Chapter 44: Apologies.

Ash did not let go of me. I should have pulled away. I thought of it. I thought of it again when the silence stretched past the comfortable silences between us, and then again when I became aware of the sound of my own breathing, which was not as steady as I would have liked. I thought of it a fourth time when the trembling had not yet stopped and I realized that the warmth pressed against my back was the only warmth in the room.

I did not pull away. Ash was very warm, and I was very cold. Her arms stayed where they were. I could feel her heartbeat against my shoulder blade. It was steady while mine was not. That was no matter. The trembling started to slow. By the time it stopped, I had stopped counting the reasons to pull away.

“Are you okay?” Ash asked again, quietly, from somewhere just behind my ear. Her breath moved against my hair.

“I am always well.” Ash said nothing to this. She had the decency, at least, not to argue. “But perhaps,” I said, and my voice was lower than I intended, “I am slightly less well today.”

She nodded. I felt her look past my shoulder at the book where I had set it down, its pages still open, the ink still wet from where I had- from where the page had gotten wet. “It’s because of that, isn’t it? What is it?”

I considered not answering. I considered several things I might say that were not answers. “Those are just the musings of a fool.”

Ash was quiet for a moment. Then she shifted, and her arms loosened, and the cold rushed in to fill the space she left. She reached past me. Her fingers hovered above the cover. “May I?”

I did not say yes and I did not say no, though surely I could have said one of those two things. Ash waited for an answer, and when it became clear none would come, she picked up the journal and sat on the bed. I should have berated her and demanded it back. I did not. Slowly, I moved to sit beside her. We sat close enough that her shoulder pressed against mine. Not that it mattered.

She read. I watched her read from the very beginning. I watched her eyes move across the enormous handwriting, and I wondered if she could even decipher it, and then I watched her lips press together and I knew she could. I should not have let her see this. She was the one who had killed Zarvok. Had killed Zera. Had killed the others. I did not know why I had not yet snatched it from her, nor why I did not want to. No, I knew why. This Hero had been guided by the System as all of my Generals had. As I had.

I was quiet. I let her read. Time passed, and at some point, Ash’s hands began to shake. It was a slight tremble. I might not have noticed if I had not been watching so closely, which I should not have been. I might not have felt it, if we hadn’t sat so close, which I should not have been. She turned a page and stopped on an entry I knew well. I could see the shape of the words from where I sat.

“Zarvok was…the big one, wasn’t he? I didn’t think even the Kraghul could get that big,” she said. Her voice had changed. “I remember him. He had a very…odd way of talking.” She said this slowly, as if it might offend me.

I nodded slowly. “Yes. He did. I always wondered if it was some secret [Skill].”

She turned more pages. She read in silence for a time, and when she spoke again it was of Malrath.

“I remember him too. He was…hard to forget,” she said. “He sought us out when we’d barely even stepped inside your castle. We all thought it was strange. That we’d walked into some kind of trap,” She paused. “I thought he would be strong. He…wasn’t, and yet he came first anyway.”

I said nothing. Malrath had always been an orator. The one I sent to pacify a place that needed something more subtle than the hammer. He had never been strong. He had only ever been loud. Even at the time, I had thought it strange that he fought first, and fell first. I had thought it was him believing his own legend. I wish I still thought that.

Ash kept reading. The pages turned. Ash’s hands were every still. “Zera…she was…an odd one. She was very strong. Fighting her was like fighting a second army. She almost killed us a few times. We might not have beaten her at all,” she said. Her voice was barely above a murmur. “Orvyn was still recovering, you see. After Zarvok. I was injured. And this Zera was…she was so angry. I didn’t know they were siblings.”

She stopped. I waited. “We only survived because of Ronan, you know,” she said. “He landed a blow against one of the strange creatures she’d brought with her. It was a small and…sickly creature, I don’t know why she brought it at all. One of his stray attacks hit it and Zera…she stopped fighting. She left herself open, tending to it.” She swallowed. “That was why we won.”

I looked at the far wall. Thoughts came, and I forced them all back. I had told her to stop leaving her strange finds outside my door, and she had never listened. The fool. Ash was quiet again. She read for some time more. When she spoke next, her voice was different. Softer, in a way I had not heard from her before.

“Orzathiel,” she said. “He was…very brave. I thought he was immortal, you know. Because he never showed fear. No matter how many times we struck him down. He would get back up. Honestly, I thought it was hopeless a few times.” She stopped, took a breath, and started again. “He was brave even the fifteenth time. I still thought he’d get up. He never did.”

She turned another page, and then she closed her eyes and set the book down on her knee, still open. “I didn’t understand,” she said. “In my stupidity, I- at one point I gave them all the chance to run, you know. We only needed to kill you and…anyway, even when the others in my party argued with me, but I offered.” She looked at me. “None of them took it. They sounded furious I’d given them the choice at all.” Her voice had gone very quiet. “I think I understand now.”

“You don’t understand as much as you think, Hero. As if their [Class] would let them abandon me.” It was a rebuke. It was the softest rebuke anyone might have ever made.

Ash looked at me. And then she reached out, and she pulled me toward her, and her arms wrapped around me again. I went rigid. “Yes,” she said into my shoulder. “I don’t understand anything.”

I did not move. Her arms were tight around me and she was warm and I was aware of every place where her body pressed against mine, which was more places than I had expected, and I could feel her breathing, and it was not steady either. We were both unsteady. If this was an attempt at comfort, then it was a poor one. I still felt something inside me settle.

“I’m sorry,” Ash said. “For killing them, I mean. I didn’t know, and even if I knew I would have had to anyway, but…I’m sorry.”

Something inside me broke along a line I had not known existed. One I had been holding. I had not known I was holding it. My arms came up before I could stop them, and I was holding her too, my hands against her back, my fingers pressing into the fabric of her shirt. I had done this one other time. In the pouring rain. It felt different this time. Warmer still.

We stayed like that. I do not know how long. Long enough that the lantern flickered and steadied and flickered again. Long enough that I stopped counting. Long enough that the words had time to claw their way up from wherever I had buried them. I had to force them out past my throat. I had been circling them for some time.

How long? Since the campfire? Since Hamel? Since that night when this stupid Hero had stood over that battered and bloody body for my sake? I had not been able to make the words reach my throat then. Now, I forced them past my lips. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “For Ronan. For your friends.”

Ash went still. She did not pull back nor did she pull away. She stayed exactly where she was and for a long moment neither of us breathed. “You better be,” she whispered. And she held me tighter.

I closed my eyes. The core hummed low in my chest, and the ache was still there, but it was different now. The humming was slightly softer. When we finally pulled apart, the distance returned, but it was not the same distance as before. Something had changed in the shape of it.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Ash looked down at the journal in her lap. She picked it up gingerly, as though it were something fragile, and held it out to me. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

I shook my head. “Do not forget what I said back then, Ash. It was my fault. I will not be a coward who hides from herself,” I took the journal from her hands. My fingers brushed hers and I did not linger on this. “I…burned the world, and now it seems I abandoned those who would never….” The rest would not come.

“Did you have other choices?” She asked.

It was the same question she had asked once before. The same thoughts came in response. Different words left my lips. “I had choices,” I said. “None of them were very good. I chose the ones that would lead me here.”

Ash nodded slowly. She was looking at the wall now, and her expression was something I could not quite read. “I’m starting to think none of mine were good either.”

We were quiet for a time. The lantern burned low. “You were lucky, you know,” Ash finally said.

I looked at her. She did not look like someone who was about to say something foolish, but one could never be certain with these Heroes, even if I was starting to think Ash was different. “Lucky?”

“You had people who cared for you.” She said. “Even if they couldn’t say it.”

“What would I know of something like that?” I snapped. The words came out harsher than I wanted them to. Ash did not flinch. “What would they?”

Ash pointed at the journal in my hands. “You have that, don’t you? I don’t think…it was just for him. That’s not the feeling I got from those pages.”

I stared at the cover. Two simple shapes. Zarvok’s sigil, pressed into leather by hands large enough to crush stone. I said nothing.

“Maybe there are more,” Ash said. “Things like that. Out there, somewhere. More proof of their service…and their gratitude. Whatever you want to call it. From what I’ve read…I wouldn’t rule out all hope.”

“That is very unlikely. Objectively.” I said. “The odds of that are-”