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Something cracks inside my chest. It’s so sharp I’d swear she can hear it.
“So,” I say, waving my arm at the tent wall. “Today’s the day, huh?”
The silence that follows my inane observation is actually painful. Voices swell outside the tent, and I remember what Rowan said about speeches. We wouldn’t want to miss those, right?
“We should probably get going—” I begin.
“Phae.” Alindra’s voice is almost a whisper, but it stops me in mid-lurch as I stagger for the door. She turns to look down at her own feet. “I talked with Rowan for a long time last night.”
Bastard. So that’s where he was. Alindra takes a long breath, like she’s steadying herself.
“Rowan told me that, if I didn’t say something, I’d regret it,” she says. “So—”
Her voice fades, and her teeth sink into her lower lip once again. She glances toward the tent’s wall, as if maybe she’s thinking about ducking under the sheet of canvas to escape this conversation. Hells, I wouldn’t blame her. Then our eyes meet, and the world freezes. The voices outside the tent fall silent, the air evaporates, and all that I can feel is the desperate pounding of my heart.
Voids damn it, it hurts to love someone. It’s like the throb of my missing arm, the ache of something I’m going to miss for the rest of my life. Alindra turns away. Her hands are clenched so tightly around her waist that they’re trembling.
“I— I like you,” Alindra says, in a voice that sounds like she’s admitting she stole the crown jewels from King Galan’s vault. “I haven’t had many friends. I mean, I didn’t exactly get the chance, locked away in the castle.”
Alindra makes a sound that’s almost a laugh, then tosses her hair over her shoulder with vehemence. She pulls in another breath, and now her entire body is trembling. The urge to touch her is so strong it makes me feel sick.
“So, I guess I’m not very good at this. At being a friend or, you know, whatever,” she continues, her words tumbling out in a rush. “But, what I mean is, I like being with you. I mean, I want to be with you. To be your friend. And, if you want to stay. Here, I mean. I would— I would like that.”
She huffs, then shakes her head. Her shoulders curl forward like she’s exhausted. I blink, trying to remember to breathe. Alindra turns away and stares very intently at the shadows the rising sun casts across the canvas wall of the tent I’m sharing with Rowan.
Stay? Screaming voids, look at us. A lifetime ago, I crashed through a portal, landed in her bedroom, and begged her to leave the Worlds Above with me. Now she’s standing in my bedroom, asking me to stay.
Something twists deep inside my chest, and memories of the Silver City howl through my mind. Alindra holding the portal open, tears streaming down her face as a man in the doorway lowered his crossbow at her chest.
And I said I couldn’t leave her. The memory ripples through my body like frost or shock. I couldn’t leave her in the middle of a tower that was falling apart, filled with people who wanted to kill her, or worse. I couldn’t leave because she was in danger, and because I’m in love with her, and because I couldn’t stand to see her hurt.
But now? Voids, having me with her is going to hurt her. Just look at how well my plan to rescue Rowan worked out. Alindra’s a brilliant, beautiful woman with a whole life ahead of her in the Worlds Above. The last thing she needs is me, with all the darkness of the Lands Below trailing in my wake.
“I—” I stammer. “I can’t.”
Alindra inhales, quick and sharp, like she’s just been hit. When she turns back to me, it’s impossible to miss the shine of tears in her eyes. She shrugs; some part of me thinks she must have picked that particular gesture up from Rowan.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I understand.”
She spins away again and presses the flat of her palms to her eyes. She’s breathing very quickly in a way that makes my whole body pull tight with something close to panic. Hells, I’ve seen this a hundred times. I’ve had to tell dozens of women that their amorous feelings weren’t reciprocated, or that they couldn’t move in with me and Rowan, or that no, I wasn’t going to join them on their little trekker adventures because I had my own life to live.
But it never felt like this. It never hurt to turn them away.
Alindra drops her hands and takes a long, slow breath. When she meets my eyes, there’s a sort of calm in her expression that makes me feel like we’re already a world apart.
“I would have left the Kingdom of the Summer without you,” she says. Her voice is gentle, although the end of her sentence trembles. “That’s why I had all the gold. I was going to run away that day, when the magicians closed the anomaly.”
I nod. I’d figured that was the case. She never would have been so eager to go with me if she wasn’t already planning to leave. Or desperate to leave.
“I would have done it alone,” she continues. Her eyes drop to the floor before coming back to me. “But I’m glad I didn’t have to. I’m glad you were there.”
Tears shine in her eyes, and she gives me a smile that splits whatever is left of my heart wide open. “I don’t want to be mad at you,” she says. “Even if—”
Her voice cracks, and she swallows. When she turns back to me, there’s a sort of grim determination in her eyes that I associate with the madmen who came to the World’s End to explore the void. Some of whom Rowan was even able to rescue, days or weeks later.
“I’m glad I knew you, Phaedron Undervale,” she finally says.
She steps back, then holds her hand out to me like we’re reaching the end of some business arrangement. Except that her hand is trembling, and tears are leaking out of her eyes.
