The sun was rising higher, now. Early morning bringing out that rose hush that I’d admired so much the morning of the vaklok.
The morning of the day that he’d first held my hands.
And I didn’t know if it was sorrow, then, or my poor brain giving out on me after the exertion. But my vision sputtered, and my knees buckled, and the only thing that kept me from smashing my head and getting concussed all over again was Tilly’s small but resolutely loyal body clumsily catching me. Though she couldn’t stop my fall completely. We went down together, both of us falling onto our asses with her behind me. Winded from the run after spending so much time in bed, I sat there gasping, my tailbone aching.
“Sorry,” I said to my friend for knocking her down to the ground. “But I have to…” I got shakily onto my hands and knees. But I couldn’t make my body stand, no matter how much my mind screamed at it.
Fucking pathetic, really. So pathetic compared to him.
So instead I just stayed like that, on my hands and knees, staring at the stone until it glowed its usual aqua with bright sun. The sound of shuttle engines finally made me look up.
When the shuttle landed, Valeria and Grim came out at once.
“What’s wrong?” Valeria said. “Why is she out here?”
“I tried to stop her,” Tilly said. She was still on the ground beside me. “She wanted to know.”
“Nasrin, you need to rest. You’re recovering from a serious head injury!”
“Would you stay inside and rest?” I cried. “If Grim was out there? And you didn’t know if he was alive or dead?”
Valeria sighed and shook her head.
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Well, shit. I won’t keep you in suspense. Between the shuttle’s power and the party of men who went to investigate, we got the borog rolled over. There was no body beneath the borog’s. Though more than one man said the blade stuck under the borog’s throat was Gahn Thaleo’s.”
“So what else is being done?” I demanded, trying once more to rise from my knees but halted by dizziness. I leaned against Tilly for support. “What if he’s still out there somewhere? And he needs our help?”
She crouched down to meet me eye-to-eye.
“They tell me that the borog’s blood is highly toxic. It can burn right through you, and anyone who got underneath it to stab it would have been doused in the stuff.” She looked suddenly pained. “He didn’t survive the encounter, Nasrin. They’re going to keep looking. They’re searching all the small caves and nooks and crannies of the surrounding area. But ultimately, they’re looking for a body.”
I didn’t sob this time. I simply lay down on the stone, pressing my cheek to the warm smoothness of it. I’d restedmy cheek against Thaleo’s chest just like this. Memorized the rhythm of what had seemed like such an unkillable heart.
But there was no heartbeat here.
I didn’t fight Grim as he picked me up and carried me back inside.
I passedthat terrible day in a state of half-consciousness. I didn’t stir from my bed in the healer’s cave, even when Salina and Tilly brought me warm drinks and food that I did not touch. When I saw the grief carved into Salina’s face, I felt even worse. Like I had no right to my sorrow. The Deep Sky people had known and loved Thaleo for their whole lives.
I’d known him for such a brief time. And had spent an even smaller portion of that actually liking him, let alone loving him. In quiet moments alone, I punished myself for this, thinking of all those instances before I really knew him when I could have let down my walls, put aside the barbs of my judgment, and spoken to him. Spent time with him. Like a miser, I wanted to hoard every possible moment I’d had with him. And I’d left so fucking many on the table.
By evening, there had been no change. No real news brought back by the warriors returning to eat and rest. All we knew was that Yeralk refused to come back to the main mountain, and no body had yet been found in any of the caves or other areas of the valley where the borog had been killed. It shattered me to think that Thaleo might have been dragged away by yet another predator of the mountains.
I ate nothing that day. By sundown I wasn’t sure I was even capable of lifting my head off of the bed. I watched the light fadeaway, darkness slowly collecting like dust on the surfaces of the cave until everything was indistinct.
And I must have slept then, because I dreamed of him. I dreamed of Thaleo outside on Yeralk’s back. Dreamed of him coming in through the balcony window, like some stoic alien Romeo.
A rose by any other name.
My name meant rose, too. Wild rose.
What a strange thing to remember now. This confirmed it really was a dream. It was not the real Thaleo that moved on silent feet into the room, standing over me like something I had conjured through the sheer, broken force of my yearning.
But I didn’t care if he was real or not, this wordless shadow of the man I’d known.
“I love you,” I whispered. Tears seeped from the sides of my eyes. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
“Sleep, beloved.”
