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She frowns at me like I’ve finally lost what little grasp on reality I had, but then she touches the door again, visibility shivering as her fingers brush the cold surface. For a moment I think no, I’ve missed it, there can’t be that many similarities between the Kingdom of the Fall and the Towers of the Silver City.
And then she gasps.
“There’s something here,” she whispers.
I nod as Rowan’s face rises in my memory, his gleeful, chaotic grin. The way he explained that you need two people to break into the inner chambers, that both guards have to open their locks at the same time.
I shake my head as if dismissing the memory. Had I truly believed that was the last time I’d let my brother talk me into doing something crazy? And now here I am, deep inside some sort of magical fortress filled with humans and the voids only know what else, standing before a door that probably contains something unimaginably terrible, in order to save my brother’s reckless hide one more time.
I huff out a breath as my fingers catch on the only two matching keys on the ring. When I finally see Rowan again, I’m going to curse him into the void.
The matching keys slide off the ring without a sound, and I hand one to Alindra. Her eyes are black pools in the dim glow of the torchlight, and her lips are pressed together into a tight little line. My chest feels like it’s shrinking, like I can’t possibly find enough air in here to fill my lungs. There were so many things I meant to say to her, so many things I hoped we’d experience together. And now we’re here, at this door, and we’ve somehow run out of time.
I take a deep breath and close my fingers around hers, pressing the little key into her palm. “I think we have to do this together,” I say.
Alindra nods. She looks like a woman on the battlefield, someone who’s been called to the front. I lean forward and press my lips to her forehead.
“Alindra,” I whisper. “When all this is done. When I find Rowan, I mean, and bring him home. After that, I—I want to come back. Back here, to the Silver City. To find you.”
Her breath catches on her lips, a rough hiss in the air between us.
“If you’d want that,” I finish.
My voice trembles, as if the strange magic in the air has clawed the inside of my throat.
“I’d want that,” Alindra whispers.
She sounds like she’s been running, and my chest aches with the dull throb of all the words I want to say. I want to promise her I’ll come back as quickly as possible, that she’ll hardly even know I’m gone.
Voids, I want to promise even more than that. A picture breaks through the fog in my mind, sudden and clear as crystal, almost violently painful in its impossibility. Alindra in the little room in the human inn, the Dalmation, sitting next to the window as I walk the floor, a baby in my arms. In my mind, Alindra’s child is wrapped in the same swaddling cloth I used for Rowan, and suddenly I’m feeling all of it again, the soft weight of an infant against my chest, little gurgling noises and the warm scent of milk.
I want that again, all of it, even the hard, painful parts, the diapers and sleepless nights and teething fevers. I’d wanted so desperately to be a father. Caring for Rowan as he grew in the wilderness of the Lands Below, that unshakable sense of purpose, the knowledge that I was absolutely, utterly needed; I’ve never been able to recapture that feeling, not in all the long years after Rowan outgrew his childhood and left it far behind, discarded like a toy that sank slowly beneath the weight of years and years of snow.
It’s not just Alindra I want, I realize with a shock. It’s an entire life that I want, Alindra and her child and all the years to come. If she’d want that.
I swallow hard and force myself to step away from the warmth of her body. There’s a vast, screaming chasm between where we are now and my fantasy of holding Alindra’s child in my arms in a place that’s warm, safe, and beautiful, a void so deep and wide it might be impossible to cross.
Best to not even think of such things, really. But there is still something I can do, before I have to leave this woman alone in the Worlds Above. I dig under my cloak and fumble with the strap that’s crossed over my chest. Little by little, Skyfire’s sheath comes loose. I pull it off my back and let my fingers close over the familiar weight.
She’s a big sword, my beautiful Skyfire. She’s almost too big for me now, as Rowan takes great pleasure in reminding me, and she was far too big when I stole her from my father as my mother and I prepared to flee, to blend in with the throngs of refugees entering the Lands Below, the one place my father would never follow us.
I whispered to her wrought-silver hilt as I pulled her off the wall that night, promising that I’d be a better master than my father. That I’d be a better man than my father. Since then, I’ve cared for her with the same kind of devotion I showed Rowan after our mother died, polishing and sharpening her blade even when I was too small to wield her.
My eyes sting. I clench my jaw as I lean forward.
“What are you—” Alindra whispers.
I stop her words with a soft kiss as my arm traces a path along her waist, pulling the sheath’s belt with it. I clench the belt loosely around her hips, then step back. Skyfire’s too long, of course, and that sheath could make running awkward. Some part of me argues that I should strap it to Alindra’s back instead.
But a greater part of me feels time slipping between our fingers like sand, and our luck has already been stretched as thin as spider silk.
“Her name is Skyfire,” I say, patting my sword’s hilt one last time. “I’ll be back for her. For both of you.”
Alindra blinks once, then again, and then turns away. I raise my brass key to the tiny, almost invisible notch in the door before us, then turn back to Alindra.
“Ready?” I ask.
She wipes a hand across her eyes, then nods. Together, we slide our keys into the lock. There’s a low click, then a hissing sound, like sand over stone, and then the entire door shudders.
