Chapter 101: I Have You Both

Third Person POV

Torin did not want to be seen.

That was the only thought moving through his head as he pushed himself up from the base of the tree and took stock of what was working and what was not. His ribs were complaining loudly. The cut above his eyebrow had sent a thin line of blood down the side of his face that he could feel but could not see. His back had taken most of the impact when he hit the tree and was making its feelings about that very clear.

He could hear Azura’s voice behind him. Low and steady, talking to Logan the way she talked to Logan, as if the enormous black wolf with the darkening eyes was just a person who needed reminding to breathe. He did not turn around. He did not want to see what Rhydor’s face looked like when he shifted back. He did not want to be in this yard for any of what was about to happen next.

He walked toward the tree line at the back of the property.

Nobody called after him.

He kept walking until the trees closed around him and the yard disappeared behind him and there was nothing but the sound of the woods settling in the afternoon quiet. Then he found a tree with a wide enough base and sat down against it and tipped his head back and let out a long slow breath through his nose.

He pressed the back of his hand against the cut above his eyebrow. Held it there. Looked up at the patches of sky visible between the branches above.

He had said the thing.

He had sat on that bench in the afternoon sun and said the thing he had been carrying since approximately the day he had met her.

He had said it.

And then Logan had come out of the trees and introduced himself to his ribs.

He almost laughed. It hurt too much to let it finish but it started.

****

Liona came back from the market with a full basket and a mood that was somewhere between satisfied and the particular smugness of someone who had found exactly what they were looking for at a good price.

She stepped through the gate into the yard and stopped.

Empty.

She looked around. The bench where Torin had been sitting was there. His knife was on it. The sharpening stone beside it. The chair Azura had been sitting in was pushed back at an angle, as if someone had stood up from it quickly.

Then she saw the blood on the grass.

Not a lot. Just a dark spot near the base of the tree at the far edge of the yard and a few drops leading from the bench toward the tree line at the back of the property.

Liona set her basket down carefully on the bench beside Torin’s knife.

Then she followed his scent into the trees.

She found him sitting against a wide trunk about thirty feet into the woods. His head was tipped back. He was pressing the back of his hand against a cut above his eyebrow. When he heard her footsteps he turned his head and looked at her without surprise, like he had already known someone would come and had resigned himself to it.

He was not smiling.

That was the first thing she noticed. In all the time she had known him she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen his face without at least the residue of a smile somewhere on it. Even in serious moments there was always something there, some quality of ease sitting underneath the seriousness.

Right now there was nothing. Just his face without the performance of it. Tired and a little banged up and completely unguarded in a way she had not seen before.

She sat down beside him against the same tree.

"What happened?" she asked.

He looked back up at the sky through the branches.

"I was stupid," he said.

She looked at the cut on his forehead. The way he was holding his ribs without acknowledging that he was holding his ribs.

"I know you are," she said. "But what actually happened?"

He made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was closer to one than anything she had expected to get from him in this moment. His head turned toward her slightly.

Then he told her.

All of it. The quiet afternoon and the conversation about the book and the way it had shifted into the other thing, the thing he had been sitting on for weeks and had finally said out loud. The words he had used. The way Azura had gone still while he said them. The way he had told her he was not asking for anything and had meant it completely.

And then Logan came out of the trees like a wall that had decided to move.

Liona listened to the whole thing without interrupting.

When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

"She stopped him," she said.

"She always does," Torin replied.

They sat with that for a moment. The afternoon light was coming through the trees in long slanted columns, warm and unhurried, landing on the ground around them in uneven patches.

Torin was quiet for a while. Then he turned his head and looked at her properly. At her face. At the particular way she was sitting beside him, close enough that their shoulders were almost touching, not making anything of it, just there.

"I understand now," he said quietly. "What I did to you. How it felt to be on the other side of words you cannot take back once they are out."

She looked at the ground in front of her feet. "You were kind when you rejected me."

"Kind still hurts," he said.

She nodded once. That was true and she was not going to pretend it was not.

He shifted against the tree. Winced slightly. Pressed his hand against his ribs for a second and then deliberately stopped doing it.

"I am sorry, Liona." His voice was low and without any of the easy charm she was used to hearing in it. Just the words, plain and genuine. "I am sorry I could not feel what you wanted me to feel. I am sorry I could not be what you needed."

She looked at him. At the cut on his forehead that had stopped bleeding. At the face that was just his face right now, nothing extra on top of it.

She reached over and took his hand.

"I know," she said.

He looked down at her hand on his. Then he laced his fingers through hers and held on and they sat like that in the quiet of the trees while the afternoon light moved slowly around them.

Azura appeared at the edge of the tree line.

She stopped.

She had been looking for Torin since she walked out of the house with her journal pressed against her chest and the sound of Rhydor’s voice still sitting in her ear. She had followed the same path Liona had followed without knowing that Liona had already been there first.

She saw them.

Torin was against the tree with his head back and a cut above his eyebrow. Liona was beside him with her hand in his, their shoulders touching, both of them quiet in the particular way that came after something honest had passed between two people.

She started to turn back. This felt like something she had walked into the edge of without being invited.

"Azura." Liona’s voice. Not loud. Just clear. "Come here."

Azura stood at the edge of the trees for a moment. Then she walked toward them.

She sat down on Torin’s other side without saying anything.

The three of them were together now, lined up against the wide trunk. The afternoon light came down around them. The birds above went about their business with complete indifference to anything happening below.

Torin looked to his left at Liona. Then, to his right, at Azura. Then back up at the sky above.

"I have the two of you," he said. Something quiet in his voice. Something that was almost steady. "I will be fine."

He almost meant it.

Liona looked at him sideways. "Why do you say it like that?"

"Because I can feel him staring at me from somewhere and it is genuinely unsettling."

Liona went still. Then she murmured, almost to herself, "I thought I was the only one feeling it."

"I do not feel it," Azura said.

Torin and Liona both turned and looked at her at exactly the same moment. The same expression on both of their faces. The particular look that said, ’Of course not, really and we are not surprised’, all at once, without any of those words being said.

"Why would he give you the creeps?"

They had said it at exactly the same time. They looked at each other. Then back at Azura.

Azura opened her mouth and closed it.

Looked between them.

"That is not what I meant," she said, not even knowing if it suits the answer needed.

Neither of them looked particularly convinced.

****

The window of Torin’s house faced the tree line.

Rhydor stood in front of it.

He had not moved since Azura walked out the door. He had heard her footsteps cross the yard. He had watched from the window as she went toward the trees. He had watched the tree line after she disappeared into it.

Now he just watched.

The three of them talked about something he could hear but chose not to listen. Torin said something that made Liona respond and then both of them turned to look at his Azura with identical expressions.

Yes, she was his. He watched her face.

The way it moved when she was flustered. The particular thing it did when she was trying to form a response and the response was not cooperating. He knew that face.

He knew every version of that face.

His own expression gave nothing back to the window.

Nothing moved in it. Nothing shifted. Just Rhydor standing in a room that was not his in a place he had followed her to without being asked, watching the woman who had looked him in the eye an hour ago and told him his presence suffocated her, sitting in the afternoon light between two people who had done nothing but take care of her since the night everything fell apart.

He stood there. He did not move toward the door. He did not look away.

He just watched.