I take in a shuddering breath and hold it until my lungs hurt. Maybe, down there in the canyon, I tore my own heart out. Maybe I used so much fear on the monsters that I emptied the well. Maybe I can have a new start. One I won’t ruin.
It’s a nice lie. I’ll hold on to it for a little while. I need every balm I can get.
The door creaks. I didn’t bother locking it, since I only needed to retrieve my bag. When I turn, a shock like dry thunder runs from my heels to my skull, burning hot and cold beneath my skin.
Azmar.
He stands in the doorway, filling it, his corded hair pulled back. He’s dressed in his usual simple attire. His shoulders hunch slightly, and a slip of bandaging peeks out from his collar.
I try to say his name, but my voice has turned to dust. My sore throat twists.
But the fear . . . There’s no fear in his eyes.
“Lark,” he whispers. I think I hear relief in his tone. But instead of warm hope blooming, a sapping dread pulls me down. I search his face, his stature, trying to read him. I can’t.
My hands are shaking.
He steps in, closes the door behind him, and wipes a hand down his face. “I was so worried they’d hurt you. That you wouldn’t come back.”
Heat pricks my face. My eyes water.
Azmar sobers. Takes another step, then another. Reaches for me.
I step back, and a delicate fiber of fledging strength snaps like an old lute string. “I-I don’t understand.” I sound like a frog and shake my head like a madwoman. “I-I saw you in the infirmary. Azmar, you were so frightened—”
A tear burns down my face.
This time when he reaches for me, I don’t move. His calloused thumb follows the tear’s trail, erasing its passage. Then he cups my face. “I know. I wasn’t . . .” He lets a hard breath out through his nose. Glances away, then back. “I wasn’t entirely lucid. I . . . I needed to process. I was asleep for a while. Strange dreams . . .” His brow wrinkles.
“They w-weren’t dreams.”
But he shakes his head. “I knew what you were doing, Lark.”
Pulling from his touch, I whisper, “It doesn’t make a difference.”
“Doesn’t it?” He studies me before reaching into his belt for a few rolled-up parchments tied with twine. He hands them to me.
I hesitate. “What is this?”
“This came to mind this morning, before I was released. Read it.”
I try again to read him, to understand, but I see only my own fears looking back at me, as though I’ve gone blind to everything else. Rolling my lips together, I take the papers in trembling fingers, slide off the tie, and unfold them, terrified.
Three different styles of handwriting cover the page, two blocky and one like angry scratches. The spelling of some words and the size of the letters tell me it’s trollis penmanship. At the top of the paper, someone scrawled, Azmar 937. Dates line the left margin.
These first papers are fifteen years old.
Graduated rudimentary school with good marks, but hesitant in the field. Engages like a Pleb, the first line reads. The next says, Holding back in practice. Ran extra drills until 1900. Little effect. Wrog has the idea to put him with the sixth-years. Beat some sense into him.
I swallow. “These are your training records?”
“Part of them.” Azmar reaches forward and takes the first page. A notation marks the center of the next one. “Read.”
Thrust A937 into combat imitation with the sixth-years. Ordered several to gang up on him. A shock—he fought like a Supra. Turned into a right spreener and gave two of the boys concussions. Untapped talent here. Good breeding.
I look up to Azmar. “I don’t understand—”
He takes the papers from my hands. “I was terrified, Lark. I thought my trainers were fed up with me and wanted me dead.”
I pale. “That’s terrible.”
“Lark.” He raises the paper before my nose. “I was terrified.”
A few seconds pass before realization dawns.
Fight or flee.
The walls of my apartment shatter, and I’m kneeling in the red dirt of the basin again, Azmar’s blood pooling around me. F-Fight or flee. That’s how all creatures respond to fear. Azmar, I need you to flee.
Azmar’s gut response to fear is . . . to fight. That was why he lunged for me in the infirmary. He wanted to fight me.
“I knew what you were doing.” He rests the papers on my empty side table. Takes my face in both hands. “You saved my life.”
Tears pour freely. “Y-You saved mine.”