Darrin Ordin
I walked away from Toren, feeling a strange sense of loss welling up from his words.
"What's stopping you from getting with Dima again?"
I didn't know where we went wrong, honestly. Half a decade ago, Dima and I had been on track to settle down truly. We'd met in the Relictombs ten years ago in a convergence zone. Back then, the Unblooded Party hadn't even been a name worth the dirt on a highblood's boots. But she'd fit in naturally, her sense of justice and independence like the missing cog in a machine.
Once things had gotten further on in our relationship, I'd even considered retiring from ascending, even though the thought of leaving behind the thrill tugged on something in my gut. And if we were to have a family, I'd need to give up my more dangerous avenues, too.
And then we had the talk. I told her what I was thinking. Where I'd seen our relationship heading.
And Dima went dark. She cut off all contact for a year straight, avoiding me and the rest of our party. I'd gone over that conversation for years, trying to find what I'd said wrong. Had I been too forward? Had I not shown enough dedication?
Every time my eyes landed on Dima, I felt that open wound smolder just a bit more. But despite all the time that had passed, I knew the woman. If I tried to push the issue; tried to broach the open gap between us, she'd hunker down.
I found that grimly amusing. That was something I found attractive about her: her bull-headed stubbornness. If a rock thought to stand in her path, her glare would weather it down to dust, and she'd continue on as if nothing had interrupted her in the first place.
But that made talking to her difficult.
I moved toward Hraedel. We were the two figureheads of this operation, and both of us knew it. That was the nature of leadership: standing tall so others could stand tall in turn. But the shield and I didn't always see eye-to-eye.
Scratch that; we rarely agreed. The man was deep in the pockets of a number of Named Bloods I'd had legal spats with. He didn't like me. I didn't like him.
But he was a leader. He recognized the necessity of working with me, regardless of our disagreements. There was a begrudging respect between us that came from shared tolerance of the other.
"How long do you think it'll take to prepare your team?" I asked Hraedel, trying to distract my mind from the thoughts of Dima.
Hraedel was spooning himself a heaping of rice onto a paper plate. Even weeks later, this zone continued to baffle me. The intricate colors on simple things like paper plates felt like a waste. Colored ink was expensive. To see it constantly was weird.
"I'll give them a more thorough rundown of their jobs," the leader of the Aensgar Exiles affirmed. "Jameson already knows how to make bridges. Just make sure your shield can match him. Else we aren't avoiding any undead at all."
It had taken some painful negotiations to get the Exiles and Twinfrosts on board with working together. Namely, my team and I had to sacrifice part of our potential accolade cut–and any claim to a relic within this zone–to convince them all to work with us. I'd promised the rest of my team that I'd compensate them from my own personal reserves once we made it out, yet it still left a lump in my gut.
I smirked. "Jared can outmatch anything Jameson can do, friend," I said. "You should cross your fingers about yourself. How many boats have you made?"
Hraedel, unfortunately, didn't take my bait. A shame. "I know my craft," he said. He gave his food a slight taste. "I refrained from asking during the meeting," he said slowly, "But how did you come across this food?"
I felt my smirk sink slightly. There wasn't much of a point hiding that information now that we were close to an escape attempt. "Toren spotted a strange building upon entering this zone," I said. "He thought it might have been a store. We didn't have much left to lose, so I took a gamble. It paid off."
Hraedel looked at Toren Daen, who was eating his food with morose slowness. The young mage had that contemplative look he wore whenever he brooded. I wondered if he realized how much he displayed his thoughts on his face.
"He's a strange one," Hraedel said. "Even for an ascender. That music he played..." the man shook his head.
I sympathized silently. I'd been affected by emotion rioting spells before in the courtroom, specifically in my legal battles against Highblood Patamoor. The ability to enflame emotions was banned from the court floor, but between a highblood and an unblooded? The rules became guidelines. Suggestions.
What Toren had done wasn't like that. There was an element of alien influence I could feel when emotion-altering spells touched my mind. Yet what flowed into me when Toren played his violin... my emotions were my own. I felt compelled to believe him when he said it was hyper-sympathy.
"He looks young," Hraedel said absently. "How long has he been an ascender?" he asked.
I opened my mouth to reply, then paused. I hadn't actually considered Toren's supposed inexperience. He worked so fluidly and acted so maturely that I often forgot his age.
It felt unbelievable that the young man had only been an ascender for a month or so. He acted as if he had years of experience under his belt. Sure, there were times when his inexperience showed, but those times were few and far between.
And he had no academy training, either. Most ascenders would look down on another mage for not going through the conventional channels. But if he was as skilled as he was without academy training...
"He's always been a solo ascender," I said in response. I couldn't afford any sort of doubts in Toren, especially now that we were about to rely on him so thoroughly for our escape. "I went on an ascent with him before this. He saved my life more than one time."
Hraedel took a liberal swig of booze from his wineskin. "Damn. Solo at that age. He might've saved our lives holding that bridge," he said. "Just have to trust him again, I suppose."
I watched as Alandra spilled something on Jared's light chainmail armor. She rolled her eyes, saying something to him. The shield said something back, gesturing wildly at his soaked armor. Alandra shook her head, then grabbed his tunic and began to haul him off to the bathroom nearby.
I began to laugh lightly, seeing through her ploy. Sure, there were cleaning supplies in the bathroom she could use to clean off his armor. But I knew they would be in that bathroom for quite a while.
My laughter died off as my eyes met with Dima's. There was a coldness there that drained that bit of amusement from me like water through a drain.
"What's stopping you from getting with Dima again?" Toren's scathing voice bounced around in my skull.
Alandra had finally worked up the courage to make a move on Jared. I'd watched her steal glances at the shield for years, subtly hinting at her feelings. And now, in the uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring, she was finally taking that step she needed.
And what leader could I be if I didn't set an example for those who followed me?
I snatched Hraedel's wineskin from his hand as he began to tilt it back, earning an affronted shout. I ignored it, tilting it back. Warm, burning brandy washed down my throat. The alcohol churned in my stomach.
I shoved the wineskin back into Hraedel's hands, ignoring his glare. Squaring my shoulders, I sauntered over to where Dima oversaw the food preparations with Jana.
She watched me approach imperiously. I smiled, forcing my lips wide.
"Hey," I said. "Need any help with food prep around here?"
Jana perked up. "Yes, actually we could–"
"We have everything we need," Dima's voice cut across Jana's words like the crack of a whip. "Though the other stations could probably use help."
I turned toward Jana. "Dima has a point, it seems," I said. "Could you give Jameson some help with the stir fry?" I said hopefully.
She looked ready to protest, then thought better of it. Jana looked between us, sensing the tension. The poor shield looked mightily uncomfortable, Dima's eyes boring holes into my face. "I'll go do that," she said.
"Good luck," I said with a wave, watching her awkwardly shuffle away.
"Was that necessary?" Dima asked. I turned back to the woman, suppressing the surge of longing in my chest. Her eyes were so piercing. So many people thought her judgemental. They were wrong. She saw the truth of things. That was why she fought so hard for those less privileged than she. She did not take half-hearted excuses.
I felt my grin slip. I couldn't keep up false pretenses with this woman. I'd never been able to. "To get a chance to speak with you alone, it was," I said honestly.
Dima looked down at the bowl she was stirring. I didn't recognize what she was making. "You should go back to planning with the others," she said. "There's nothing to speak about here."
"I'm afraid there's nobody else I can talk to. Toren's busy sulking on the couch," I said. "Lord Denoir doesn't like talking to anybody but the aforementioned Daen. The twins? I think I'd rather take a bath in carallian blood than speak with them for too long."
A slight smile flitted across Dima's face, though her bob cut covered her eyes. Progress. Just gotta keep this up.
"Hraedel is probably upset I took a swig from his brandy, so that's a no-go," I continued. "And Alandra and Jared..."
Dima took a covert glance toward where our sentry and shield had once been lounging. When she saw they were gone, she gave me an uncertain look.
"Alandra dragged Jared off to the bathroom," I said, a knowing smile splitting my face. "I think it would be very rude to insert myself into that kerfuffle."
Dima turned away again. "So that's what this is about?" she asked. "You see the others hooking up and want to fall back into old habits?"
I crossed my arms. "No, Dima," I said quietly. "I just want to know what went wrong between us. Why we're like... this now."
"Nothing went wrong," Dima snapped. "You can just keep going on your ascents, free of care. I realized I didn't have a part in that."
"Something went wrong," I retorted. "That night, I thought..." I swallowed. "What did I do? How did I drive you away?"
Dima looked out the window, through one of the few open slits that looked out over the streets far below. "Are we really going to do this?" she asked. "Right before this final push?"
"There's no other time to have this kind of talk," I replied. I took a step forward. Dima shifted back, keeping distance between us. I felt a little bit of my heart splinter. "We don't know how our escape is going to go tomorrow. We might never get the chance to have this conversation. To get closure."
"'We?'" Dima replied quietly. "There isn't a 'we' right now, Darrin. It ended all those years ago."
"Then why does this conversation hurt you, too?" I asked. "If you don't care, why do I see the same pain in your eyes?"
Dima met my eyes. Yes, I saw a kindred ache there. The same longing, buried deep for years. But I knew her well enough to see it there.
"You can never let the past lie, can you, Darry?" she asked.
"That's what you loved about me, wasn't it?" I pushed, leaning closer. This time, she didn't edge away. "That I didn't let things go. I unearthed things that shouldn't have been buried."
Dima shifted on her feet. Silence stretched between us for a time, the hustle and bustle of mages around us simmering in the background. For now, it was just me and her.
"Do you remember the first time we worked together in the High Hall?" she asked instead. "When one of our ascending partners was falsely accused of stealing accolades?"
I huffed. "How could I forget? It's what started everything I did after. If a highblood could bully a mage into giving up his accolades, then there was no justice in the world."
Dima lifted a fork from the food, giving it a testing bite. From how she squinted and the subtle changes on her face, I knew she wasn't yet satisfied with her craft.
"That's when things changed for the first time, wasn't it?" she said, her eyes going distant. "We'd let ourselves be blind to everything for so long. But after that court case, it was too obvious."
I swallowed. The mage we'd tried to help, an unblooded man named Qandra, had nearly his entire wealth of accolades stolen from him under the weight of the High Hall's "justice." I was young and inexperienced in the games of highborns. We failed to help the poor man. I did my best not to think of what became of him after.
"Though we got better after our initial failures," I said, trying to buoy the mood. "Bandun, Versha, Kail, Sara... They managed to put up a fight against the powers that tried to put them down. And it wasn't just us who did it. People learned to fight for themselves. That was the most important step."
Dima paused in her preparations, looking up at me. What I saw on her face made me recoil slightly. The pain there was a knife to my chest.
"I loved this about you," she whispered. "Your drive to help people. Unwilling to bend against injustice. It's what makes you you."
"That's me," I said stupidly, wanting to add something but feeling wrongfooted. Why was it easier to get into verbal spars with highbloods than actually talk to this woman?
Dima looked down at her food. I could have sworn I saw a teardrop escape her eye and fall into the prep dishes.
"If we make it out of this alive," she said at last, "I'll tell you why I left. You're right. You deserve to know. More than you can fathom. But not right now. I can't."
I swallowed, feeling a surge in my heart. That was good. Better than I'd hoped for. If we could talk, maybe we could mend what was broken. I didn't know if we'd ever reach that same level of closeness as before, but maybe...
"Okay," I said in a hushed tone. "I'll be there for you. You know that, right?"
"Sometimes," she said quietly, "I wish you wouldn't be."