We strolled to the railing, both resting our elbows against the wood. A few hundred feet away, a piece of railing had snapped that changed my life forever, the explosion resounding across the harbor, off of the buildings–
He let out a contented breath, snapping me from my spiral. “So the Royal Guard, then?” I asked.
“The Royal Guard,” he sighed wistfully, nodding his head.
“How’d that one happen?”
He was silent for a moment. “My aunt had been married to a civilian commander in the Eserenian army before a fever took him years and years ago. Before I was even born. He still had friends serving who owed him a few favors.” He let out a soft chuckle. “Getting me in was where their favors ended though. Worked me harder than any other cadet.”
“Sounds shitty.”
“Itwasshitty.” He blew a breath through puffed cheeks and ran his hand through his untamed hair. Without another word he lowered himself to the ground, his feet dangling over the seawall, forehead resting against the handrail. I sat down next to him. My forehead was nowhere near the handrail and my legs were comically shorter than his, but his looming presence was somehow a warm comfort next to me. I was careful not to inch too close to him. “The training panned out, though. His old buddies became my buddies, even if they had twenty years on me. Worked my way up the ranks to the Guard.” A half smile, the moonlight bouncing off the harbor to those eyes, shining like two tidepools in the soft glow of the small hours of the night.
“And tonight is just a night off?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“More or less.”
“Like I said, I didn’t think guards got nights off.”
“Like I said, more or less.” I shot him a sideways glance signaling that I wouldn’t question him further, and the comfortable silence surrounded us once again, punctuated only by the sound of the waves lapping on the seawall.
“Tell me about your brother.” The words came out before I realized I was speaking them. I clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s okay,” he said with a sorrowful smile. “Tobyas.”
“Tobyas, right,” I repeated back to him.
“We used to climb the cliffs,” he started, his gaze remaining over the water. “My aunt would tell us we were going to break our necks, get stuck on some jagged outcrop, drown in the waves below, but she never stopped us from exploring. So we’d each grab a honey apple and set out, walking through the city to the Cliffs of Malarrey, scaling faces that were far too steep, jumping off of rocks that were far too high. We’d come home with skinned knees and bloody noses, the occasional jammed finger.” He flexed his hands, bracing them on the handrail. “We were untouchable out there, or so it felt like. We’d spend hours looking for hidden caves, finding Eserenian crystals, discovering new footholds that would get us to new parts of the cliffs. I think the day we found the cave with the lights was one of the best days of my life. We couldn’t believe it.
“And then one day it happened.” The light in his eyes dimmed as his voice lowered. “He just…lost his footing. Nothing exciting, nothing any more daring than usual, just one bad step.” The familiar pain of loss lanced through me, my stomach turning. “I was a bit ahead of him, on a plateau above. Heard a rock slip and a scream, and the rocks below just…” He took a deep breath. “By the time I got to the edge of the cliff, his body had already gone under. But there was…there was blood. In the water.” He paused, silent. “I still hear it though, his scream. Still see the red in the water.”
I was silent next to him, sorting through my emotions like tangled yarn in a basket, grief knotted with longing knotted with empathy. “I do too,” I breathed. “I see it everyday, hear it everyday. It doesn’t leave me.Shedoesn’t leave me.”
His gaze turned to me, pinning me in place. His hands wrung together and I wanted so badly to reach out and hold them. “It’s why I still go to the cliffs,” he said. “You’d think it would hurt, being there, and it does sometimes. Buthe’sthere.” I nodded in understanding, so many unspoken words on my tongue that I thought I might choke. “And when I watched what happened at Cindregala…when I realized what was happening, what I was witnessing, whatyouwere witnessing…” He shuttered. “I’ve thought about you every day since, Petra. How I could have stopped it.”
The words took me by such surprise that I had to repeat them in my mind. The guilt, the rage I felt at myself for standing there as it had happened, for freezing in place like a fucking idiot, it all bubbled up inside of me. Elin’s words. It should have been me. I took a breath to steady myself, the air cooling my insides slightly. I looked up at him, my brows angled upward. “I think about it too,” I managed to spit through teeth so tightly gritted that it was a wonder none of them cracked. “You would have liked her.”
“If she was anything like you, I’m sure I would have.”
“Usually men went for Larka, not for me. Everywhere we went, people stared at her.”
“I was staring at you.”
I was again grateful that it was too dark for him to see me blush. I didn’t know how to answer. Shaking his dizzying words from my head, I turned to face him again. “Everyone loved her. She should still be here. Tobyas should still be here.”
He rubbed his palms on his thighs, the muscles sculpted by intense training evident even through his trousers, even in the moonlight. I had to tear my gaze away, biting my lip. “And such is life, Petra,” murmured, head dropped.
“Such is life, Calomyr.” A small smile graced his lips, his golden brown cheeks silvery in the moonlight.
I heard the cathedral bells toll signaling midnight had come. I turned my head to the noise, the spires of the ornate building at the base of the castle just visible over the city skyline. He laid back in the grass, and I slowly joined him. And there we lay, admiring the palette the Saints had created while painting the sky, the colors of a ciakoo melting together as if it were just for us.