She has her lips in Merry’s dark little mane, fussing hopelessly with those wild, silken strands as she laughs softly at something Kharon says to them. The day is bright and beautiful and trying its hardest to help the inhabitants of the island forget the tragedy that unfolds with new fervor each day within the lands not under protection. But the island has nothing on the silver eyes watching her now, or that faint, crooked way he grins at her sometimes. The one that captures her lips and shapes them into something soft and beautiful and so bright, something she thought she might forget how to do.
It’s why she nearly misses the situation unfolding in the distance just beyond Kharon’s shoulder, half hidden by the feathers of violet wings too beautiful to be real. But she freezes, abandons her efforts to smooth down Merry’s wild little mane, and feels the slow beat-beat of her heart disappear entirely.
It’s okay, because she has forgotten how to breathe anyhow.
“Dovev.” She says, and it is not so much a sound as it is an exhale, as it is all the life escaping through her lips in the shape of his name. Ether has brought them - them, because she can see the familiar form of her sister braced and staggering beside them. She wants to turn away, to put an entire ocean between herself and them, herself and his nose pressed to a blue and white neck so same and so different from the one in the pieces of broken memories she holds in her chest.
That had been her, once.
She finds she cannot remember how to exist in this moment. Cannot hear if Kharon is trying to recapture her attention, cannot feel if Merry’s nose is nudging uncertainly at her shoulder. There is no sound, no sensation, no thought. Nothing can exist beside the pain that is breaking every bone in her body, fishing the veins out like they are loose threads needing to be plucked. It is a strange feeling, to be coming undone. Reduced to the pain she feels when she watches the man who is (is not, cannot still be) her husband, perched so protectively at her sisters side. The sister responsible for putting all the fissures in her bones, made them so easy, so ready to break,
Had Heartfire known? Had she known each day she kept Dovev at her side, that Luster had been looking for him in every face she passed. That when he disappeared, she had waited. Waited for him to come back, worried when he hadn’t. Had she known then that Luster would conceive, grow fat with his child. Had she known what they meant to each other and kept it from both?
She blinks once, flinches, shakes her head like these biting questions might be forced away from her. There is too much she doesn’t understand, too much she won’t ask because it doesn’t matter now. Because even from here she can see the swell of new life filling her sister’s stomach, and there is nothing strong enough in this world or the next to pull this knife from Luster’s back.
***
She means to turn away, find someplace else to go, anywhere else. A place where she can lose this pain and this wild hurt before it consumes so much that there is nothing left but these broken, wasted bones. But Heartfire drops, collapses in the loamy footing, and before Luster can stop herself she is moving toward them.
Why.
Why.
Because that woman in the sand, broken and bleeding and painting the ground red with her coughing, is her sister.
Because that man standing beside her, frantic and aching and brushing his lips across that swollen belly in a way that tells Luster everything she needs to know, is the man she gave her always to.
She reaches them after Ether has gone and the healers have hurried over, finds that the closer she comes, the quieter she feels. Like this internal war waged has decimated everything and there is nothing left inside her. But it isn’t true, she is not a creature made to be numb, not made to be empty, and even now she buries her brokenness where it is so hard to find, traps it back so deep in the bottoms of those beautiful, bruised eyes. It is not for them to suffer with her, not for anyone to know this pain that chafes and eats away at the light inside her.
“He is good at many things,” she says as she joins them, her voice deceivingly soft and light to match the gentleness in those dark eyes, “but patience is not one of them.” And ohhh, oh she doesn’t mean to lift her gaze to his, doesn’t want to know what it looks like to be forgotten, but she can’t help herself, can’t stop herself. Can’t help but search for anything in those eyes to make her feel a little less jagged, a little less like a universe of dying stars waiting to burn away. Can’t hold back that soft gasp in her chest at how much it is killing her to be so close and not touch him. Not hold him and duck beneath his neck, clean the edges of his armor with the soft of her tongue until the skin is less ragged, less stiff with dried blood.
But he is not hers anymore, not hers.
“I think you’ll have a harder time convincing him to relax than you will at healing my sister.” So soft, so soft, and finally pulling her gaze away from him so she can go lay beside Heartfire. “He just needs to be reminded that she’s way too stubborn to die.” Still soft, so silver, reaching for any kind of levity she can breathe into the somberness of the group as they watch Heartfire struggle to catch her breath.
She folds her legs beneath her, lays close enough to cradle her sister’s too-hot body against her own. Will she feel cold in the absence of her fever if these women manage to make it abate? She doesn’t know, has not seen enough of this plague to have any real knowledge of how she can help, to know if it’s even safe to be this close. One of the healers coughed, and she can see that stain of red in the corners of gentle lips. Dov hasn’t though, and she’s so stupidly frowning up at him, trying to find any sign that he isn’t okay. But he’s always been so stoic, so impossible, so she looks away from him, needs to stop finding excuses to look at a face she’s memorized in the most intimate ways.
Instead she brushes a kiss against Heartfire’s neck, so dark and blue and soaked through with sweat, closes her eyes against a fear she feels swelling inside her. A thought with sharp edges and even sharper teeth, that uncertainty that the healers won’t be able to give her enough, that it will be too much for the child trying so hard to grow inside her. “Oh, Djinni, I wish you were here.” Just a whisper, the first hint of all those broken pieces as they turn traitor and claw back to the surface to breathe.
@[Djinni]
i need to edit when i’m home and in front of a computer, that lusters twilight manipulation is sending little firefly sized balls of light over to cling against dov. i’m dumb and forgot to mention this in the novel length post :|