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This time when he reaches for me, I don’t move. His calloused thumb follows the tear’s trail, erasing its passage. Then he cups my face. “I know. I wasn’t ...” He lets a hard breath out through his nose. Glances away, then back. “I wasn’t entirely lucid. I ... I needed to process. I was asleep for a while. Strange dreams ...” His brow wrinkles.
“They w-weren’t dreams.”
But he shakes his head. “I knew what you were doing, Lark.”
Pulling from his touch, I whisper, “It doesn’t make a difference.”
“Doesn’t it?” He studies me before reaching into his belt for a few rolled-up parchments tied with twine. He hands them to me.
I hesitate. “What is this?”
“This came to mind this morning, before I was released. Read it.”
I try again to read him, to understand, but I see only my own fears looking back at me, as though I’ve gone blind to everything else. Rolling my lips together, I take the papers in trembling fingers, slide off the tie, and unfold them, terrified.
Three different styles of handwriting cover the page, two blocky and one like angry scratches. The spelling of some words and the size of the letters tell me it’s trollis penmanship. At the top of the paper, someone scrawled,Azmar 937. Dates line the left margin.
These first papers are fifteen years old.
Graduated rudimentary school with good marks, but hesitant in the field. Engages like a Pleb,the first line reads. The next says,Holding back in practice. Ran extra drills until 1900. Little effect. Wrog has the idea to put him with the sixth-years. Beat some sense into him.
I swallow. “These are your training records?”
“Part of them.” Azmar reaches forward and takes the first page. A notation marks the center of the next one. “Read.”
Thrust A937 into combat imitation with the sixth-years. Ordered several to gang up on him. A shock—he fought like a Supra. Turned into a right spreener and gave two of the boys concussions. Untapped talent here. Good breeding.
I look up to Azmar. “I don’t understand—”
He takes the papers from my hands. “I was terrified, Lark. I thought my trainers were fed up with me and wanted me dead.”
I pale. “That’s terrible.”
“Lark.”He raises the paper before my nose. “I wasterrified.”
A few seconds pass before realization dawns.
Fight or flee.
The walls of my apartment shatter, and I’m kneeling in the red dirt of the basin again, Azmar’s blood pooling around me.F-Fight or flee. That’s how all creatures respond to fear. Azmar, I need you to flee.
Azmar’s gut response to fear is ... to fight. That was why he lunged for me in the infirmary. He wanted tofightme.
“I knew what you were doing.” He rests the papers on my empty side table. Takes my face in both hands. “You saved my life.”
Tears pour freely. “Y-You saved mine.”
He crushes me to him. I grab fistfuls of his shirt and sob into the linen, my own fibers breaking apart and restitching themselves. I am remade as hope burns away the last tendrils of fear.
A wet chuckle creeps up Azmar’s throat. “I was terrified of you, Lark,” he murmurs. “But I was more scared of losing you. I thought I already had.”
I press into him, keeping my hands at his stomach. I don’t want to worsen his injury. He probably shouldn’t even be up. I think of the first time we embraced like this, in the waterworks, after Grodd dangled me out that window. How far we’ve come in so little time.
When I’m calm enough to speak, I confess, “I-I was going to leave.”
“No.” He drops to one knee, then the other, and looks me in the eyes. “Stay, Lark.”
“The council knows. Others will know. Your life will be ruined. I n-never meant to ruin—”
