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“Del,” Arven whispered softly. “Wake up, Del.”
That was the first time he’d ever called me by that. Arven always used my full name like there was a massive distance between us that he didn’t dare cross. All of a sudden, the sound of the nickname brought me rushing back to wakefulness.
I gasped and blinked at the ceiling. A warm sensation covered my cheek. I reached up to touch it and found Arven’s gentle hand. My heart flipped, but not in fear. I exhaled and let myself fall apart on the mattress.
Tears ran down my cheeks and gathered in Arven’s palm, but I didn’t dare give in to the sobs. Not in front of Arven. So, I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, careful not to brush against him again.
“What are you doing up here?” I asked without taking my attention off the ceiling.
This was my private loft. I hadn’t invited him to join me in bed.
“I heard you crying.” The answer was simple.
And it warmed my heart in an unexpected way. The man had heard me in the throes of my nightmares and come to wake me. Again, this was nothing like the monster I’d expected. I almost wanted to curl into his chest and let him soothe away that lingering terrors trying to shake me from within.
I wouldn’t, though. There was no way I would allow myself to show such weakness in front of him.
“I saw the remnants of your home.” There was a note of sorrow in his voice as it trailed off. “I see why you dream of what happened. I know the feeling, unable to see anything but a battlefield when I close my eyes. Sleep has been hard to come by in recent years. While my court is safe, I suffer.”
This time, I reached out to him instinctively. I touched him before my mind could even register what I’d done.
“There’s no shame in trauma,” he said, his eyes downcast like he was trapped in a memory too. “We did not ask for it. The burden is shakable in time…at least, that’s what I’ve been told. I have not yet been able to shake free of mine.
“My brother thinks that a woman would help me with that.” Arven laughed, obviously in disbelief. “I can’t imagine any woman living with me and what I’ve become.”
“I forgot you had a brother,” I said in the dark.
He nodded, his red eyes illuminating the small space between us. “Calen is softer than me. He prides himself on tactical approaches while I am the one shedding blood for our court.”
I shook my head. “Stop going back there.”
I said this for the both of us. Every thought brought us back to the places that hurt us the most. If we could stop letting our minds bring us back time and time again, then the burden wouldn’t weigh as much.
“Forgetting feels wrong,” I acknowledged. “But we can’t live in the wounds. We have to stop picking them open and let them heal. If we don’t, then it’s just going to keep festering and getting worse.”
He grunted. “Deep words for someone doing the same thing.”
I couldn’t help but give a half smile because he was right.
Arven fell back beside me on the mattress. I should have kicked him off, but the darkness in the middle of the night felt like a safe time. We weren’t mortal enemies right now. We were just a pair of broken elves trying to make amends with our war-torn history.
I raised a hand and let my arcana curl up towards the ceiling where an array of stars slowly started to glow. After the lights ignited, they began to move around the ceiling in a slow dance mimicking the movement of the stars across the many realms.
“It’s one of the few things I remember,” I admitted.
So much of my childhood had been stained by the siege. My memories clung to the blood and the screams, but I’d known nineteen good years before that. There’d been night gardens, poison gardens, vegetable gardens. There’d been dad’s observatory and all the names of the stars that he’d taught me. I struggled to recall most of them, but I knew the way they moved.
“I’m…I’m happy with the person I’ve become,” I said. “Well, mostly. There are a few things I wish I hadn’t done. Other than that, I like how strong I am. I like that I know how to mix poisons for my own work. I like that I feel alive when fighting…but I do miss home and everything it was.”
“I wish I could say that I related.” Arven fell silent for a heartbeat. “I know what it means to fear for my home, but not to lose it. Not yet, at least. Every day feels like more of a battle. The borders are always being tested. Once they fall, I’m not sure if I can hold them on my own. The threat of my name won’t always be enough to keep the other courts from biting at our ankles.”
I sighed deeply. “Why are we like this? When will we learn to leave each other alone?”
The urge to curl in on myself almost won. Instead, I sidled a little closer to Arven and let his warmth ease the growing tension in my body. He, in turn, wrapped an arm around my shoulders. We lingered there, not quite tangled in each other, yet not quite as far apart as we’d once been.
“It feels like a hopeless dream to think about uniting the courts under one banner.” Arven ran his thumb along the exposed skin of my shoulder from where my shirt had slipped low. “I wanted it, once upon a time. It was why I studied the art of war. It was why I marched across the battlefield with my armies. That way everyone would know my face, they would know that I could be the king who would one day keep them all safe.”
I snorted. “Then you becamethis.”
