the mules for travel. Tension winds tighter as the sun crosses the sky. When evening sinks in he joins Rhys by the fire, and even his gregarious friend doesn’t try to fill the empty space with chatter. His mood must be catching.
“Are you sure youwantto come with us?” Rhys says finally, breaking the silence.
He fiddles with the shirt in his lap. “It doesn’t matter.”
Rhys frowns. “Doesn’t it?”
Nur reaches for the words that will make it make sense. In his head, it’s crystal clear. On his tongue, it melts into uncertainty. “Arsene doesn’t need my help to finish his mission. He’s capable. And I owe a debt to the caravan for—” He hesitates. There’s a lot he owes them for. Not killing him on sight. Opening their arms to him, in spite of his nature. And for those whose lives he took. “For everything.”
“I don’t think anyone believes you owe us,” Rhys says.
“I believe it.”
Rhys shrugs. “Maybe you’re wrong.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“And you’re okay with being apart from him?”
“It’s only for a while.”
But as the flames burn down and the sounds of work continue in the background, he has to acknowledge that a strange foreboding crawled into him at Rhys’s words.
Apart.
He tries to shake it off. Arsene fetches him finally, once the wagons are fully loaded, and they retire to Nur’s tent. Nur tries not to cling. Arsene fucks him like he’s forgotten how to stop, staying inside long after he’s come as if they’re knotted together. He grips Nur bruisingly. Nur takes everything given to him and aches for more.
When Arsene is asleep, his lips form the words in the dark. A mirror of what Arsene told him in the light.
Yours. Forever.
The caravan leavesin the morning. Arsene embraces him tight enough to hurt. He steels his spine against his worry and fear.
“Soon,” is all he says.
“Soon,” Arsene repeats, muffled. His shoulders shake once, quickly, and then the bond is quiet.
He sees them off from the skeleton of the old building where Nur waited for him to return. The ruins quickly obscure the site, and Nur doesn’t have to worry about looking back. Arsene won’t be there.
The caravan reaches the edge of the city by late afternoon and sets out into the desert once more. The dunes stretch before them in golden waves, rippling endlessly into the horizon. The stars of both realms sing to them.March on. Your journey isn’t over.
The further they get from the city, the deeper Nur’s foreboding runs. It’s the bond, stretching with distance—it must be. He walls it off and forces himself to stop listening. It could easily drive him mad. Arsene will be feeling it, too, and he can’t think about that.
As the desert swallows them and the sun spins across the sky to collide with the horizon Nur’s foreboding turns to yawning fear. Once they camp he tries to busy himself with menial work, but he doesn’t find much to occupy him—with the new humans they picked up in the city there are plenty of hands for every task. Finally even mild mannered Josi finds it in herself to chase him away from the cooking tent.
“Absolutely not.” She brandishes a chunk of salt beef at him. “I have never seen you touch a single piece of human food.”
Nur slinks away, chastised.
By now Arsene will be deep inside the earth, in the bunker he described to Nur. He’ll find what he’s looking for soon, and he’ll leave the city going the opposite direction—back to New Yden. Nur isn’t afraid of losing him to that life. He fears something else as yet unclear to him. Jumbled words cluster in the back of his throat, waiting to unravel.
That night, Nur dreams.
Nur meetsBranok before he’s King, before the Court and the war, before his demon form—when he’s just a soul eking out an existence in the ruins. This soul is different, though.
Human souls are drawn to the ruins, so that’s where Nur lurks, hoping to nibble away at them. It hurts to linger amid the old stones, for a cloudy tangle of reasons, but hunger compels him to stay. He’s patient. He’s careful. He takes a little when their backs are turned, not too much.
