Then I put the socks on her feet before covering her up with the blankets once more. One delicate hand is hanging off the sofa, and that’s when I spot the tattered remains of her cut ribbon still tied to her wrist.
Emotion, hot and heady, suffocates my skull, my sorrow pressurized and congested.
With the barest of touches, I pick up her hand, my fingers skimming over the cut end. It lies unmoving and leaden, a severed, silken corpse.
Use your ribbons.
I can’t.
Oh, she didn’t tell you? She lost that privilege.
A tic in my jaw pulses, rot pushing at my neck like punishing whips.
Gently, I untie the ribbon and slip it into my pocket—the only part of me that stayed dry. Then I tuck her hand back beneath the blanket before I slump down to the floor again. I don’t know how much time has passed when Lu comes back into the room. She smells of firewood and smoke and looks tired, but that doesn’t stop her from sitting down on the floor next to me.
If she asks me why I can’t fix Auren, I might just snap.
Instead, she’s quiet. We both just stare at the flames, listening to them crackle as the storm wails outside.
When she does talk, I almost flinch, so lost in my thoughts that I forgot she was here. “Do you remember when I first joined your army?”
I go still, glancing at her from the corner of my eye, studying the ridge of her contemplative brow. She never talks about this, never talks about herself back then. We’ve always respected her silence on the matter, because we sure as shit have things in our past we don’t like to speak on either. The few times one of us has brought it up, she’s shut it down, so I’m shocked that she’s bringing it up now.
Feeling like I’m treading on ice that can split at any moment, I carefully nod. “I do.”
With wrists balanced on her knees, she shakes her head. “I was a hissing cat who couldn’t go through a single conversation without picking a fight.”
My lips tilt up when I remember that scrappy, vicious girl who used to spew some of the meanest, crudest shit I’d ever heard, and she was only fourteen. “I was surprised you never sprouted claws.”
She snorts and flicks at the wooden piercing in her lip, the firelight making the set-in ruby gemstone glint. “I walked right up to you, looked you dead in the eye, and told you that your captain was a bony-assed whiner who couldn’t dodge a wad of spit, and that you needed soldiers with better judgment.”
The memory makes a chuckle slip out of me. “All while he had you by the collar until you kicked him in the knees.”
“Bastard shouldn’t have wrongfully accused me of trying to steal shit.”
“You’re right. Which is why I gave you a uniform and told you to get your ass to the barracks.”
Her lips tilt up. “You said if I was going to try and replace one of your captains, I needed to at least learn how to swing a sword.”
“And look at you now,” I reply. “Captain of the right flank.”
Lu rubs a hand over her shorn hair, finger lingering over the shape of the blade cut into the side. “Let’s be honest. You saw a half-starved and feral girl on the streets that day and felt sorry for her.” Her tone is nostalgia topped in something bittersweet.
“On the contrary,” I tell her honestly. “I saw a wicked sidekick and a person unafraid of a fight, who could be a great leader if only she was given the chance to learn.”
Lu turns to me, and for the first time in years, it’s almost like I’m looking at that fourteen-year-old girl again. Served a shitty platter of an undeserving family, caught in the prongs of their shortcomings. She was fucked up, tossed out, forced to fend for herself. Her combative attitude wasn’t a character flaw. It was her fortitude. “I hated you that day, you know. For drafting me into your army and making me into one of your fucked up soldiers. I didn’t want to answer to you. Didn’t want to answer to anybody.”
“Oh, I know. You cursed me out on more than one occasion for it. I think you were on latrine duty for a solid nine months.”
“It was twelve,” she counters, almost proudly. “And I secretly hated you more because I was so damn thankful.” Brows lifting at her candor, I watch as she shakes her head and lets out a sigh. “Let’s face it. If you hadn’t scraped me off that street and given me a sword, I would’ve died, Rip.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe that for a second. You were strong, even then.”
Her brown eyes are cast down, staring at the charred wood burning on the grate. “I don’t mean die physically, but mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.” She presses a hand to her chest, thumping it twice. “You can’t contemplate or settle or thrive when you’re living like that. I was dead and running, just trying to keep up with survival. Just making it one day. People don’t get that, you know? If they’ve never lived like that. It’s one day. A whole slew of one-day-at-a-times, just getting through, squeezing by. Always running, never expecting anything else. Never having anyone or anything but that running and fighting and dying through it.”