🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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Of all the things to have survived, it was Valren's smoking pipe.
As I was warming my hands on the crackling fire, its curved lip edged into my periphery. "Want a draft?" Valren asked, flopping to a nearby rock.
I glanced at the others seated around the source of warmth, looking no worse for wear. No doubt they're as sore as I was. Even if I did want to smoke, now's not the time. "It's fine," I shook my head at the second-in-command. "I'm not much of a...you know."
Valren chuckled, summoning a small flame into his fingertip before poking it into the bowl. "Nazran explained to me what you did with the danburki," he puffed out a few drags, for once curling out of his mouth rather than his nostrils. "Takes a lot of guts. And risk. Did you know that you could lose your mind to the netherside if something went wrong?"
"Nope," I rubbed my hands together in pursuit of the heat amidst the biting cold of the forest. Nobody told me Jalinica could get chilly, especially at this time of the year. It was a far cry from the humidity in Crytone, even when they're just a few prinks apart. "I just did what I had to do."
"Which is why you have my respect," he said, making me rescind my gaze at the fire in order to turn to him. "It's not everyday I've witnessed someone we recently kicked out go back to help us. Twice."
I shrugged. "It's only right for me to do that," I said. "Especially after what I did."
Valren huffed, more plumes of sickly-sweet smoke pouring off his mouth. "I should apologize as well, for how I acted that day," he said. "You didn't deserve to be let go that way, but we had been distraught. I was distraught."
I knitted my eyebrows. "I thought you don't really care about that whole thing," I said. "Was that why you never really dipped your toes into that mess?"
"Let's just say Mirani was like a sister I never had," he said. His thumb caressed the heel of his pipe in thought. "In all my years of being in this job, I've seen countless people inside and outside Dragnasand snuff out like little embers in the night. I guess you could say I've grown quite used to seeing tears and feeling the hollow cavern forming in one's heart."
"I've made it a rule to treat the ones I work with as strictly acquaintances," Valren continued, his eyes staring ahead but not really. "But with Mirani...it's easy to say that you just can't help but like her."
A laugh tore off my lips at that. I ended up tucking my hands behind my knees as I folded my legs closer to my chest. "I second that."
"I don't really blame you for taking on this mission," Valren scratched the inside of his palm, knocking one of his claws against his pipe. "If it helps, I don't really blame you for Mirani's death, either. She chose to save you. That's what matters."
There's the warmth I was looking for—building from the base of my gut until it flared to my chest and my limbs. It's a different kind of freedom, like a part of the weight on my shoulders has been lifted.
