Ceann and Ges stand together, somewhere on the far wall of Ismayah, before the mountains, arm's length apart. They've been there since night, and haven't said anything to each other. Ges wanted to look at Ceann in the Sliver's light and maybe she wanted to look at him too. But they didn't, not for a moment, which is how it is, Ges thinks. They watched the black shadows beyond the mountains as they sank into darkness and emerged again, the silhouettes shaking, like the mountains themselves are moving.
Morning clouds are breaking and the Bright Circle is casting tentative rays past the city, burning the mountain peaks in glowing pink.
"Troud finally spoke," Ceann says. Her voice is as cool as the morning air. "She's leaving. Tor hates you."
"Why did she tell us her name if she was going to leave?" Ges says. His voice is light but he can't bear to look at her.
"Because her parents died, and we said we'd save her, and then she was taken and tortured," Ceann says. Then she looks at him. She's flashed now that he can't look back. "Tor called you a piece of work."
"Mhm," he says. He can't feel the stone they're standing on, not really.
"You are a piece of it," she says. Now her tone is laced with something even colder. "You drift around, reach in and move people, because of your dumb flow. Then it hurts them, hurts them deep and hard and in your messed up brain you think it's all fate." She pauses, studies her fingers in the morning light. "Do you even feel guilty?"
Very. "Does it matter?" he says. He feels her gaze cut through him, like Wolf knives.
"You beg me," she says. "You always beg me for what I can't give you. Do you know what I hold back? You're so stupid. I don't tell you endings. I don't tell you endings because I know they would kill you. I don't tell you how it ends and I stay with you anyway and you keep pushing, Ges. You always keep pushing."
She rolls her eyes, a crescent of movement. "Here it is. I saw us watching the next star number. I saw us breathe the black and white. We dissolved into the tunnel smoke as we watched, same as always. You want to hold my hand, as always. We both watch alone, though, and that's always too. Doesn't it feel good, that I saw us dissolving?
"Monsters have horns and wings and teeth but short memories. WIthout the Wolf's promises they'll stay past the mountains and eat each other. So Ismayah stays safe. How do you feel about that?"
He feels ways about it.
"Not good enough, huh?" Her voice mocking now as the Apex Wolf's laughter. "Not good enough because it's the same as always and we're still not close?"
He's silent, still. Maybe if he doesn't move all this will go away.
"We'll never skin," she says. "Ever. You just have to deal. You don't deserve anything more from me. I can't do anything for you, Ges. I've done enough."
Then it flows to his mouth and he just has to say it.
"Ceeeann," he says. "Stick around. Let's co-exist."
