“Wrinkles and all,” he said with a wink. “Death becomes you.” Dragging my hand to his waiting lips, he pressed a scandalous kiss upon my knuckle. “Let me broil in the pits for an age if I was going to walk to my grave without telling you once more.”
I sought out my slippers, unable to meet his gaze.
“Oh, what a lovely blush…suits you,” he teased, my hand still in his. It was a protest, this touch. It was a rebellion, and every Thromarrian knew how rebellions ended. The realisation had me yanking my hand back, skimming the atrium for any sign we were to be intercepted. The paxiams paid us no mind, their bored faces staring listlessly ahead.
The Dendralis didn’t bother with consequences for the already dead, it would seem.
I fidgeted my hand, tingling with the echo of his own.
“You really are the little heathen you always were,” I said, meeting his stare. He was grinning from ear to ear, like a mountain cat. “Beautifulof all things. Like that matters. Like I’d care.” I motioned to my body, to the slightly too-longdress and my Seventh Day chappellum slippers. He tracked the movement, head tilting.
“Still beautiful; you’ve always been beautiful. But now…” He took a small step back, surveying me. “Now, you are breathtaking.”
I snorted, the sound gloriously elegant. Ever silver-tongued, even at the very end of it all.
“And what about you?” I asked, clearing my throat. “What have the crusiax been feeding you? Bulking oats?”
Taking in his broad shoulders, rounded biceps, and trim waist—still visible beneath the folds of his shirt—I tried not to grimace. Demetri was not the boy I remembered. Somewhere in the years I’d lost, he had become a man. “You’ve grown larger.”
His smile ignited a dimple. There, on his right cheek. Thatcurseddimple.
“I can assure you every part of me has grown larger. I could show you later if you’d like?”
The flush burning across my face faded, giving way to an uncomfortable pulling in my limbs, a heaviness dragging me down. It was the invisible weight of something we both carried. Something I thought about often, late at night, alone in my cot.
Opening my mouth to speak at the same time as he, our syllables collided, both of us stumbling over the words of the other.
Before we could try again, Demetri’s eyes flickered to something, or someone, over my shoulder, the sharp line of his jaw twitching as he straightened his back. That familiar smile shifted, morphing into something I couldn’t quite name.
“Well met, brother,” he greeted the figure whose shadow bled into ours.
“Hick,” a faceless voice replied, deep and gruff.
A laurel approached, wedging himself between the two pillars we’d claimed. I craned my neck, the man absurdly tall. Gods,even Demetri, one of the tallest in our enclave, seemed but a bust compared to the monolith who’d joined us. Perhaps that was why he wore a tent. At least, that’s what it must have been before someone repurposed it into a shirt. It hung off him in a great swathe of baggy fabric, sleeves rolled to his angular elbows, the hem falling nearly to his knees. It brushed my arm, the bottom of it yellowed like old parchment. Maybe it was the seamstress in me, but who came to their Last Rites without laundering first?
Someone who cared not for the dignity of the offering, only how it would end.
Realising I was staring, I coughed, peeling my gaze from the stains marring his linens.
“Hick?” I asked, attempting to disguise my curiosity for what he had said rather than his sullied clothes.
“Hickory tree,” the nameless laurel explained, flicking a bony wrist towards Demetri, one of his worn boots tapping against the mosaic.
The smile returned to Demetri’s face, no doubt amused at the confusion on mine.
“Osric is a sentimental man, Ashara,” he mock-whispered, leaning close. “Refuses to call us by our Blood God-given names. Us lucky few get nicknames instead. Something to do with eyes, I think?”
Osric nodded, the movement small and quick.
“How do you know each other?” I asked. I’d always reasoned it was a tragedy of fate that Demetri and I shared a name day, and thus, the same date of our offering, too. But for him to know another destined to die at the same time as well? The Blood God’s sense of humour was callous indeed.
We stood in a loose triangle, a foot or so apart, but both their heads were angled towards one another. Silence stretched, and for a moment, I thought neither had heard me.
“Crusiax,” Demetri eventually replied, breaking his gaze with the other laurel to meet mine. “We were stationed in Ricily together.” Clapping his friend on the shoulder, Demetri nudged him at the hip. “Captivated by my eyes as most are, he proclaimed me as Hick, not a beat after we’d crossed swords in the training ring.”
The man grunted, seemingly fascinated with his boot scraping the floor.
“Why eyes?” I pressed, piecing it together. Demetri’s were indeed like hickory bark: warm, strong, and grounded.
