Chapter 111: Men

Torin’s POV

The road was quiet. Not the charged kind from before. Just the regular quiet that settled over an empty path when the people on it had run out of things to say and the trees had nothing to add.

I walked with Liona beside me, and neither of us spoke, and the silence between us was not uncomfortable. Just there.

I had given Azura her minute.

Actually, I had given her slightly more than a minute. Because after Azura walked away, I had looked at Liona. She had looked back at me with that expression she used when she was not going to say something out loud but was making sure I understood it anyway.

She did not need to speak. I already knew.

Give her more than a minute.

I had learned enough about reading Liona’s expressions to know when she was making a request versus when she was making a suggestion. That one had not been a suggestion.

So we waited. And then we started walking.

The road curved slightly ahead and then we saw her.

She was standing in the middle of the path. Not walking. Just standing there with her bag on her shoulder, her hands at her sides, and her eyes on the ground. The rigid set of her shoulders from before was gone. She just looked like Azura standing on a road waiting for the people she had walked away from to catch up to her.

I stopped. Liona stopped beside me.

None of us spoke. The wind moved through the branches above us. A bird called out somewhere behind us in the trees, one single note, and then thought better of it.

Then Azura looked up.

"I am sorry." Her voice was the quiet version. Not the sharp one from back on the road. "For yelling. For walking away. I did not know what came over me." She paused. "I am sorry."

Liona was already moving before Azura finished the sentence. That was Liona. She did not hold grudges because holding grudges required keeping something unpleasant close to you on purpose, and Liona did not do things intentionally that made her feel worse.

"Do you think I could stay mad at you?" She was already close enough to reach her. "That is not possible. You are my girl." The smile came out warm and immediate. "You could burn down the house and I would forgive you by morning."

I watched Azura’s shoulders drop in that specific way they dropped when something she had been holding was released. Then she looked at me.

I nodded once. "It is okay." I looked at her face, the residue of whatever had broken open back on that road still sitting around her eyes, and I meant it completely. "I cannot stay mad at a pretty face."

Liona’s head turned so fast I almost felt the air move.

"Excuse me." Her hand went straight to her hip. "What about my face? Is my face not pretty?"

I looked at her.

She was standing there with her chin up, her hand on her hip, and her eyes doing that thing where they were both genuinely asking the question and already prepared to be dissatisfied with whatever answer came out of my mouth.

Her cheeks were slightly flushed from the walking and the cold and probably from the remnants of watching me fight three men on a road without drawing a weapon, though I was not going to bring that up.

I reached out and touched her cheek. Just the back of my fingers. Light and quick.

"Of course you do," I said.

Then I turned and started walking before either of them could do anything with that.

I heard them fall into step behind me. Then Azura’s footsteps sped up slightly and she came alongside me, her shorter legs working a little harder than they needed to to match my pace. I slowed down without making it obvious and let her think she had caught up on her own.

She was quiet for a few steps. Then she looked up at me.

"What was the reason?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"The reason why you refused to leave yesterday."

I kept my eyes on the road. "You do not want to know."

"I really do." There was a pause. "We had our first argument because of it. I think I deserve to know what it was about."

"If I tell you," I said, "we might end up having our second argument. So I am choosing to protect the peace."

"Torin." She nudged my arm with her shoulder. Not hard. Just enough to communicate that she was not letting this go. "Tell me."

I exhaled. Looked at the road ahead. Then at her.

"I wanted to meet someone," I said.

She frowned. "Meet someone. Who?"

I stopped walking.

She stopped too. I turned and looked at her properly because this was the kind of thing that deserved to be said while looking at the person rather than at the road in front of you.

"I met a woman at the market," I said. "The day Rhydor and I went for the axes. I walked into her. Knocked her basket over." I paused. "I wanted to find her again before we left."

Azura stared at me.

Then she said it loud enough that several birds flew out of the trees to our left.

"You delayed our mission for a woman?!!"

"First of all," I said, "this is not a mission. Second of all, she was not just a woman." I held her gaze steadily. "She was an angel."

Azura continued staring at me. The look on her face was the specific one that asked whether I could hear myself talking.

"Can you hear yourself right now?" she said.

"I can," I said. "And I stand by every word."

Liona stepped between us. Both hands up, positioned between Azura and me with the practiced ease of someone who had done this before and knew exactly where to stand.

She turned to me, her arms crossed. Her jaw had a particular tightness to it that I recognized immediately and chose not to comment on.

"How," she said, "do you delay something important for a stranger you do not even know?"

I looked at her face, the tightness in her jaw, the way her eyes were sharper than the question strictly required. I saw it clearly. The jealousy sits underneath the annoyance, doing its best to look like a reasonable concern and not quite managing it.

I did not say anything about it.

I looked at both of them. "I knew this would happen. That is exactly why I did not want to say anything."

Liona turned to Azura. "Can you believe him?"

Azura turned to Liona. "Men." She said it the way people said a word that explained everything that needed explaining. "They are always like this."

I shook my head, turned, and started walking.

"Are you coming?" I called back over my shoulder. "Or are you going to stand there discussing me like I am not present?"

I heard them behind me. The sound of two sets of footsteps started up again. Then Liona’s voice was slightly quieter, directed at Azura.

"He even called her an angel."

"Just to tell us how stupid he is," Azura added

"I was even expecting him to say something serious."

"I know, right?"

"And that was enough."

"Apparently."

I kept walking. I did not turn around. I allowed them this because they had earned it.

The three of us fell into step together after a while. Side by side, the way we had been walking for two days now, the road was wide enough that it did not require anyone to fall behind.

The mist had been lifting gradually since morning, burning off in the way mist burned off when the day decided it was ready to be a proper day.

The sky was still grey but lighter than before. A different quality of grey. The kind that suggested something brighter was thinking about it from behind the clouds.

Nobody spoke for a stretch.

The silence was not heavy. It was just the silence of people who had said what they needed to say and were now simply moving through the same space together.

There was a particular quality to it that was different from the silence of this morning and different again from the silence of yesterday. Something had loosened. Something that had been held too tight for the past two days had been said and argued and apologized for and put down.

It was still there in the background. The frustration and the worry and the urgency that had been driving all of it. None of that had gone anywhere. But it was sitting differently now.

Liona looked at me. Then at Azura. Then at the road ahead.

"Are we okay now?" she asked. Quiet. Checking.

"We are okay," Azura said.

I nodded. "We are."

The road kept going east. The trees on both sides kept being trees. The grey sky above kept thinking about whether it wanted to do something about itself.

We kept walking.

I thought about blonde hair and blue eyes and a basket full of apples going in every direction at once and the way she had looked back just once before the crowd swallowed her.

I had not found her before we left.

But I knew where to look when we got back.

And I was absolutely coming back. I just had to find her first.