I shrugged, even as the guilt writhed a little more insistently in my gut. Pressure burned behind my eyes and I refused to let it break.
“Great. Fine. We didn’t kill him. He’s dead anyway, isn’t he?” My throat ached, but I blinked hard and gritted my teeth. “The least I can do is make it easier for his friends and family to mourn. The leastyoucan do is find his murderer.”
“His murderer?”
“Isn’t that the whole reason you’re here? You have a hunt to get back to, Captain.”
Something dawned over his face, but he was far too skilled at taming his features. A skill fundamental to his job, I supposed, and one I should have been all too familiar with by now. I could never read him; not if he didn’t want to be read. And right now, as he stood there letting me snap and snarl like the prickly fire-breathing beast that I was, his expression was vacant, a book slammed shut.
“That I do,” he said finally. “I’ll leave you be then, Rosie.”
My Flame whimpered.
“Fantastic. Goodbye now.”
The clatter of dishes was all I heard for a long moment. My hands shook hard enough that I had to compensate by stacking them a touch too aggressively, and sent a tiny hairline fissure halfway through a saucer.For fuck’ssake.It was only when the Captain moved away that I let myself take a full breath, let myself slow down and soothe my shredded nerves.
His footsteps paused at the door, and my own movements followed, every muscle freezing in place without my say-so.
“I’d tell you to take care, but I get the feeling you don’t want to hear it from me. If you won’t look after yourself right now – let someone else do it, alright? If not me, then Sorcha, or – gods, I don’t know. Anyone.”
I didn’t turn, but I knew he had finally left then. Knew it with the solemn silence in my chest the very moment it went cold.
???
Tanner would rest inThe Mage and Roseovernight, a window open to allow his spirit to depart when he was ready. Which, knowing Tanner, would be some time after midnight.
I sat in the dining hall for a long time after the mourners departed. The night shift men had yet to descend, perhaps slightly put off by the dead body laid out in the centre of the tavern. Sorcha had gone with a small convoy of locals to see Tanner’s family to his home, and there was a strange silence to the tavern, a stillness so eerie I might have thought time itself had stood still were it not for the insistent patter of rain on the window behind me. I wasn’t aware of having given in to the unrelenting pressure of tears behind my eyes, but every blink of my lashes caught wet shimmers in my vision, and my cheeks were stiff with dried salt. And I felt what I’d been numb to all day; the heavy, dragging horror of it all.
Tanner, dying alone in a bed of ice.
The murderous creature I’d written off as a persecuted, misunderstood compeer.
The Captain, and the look on his face when I’d as good as told him to fuck off.
I wasn’t sure what extent of damage I’d inflicted there; if he’d approach me again, because gods knew I was too ashamed now to seek him out, much as I might long to. And I did long to. I longed to talk to him. Or have him talk to me. Or just… be here.
More than anything, I longed for the people around me to stop leaving.
Although in truth, I was rarely alone to quite this extent. Not when I had always shared my body with another living being. My heart gave a painful little squeeze at the thought of my magic, and I turned my thought inwards, mentally calling to the nameless entity. It was reluctant to come, rising sullen and simmering from that untouchable cold within me, peering over some unfathomable edge.
I’m sorry, I told it.
Nothing.
I’m sorry for locking you away.
It crept a little further to the fore, but wouldn’t quite fill my chest, let alone rise to my fingers. Whatever consciousness my Flame seemed to possess, it had never had a voice – and yet somehow, it had a way of making itself understood. Right now, resisting my call, I had the sense my magic was waiting for something more from me.
I’m sorry for ignoring you.
Better, perhaps, with the warmth incrementally filling my aching chest, but not quite there yet. My heart gave an uncomfortable little flutter at the sudden understanding of what I truly had to say – and the knowledge that I truly meant it, too.
I’m sorry for keeping you away… from him.
It felt like a sigh that wasn’t my own, heaving inside my lungs and flooding me with breath when I hadn’t known I was suffocating. My Flame rushed through me, guided by my call to my fingers where it sparked to life and wreathed around my hand in a merry dancing glow.
I breathed a soft laugh, fresh tears springing to my eyes. “There you are. Missed you.”
