Chapter 45: Ember.

“Do you think I can’t feel that?” she said.

I went still, and then I straightened. I did not pull away from her, but something inside me did. “It is nothing,” I said. “A consequence of a process. One that will settle, in time.”

Ash looked at me. There was weight in her gaze. Weight that made me want to look away from her, except that would be its own kind of retreat. “Lys.”

“It is a minor discomfort. One that is hardly worth-“

“Lys.”

I closed my mouth. The humming in my chest continued. It had been continuing since I had woken, and I suspected it would continue until the day my eyes no longer opened again. If she could feel the hum from where she sat, she had been feeling it for some time. I had forgotten how sharp her senses were. The silence stretched. Ash waited. The weight in her gaze never left. I would have preferred she say something. This silent siege was effective. Ash shifted beside me, and her knee pressed against my thigh, and she waited still. I stared at the far wall.

“I wanted to keep both powers. The Cradle and the Requiem. Your suggestion -to fire them at each other- showed me a third thing. Something…in between both.” I did not know why I was explaining, “I thought that if I might force them together inside my core, that third thing could carve it. It did.” Even as I explained, the humming grew louder.

“And this third thing,” Ash’s voice was very quiet, and very close. “It has not settled. No,” She shook her head. “It will not settle, will it? It’s hurting you and it will keep hurting.”

“Yes.”

“And you did it alone.” Her voice had not changed in volume, but something in it had hardened. “You told no one. You asked no one.”

“There was no one to ask.”

“There was me.”

I stared at the wall. A crack ran across the stone near the ceiling, thin and dark. “What would you have said?” I asked. “If I had told you.”

“I would have told you that you were about to do something that could kill you. That there might be another way, if you had just waited. Just a day, or two.”

“And if I had done it anyway?”

“Then I would have sat next to you,” Ash said. Simply. As though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “So that if something went wrong, someone would know.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. The crack in the ceiling seemed longer than it had a moment ago. It was not. Cracks did not grow from being stared at. “I have never needed to run my decisions by another,” I said. The words came out stiffer than I had intended. “I am not in the habit of seeking counsel for my decisions.”

Ash was quiet for a time. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Now you can.”

I said nothing. The silence stretched. The Core hummed and I shifted on the bed. “The danger was minimal,” I said. “The chance of death was-“

“You are sitting on a bed in pain that will never stop. Lysanthia, do spare me the logic, just this once.”

My own name should not have stabbed me so. My jaw tightened. I opened my mouth to argue. The pain would dull with time. Not dull exactly, but like all things, I would grow used to-

“You would have told Sara not to do what you just did.” I went still. “If she came to you,” Ash continued, “and said she was going to hurt herself, possibly permanently, because she thought it was the only way…what would you have said?”

I knew the answer. I would have told her no. I would have taken the sharp thing from her hands and held it away from her until she stopped reaching for it. I would not have let her choose pain. “That is different,” I said. My voice barely went past my own lips.

“It is not.” The silence after that was longer still. Ash shifted beside me. When she spoke again, her voice had changed. “Promise me something.”

I looked at her. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were steady in the lantern light. She was not asking. “The next time you are about to do something that will hurt you,” she said, “you talk to me first. You will come to me and you tell me what you are thinking, and together, we find a different way, if there is one to be found.” She held my gaze. “Promise me that much.”

Objections came without thought. The first, and the most obvious. I had never submitted my decisions to another’s approval. I was a Queen. The second, and one less obvious. Some choices could not wait for counsel. More came. I ran through them all. I looked at Ash’s eyes, and found them all wanting. “Yes,” I murmured.

Ash nodded once. Just once. “Good…Lys.” She let out a breath she must have been holding. “I do not like to see you hurt yourself.”

I looked at her. Ash was not looking at me. She was looking at the lantern, glowing dim. “Why?”

She frowned. She considered the question for a long time. “Because…I suppose it hurts me too…to know that you’re hurting, I mean.” She glanced at me. Her eyes widened, her face reddened. It was I who looked away this time.

I had nothing to say to the foolishness she had just said. Nothing to say at all. Ash shifted, or perhaps I did. Her hand touched mine. I did not pull mine away. Calluses aside, hers were very soft. “Why did you do this?” Ash asked. “This is not just about keeping both marks. Is it? There were other ways.”

I thought of the demonbloods I had seen. The way they had cowered, not just from me, but all things that were too loud. Of the children with small nubs on their temples in the city, staring down at the ground. I thought of the System I might have broken, and the way the world might have changed in a thousand years. Changed in a way I could have never foreseen. I did not say any of this. I did not say anything.

“You do not owe them your pain, Lys.”

I stared at her. She stared back. I was sure I had not said anything. And yet.

“Perhaps not.” They were not the reason. Not the whole reason. The Ash in front of me was replaced by a different one. One who hung in the air, held up by her throat. If there was power to be had, then I would take it. This was the surest path. That had been all that mattered.

Ash said nothing for a time. Neither did I. I said nothing, but something in her gaze softened anyway. She could not have known. She did not have any of her [Skills]. Nothing that would have let her read thoughts.

“So, did you name it?” Ash finally asked. “Your core. It’s an Essence Core but…that’s clearly not all it is, right? I don’t think they’d classify it as just that, at least. I was wondering if you had a name for it.”

“You assume I would want to name it?”

“Yes.” Ash said. “Wasn’t the first thing you did after getting Lines to name your techniques?”

I could have pointed out that Ash herself had done the same thing, but that would be petty. “Very well. And, I have given it some thought.”

“Oh?”

I nodded slowly, staring at the lantern. Perhaps I had given it more than some thought. “I had considered calling it the Eclipse Core.”

“That’s a grand name.” Ash agreed. At some point, the hand that had brushed mine now sat atop it. It was not an uncomfortable weight.

“It is a grand name.” I looked at the lantern again. At its flickering flame. Now, it reminded me of another. One that had given off less light, but had felt far warmer for it. “But I have come up with one I like better.” I declared, to no-one. “An Ember Core.”

Ash said nothing. I frowned and looked at her, only to see her smile. “That is a much better name.” She said.

I was glad I hadn’t settled on the first name.

Eventually, we settled in. The lantern burned low, and neither of us moved to tend it. The room dimmed to shadows and the faint glow of a dying flame.

There was one bed, and there were two of us. It was a matter of simple practicality. It did not feel so tonight. I was aware of every shift of the bedding as Ash lay beside me. I was aware of the warmth along my side where her body was close to mine but not quite touching. I was aware of the egg that sat between us, ever pulsing. I was aware of the sound of Ash’s breathing in the dark.

The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs. It was a low and constant pulse that sat just above silence and just below pain. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and made my breathing slow and deliberate.

I turned onto my side, facing the wall. The Cradle pulsed warm on my left arm and the Requiem pulsed cold on my right. Between them, the thing I had made hummed and hummed and it would never stop humming. I shifted again, and the motion was enough to make the bed frame groan. I silently cursed it, for ruining the quiet.

Ash’s breathing was slow and even. She had fallen asleep. The stupid Hero, who could fall asleep anywhere, in any circumstance. I had found it annoying before. The annoyance was something deeper now. I should have learned the trick to this from her before.

I shifted again. I tried to find a position where the pressure eased, but each time I settled, the Core shifted its rhythm, just slightly. Tomorrow night would be the same. The night after would be the same. Perhaps every night would be, until my second end found me. I had paid worse prices. This was nothing. This was a mere splinter compared to what I had endured. The splinter would not let me sleep. I shifted again, and the bed groaned again, and-

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“You are an idiot.” I froze. Ash’s voice came from right beside me. Her breathing had not changed.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” There was a rustling of cloth. She turned, and I felt the mattress shift, and then her breath was warm against the back of my neck. “It’s been half an hour, Lys. You are not sleeping. You are not going to sleep.”