She waited too long to go and talk to him, waited too long to ask him why he hadn’t cared when Heartfire told him these were his children. He’d only glared at her sister harder, had only left with her like those words meant absolutely nothing to him. Like he didn’t care at all what they had created together. Maybe he didn’t, maybe he was so happy with his new family that he didn’t want anything that could ruin that, so happy with someone far better than Luster could ever be.
Someone too close to her for this to ever stop hurting, for her heart to ever stop breaking.
But that isn’t the man she remembers from the cave, the one who had held her and loved her so gently. Pressed kisses to her face and her neck like she mattered to him, like she meant something. Like he didn’t want to live without her. She remembers all of it now, she thinks. All those slippery details that had been so set on falling away like sand between grasping fingers. She remembers how much she loved him in that moment, how it had been so easy to promise him her whole heart, her everything. Just for him, always for him.
It is hard to know how much of that she still feels for him when she hides behind walls constructed to keep her safe, protect her from a heart that almost absolutely loves him still in that same way. A heart that will only find loss and rejection if it doesn’t let go of such foolishness. It is good that he is happy now - and he must be, so selfishly she needs him to be, because if he isn’t it will be a pain so much harder to bear. This incredible loss for nothing at all.
Except, it isn’t nothing, because nothing is not what dampens her neck and her flanks with sweat. It doesn’t tighten in her belly and make her groan with pain, this discomfort so out of her own control.
Something so beautiful, so perfect, does that to her.
Something they did together.
Something they would do together.
She regrets that it took her so long to understand this, that even if he doesn’t still love her in that same way anymore, he will love them. That whatever she saw in him those many days ago must be something beyond her understanding, because he is not that man. He would want to be here just as much as she would if the roles were reversed, and she will not keep them from a father who wants to love them.
But they’re coming now, coming soon, and he isn’t here with her. Is likely with Heartfire and their brood. She tries not to wonder if their children will look alike, the children of the man she loves, the children of her sister. It is an oddly painful thing to wonder about, a thing that reaches for feelings of being replaced with someone better, someone more, no matter how hard she tries to turn her back to it. But it is easier now, easier to let go of it when there is so much else going on. She has to find him, has to find Dovev, has to do it quickly before they come.
She is already exhausted when she pulls on the dregs of her magic, should be finding a quiet place to bring their children into this world. But instead she struggles on, pausing only when the contractions force her to, ears pinned and vanished into the currents of a dark, wild mane. She can feel the magic nestled against him, has been aware if it ever since she saw it go to him, cling to his skin. There to keep him safe when she cannot be. He is close, somewhere on the island still because the pull of it is less, doesn’t make her feel so stretched thin. She focuses on sending more to him. Stars and fireflies and dandelion puffs of soft light in the deepening dusk, all of it to him as she makes her way back to the place where she had last seen him.
“Please, Dovev. Please.”
The words come in a groan, and she bites back a soft cry when another contraction cripples her where she stands, dropping her too far from where she was meant to be. She heaves where she falls, stretching her body with a groan like it might ease some of this pressure, this pain building inside her. The grass is cool beneath her cheek, the trees she had been aiming for still a line of darkening green across an empty meadow. She watches them dimly, wills that familiar silhouette to appear from out of the dark. Wills him to know what he can’t possibly know. Then in one last exhausted effort, she asks too much of her magic, shapes the remaining light that isn’t with him into a pillar of twinkling bright above her in the darkening dusk.
A beacon.
Please, find me, she thinks as she closes her eyes, the first shadows of fear creeping in to settle in her bones.
