Page 107 of Keldori By Daybreak

Ciarán laughed softly and sat next to me, the bed creaking as it took his weight.

“Yes. Gams. I don’t know if she loved him back, but he was opposed to her being the one to seal the Rift. She waited until he was away, and then had the other three Magicians seal her. The stories say when he returned and found her encased in the glacier, he was devastated. He forgave her, but died hating the other three Magicians. It’s probably what caused the disconnect between the Grimguards and the rest of the Riftkeepers.”

“Darragh loved Gams,” I repeated, still trying to get used to the idea of Gams being of romantic interest to anyone. “But then why forbid all Grimguards from being with Saergrims?”

“Darragh was devastated by your grandmother’s decision, but he understood why she did it. The Saergrim’s duty is to keep the Rift. It’s a position of sacrifice. Darragh forbade all Grimguards from engaging with Saergrims that way because he had prioritized his own feelings and desires over what was best for the worlds. He didn’t want the rest of us to make that mistake.”

“Oh.” I wrapped my arms around myself and looked around the room, pretending to take it all in so that Ciarán wouldn’t know I was thinking about Liam.

“What’s your plan?” Ciarán stared at the hoodie clutched against my chest as he asked it. “After all this is over.”

“Get into school,” I said simply. “And everything else will go back to normal.”

“Everything else?” he repeated in a soft whisper. “Like me?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, you’ll probably come back to Skalterra when Gams is refrozen, right? This is your home. But then Gams will probably call you back as Liam, but that’s—”

“Back to normal. There it is.” He nodded. “But Grimguards and Saergrims, Blue, they can’t be together. Not the way you want.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Because you like Liam, don’t you?” He pulled the hoodie from my grasp and ran a finger over the bit of his cloak he’d used to suture the hole. “I can tell because of how you talk about him. How you look at me when I know you’re thinking about him.”

My breath hitched. He knew. Of course he knew. We’d nearly kissed in a bath not that long ago.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“And Liam is a Grimguard, so the rules apply to him too.”

He was rejecting me on behalf of a part of him that didn’t really exist anymore. It was humiliating.

“But he doesn’t know that he’s a Grimguard,” I whispered. “So really, if anything were to happen between me and Liam, and I’m not saying it would, I’d be the only one knowingly breaking the rules.”

“That’s not fair.” Ciarán let the hoodie fall to the floor. “That’s not fair to me or you.”

“How?”

“If I end up on this side of the Rift when this is all over, I’ll still remember you. I’ll know what you’re doing and I’ll be left jealous of a version of me that will always be better than what I really am,” he hissed.

“Jealous?” I scoffed. “What’s there to be jealous of?”

“Are you really that insecure, Wren, that you don’t know?”

I shook my head, unsure of what he meant. He laughed, but the sound was unkind and harsh.

“I broke all ten of a man’s fingers tonight, and I don’t even feel a little bit bad about it. You really think your bagel boy is capable of that?”

“‘Bagel boy’?” I rose to my feet. “He was not a bagel boy!”

“Oh, no?” Ciarán rose too, and he tore my backpack from the bed to shove his hand inside and procure Gams’s blue painted chicken. “Because of this I remember enough to know exactly what Liam was. He was soft, but he was happy and would never break a man’s fingers, and he made bagels for you, and I shouldn’t even know what a bagel is but I do! Because of this damn thing!”

He shook the chicken at me, and my heart beat rose into my throat.

“He wasn’t soft. He got impaled through the chest for me.”

“And how am I supposed to compete with that?” Ciarán’s voice rose in volume and pitch, but I still didn't understand what had him so agitated.

“Why do you have to compete with him at all? He’s you!”