*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
Rất tiếc! Hình ảnh này không tuân theo hướng dẫn nội dung. Để tiếp tục đăng tải, vui lòng xóa hoặc tải lên một hình ảnh khác.
Caj is too tired to notice when he first sees her rushing through the chaos, around the splints of wood, the stacks of metal. There's coal or soot or dirt smudged along his cheek and he's got the back of one hand up at his temple, using the small sliver of skin not hidden by the leather gloves to wipe away sweat. There's a droop to his eyes and his brows are scrunching, nose twitching, maybe to hide a yawn or a sigh.
"We've put up the base today," he tells her, his voice even-keeled, quiet, gentle, like before—better, so much better, and he rubs his eyes as she draws closer. "We'll lay the first floor tomorrow, if all goes well. Toulonne is down coordinating more supplies, he should be back—"
His sentence cuts off with an oomph when, without any warning he had perceived, Fae throws her arms around his neck in full view of the soldiers and the staff.
Their audience has the decency, the mercy, to only halt for an errant second before picking up the pace, quicker now. And Caj—despite the arm that automatically closes around her waist, holding her there, against him—splutters.
She can feel him buzzing, puzzling out what to say how to react, and she can't hold in the hitch in her breath now, can't stop the way her arms tighten and tremble, and he freezes.
"Caj," she says quietly into his ear, tightening her grip, pressing close so no one else, no matter what they think, no matter how often they glance over or how closely they pass, can hear. "They're back."
The hand at the small of her back is solid now, steady.
"What happened?" he murmurs, the gentle, the calm gone now. "What's wrong?"
Everything, everything, Allayria is demanding... and Hiran said, Hiran said—
She's so fucking scared, scared worst than before, when the city was on fire, when Caj was gone, when everything was crumpling around her.
Bring him to me.
He repeats his questions but she just holds him there for a minute, because she needs to tell him but she can't. She can't.
Finn is dead. Little, sweet Finn. And Allayria—
She can feel it, that hairline fracture splitting up across her face, the crack that will crumple and let every ugly bit of it tumble out, and she holds tighter to hold the grief in against him.
"Something a-awful has happened," she whispers, trying to get the muscles in her throat to move again, because he must know. "H-Hiran is scared of Allayria, and something is wrong with her and Ruben isn't here and Dost isn't here and I don't know if— and F-Finn, Caj, Hiran whispered to me that Finn is—"
His arms seize around her for a moment and she feels him look up, around.
"Here," he says, and he holds her around her shoulders, steering her into a nearby supply shed. She's trying to control her face, trying to fight everything off—the tears; the nausea; the vise-like, clawing fear—and he shuts the door quickly behind them.
He sets his hands on either side of her face and says: "Tell me."
And, looking into his face, Fae wonders how she ever thought he disliked her, that she ever doubted how much he cared. She had to come down here to tell him, of course, to let him know the Paragon had summoned him, but that ominous order was not what had driven her down here immediately, not what had sent her flying into his arms.
I love you, she thinks, so much it hurts. And I am so scared, so terrified of what is coming, what has arrived at our doorstep. I am so scared for you I can barely stand.
"Hiran says Allayria killed Finn," she says instead, and she reaches up, holding his wrists as his hands twitch around her face, as his eyes widen, his mouth quavers through the shock, the horror, everything. "She's taken control of the Jarles—those creatures, everything. And, C-Caj, Caj, she wants to see you, she's told me to bring you to her—"
He takes it quietly, as he always has with such things, and he asks: "Do you believe it?"
Tell me it isn't true.
She shrugs, half-laughs, half-sobs, voice quavering.
"Hiran is scared, Caj. Hiran."
His nostrils flare, mouth twitches.
"I'm scared, Caj. I'm so scared."
"You don't—" he starts, but she moves her head out of his grasp, lays it on his chest, just above her curled-in arms so she can feel his heartbeat.
"I thought we weren't going to hide anymore, weren't going to be afraid," he says instead, his voice so quiet. "Fae Urilong, Queen of Keesark, has no fears anymore."
Not for anyone but you.
"Not of the Cabal," she says instead, lifting her face, looking up at him. "Not of the Jarles. But of our friends, Caj?"
Her throat constricts.
"If Ruben and Dost aren't just away, if they're— Then it's just us," he says, looking steadily down at her.
The six of us.
"And Feuilles," she corrects quietly.
"And there's the Cabal—Ben and the other one to contend with," he says. "And all of their followers. That is going to keep her preoccupied for a while and we can... we can figure it out. What happened. What to do."
Fae nods, but she has to ask it, and her voice breaks when she does: "But what does she want from you?"
Caj's green, clear eyes study her face, flicker here, there: her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth.
"I guess we should find out."
Rất tiếc! Hình ảnh này không tuân theo hướng dẫn nội dung. Để tiếp tục đăng tải, vui lòng xóa hoặc tải lên một hình ảnh khác.
A/N: I know what you are thinking: Just make out already. We need something happy right now.
Chapter Notes: Fae thought Caj disliked her in Partisan's "Careful" because they're both a bunch of lugheads who can't get their acts together and see what's patently obvious to the rest of us.
