Chapter 46. I Finally Want to See What Happens Next

Chapter 46: 46. I Finally Want to See What Happens Next

We lingered over that meal for a long time, long enough that the lunch crowd came and went around us and the stallholder started giving us pointed looks.

It wasn’t the food... It was the stories.

Alicia told Laura about the time I’d tried to impress a girl by jumping off a barn roof and landed in a pig pen, and Laura told us about the time Sharon had made her carry a boulder up the training hill for a week because she’d made a joke about the old woman’s forms.

By the end... I was laughing so hard that my ribs hurt, and Mistress Orla’s threat started to feel like a serious possibility.

I looked at the two of them, laughing at the same joke with their heads close together over the table, and thought, ’There’s no way a version of me that deserves this exists.’

But it did, apparently... He’d been born a farm kid with a broken awakening, and he’d just spent his morning being fed soup by two women who’d chosen him.

I’d have taken a hundred beatings for that... yes... it was fucking worth it.

By the middle of the afternoon, my legs had begun to remind me that I’d been banned from walking too far, so Alicia led us up a narrow stair that wound along the inside of the city wall and out onto a quiet grassy slope above the eastern district.

I didn’t know it existed.

It was a small hill tucked between two towers, with a few scrubby trees, a bench that somebody had carved their name into, and a view that stopped me in my tracks.

Below us, the whole eastern side of Elarion spread out in a crooked patchwork of roofs, and beyond it, a ribbon of river caught the light and held it.

The barrier hung above the city like heat shimmer, steady now, with no flicker at all.

"I found it on my second day here," Alicia said, and sat down on the grass. "When Sharon was making us wait for the paperwork..."

"I came up here and thought, if this goes badly, at least I’ll have seen this."

"It’s great," I said, and I meant it.

I lowered myself next to her, one slow, careful inch at a time, and set Sir Floppington on my knee.

Laura stood for a few seconds with her arms folded, looking at the horizon, and then she sat on my other side and pulled her knees up like a teenager.

I’d never seen her sit like that. She looked about fifteen years younger.

For a while, nobody said anything.

A bird was singing somewhere in the scrubby trees, and the noise of the market drifted up to us, softened by distance.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes... and for the first time in what felt like a month, I thought about... absolutely nothing.

"I need to say something," Alicia said. "I don’t know how many times I said it, but... I really want you to keep hearing it..."

I opened my eyes.

She was looking at the city, not at me, with her chin on her knees and her braid hanging over one shoulder. She’d picked up a blade of grass and was winding it around her finger, which she only does when she’s nervous.

"When you collapsed in the plaza," she said, "I thought you were dead..."

"I know... I’m sorry."

"No, don’t apologize yet... Let me finish." She exhaled slowly. "I ran to you, and you weren’t breathing right, and your face was this horrible color..."

"For about half a minute, I was completely sure you were gone... And all I could think about was how I’d promised I would stand beside you, and I’d been fifty yards away holding a courier."

"Alicia, you were doing your job... You stopped the man with the documents."

"I know that... Intellectually, I know." She finally turned to look at me, and her eyes were a little wet. "But being right doesn’t help when you’re kneeling next to someone you love and you can’t tell whether they’ll wake up..."

I took her hand, and she let me.

"I’m not... angry or anything," she said. "I want you to understand that."

"You did exactly what a good knight does... and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel proud." Alicia tried her hardest to hold back a tear from falling. "I’m just asking you for one thing."

"Anything..."

"Trust us." She squeezed my fingers. "Trust that we’re strong enough to stand next to you and carry some of it."

"You keep acting like it’s your job to take every hit yourself, and I need you to understand that it isn’t... I can take hits... and Laura can take hits too."

"If you stand in front of everyone every single time... one day you’re going to be the one who doesn’t get up."

Laura hadn’t moved. She was staring at her knees, and her jaw was tight.

"She’s right," Laura said at last. "I watched you hold that shield against Garrick’s blast, and I was running toward you..."

"And I realized that I would have given anything in the world to take your place... It wasn’t heroism, but it was... terror."

I looked at her. "Laura..."

"Let me say this." She took a breath. "I have never had a day off that I didn’t feel guilty about..."

"Not since I was a child... Every free hour, I think about what I should be doing, what reports I haven’t filed, what drills I’m neglecting, and what mistakes I haven’t corrected yet."

"This morning... when Alicia put that schedule on your desk and told me we were supervising you, I almost refused... because I thought I was being irresponsible."

"But you came anyway... that’s good, though, right?"

"I came because I wanted to." She laughed, a small, helpless sound. "And I just realized that I haven’t thought about a single report all day..."

"Not even once, and... I don’t know how to describe how strange that is."

"That sounds like a good thing to me."

"It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in years," she said, and her voice cracked a tiny bit on years. "That’s what frightens me..."

"If I get used to this, I might not be able to go back."

"You don’t have to go back..."

"Of course I do... We have a conspiracy to stop."

"Then we stop the conspiracy," I said. "And in between, you get to sit on a hill and eat soup."

"Those two things are allowed to happen to the same person."

She gave me a long look, and then she smiled, a wet, crooked smile that I’d have crossed a desert to see.

"You say strange things... and make it look somehow... charming."

"It’s one of my few talents."

I took a moment to gather myself, because I wanted to say something true, and it’s harder to be sincere than it is to be funny.

The wind pulled at my sleeves.

I could feel Alicia’s hand in my right one and Laura’s shoulder pressed against my left, and I thought about what I wanted to tell them.

"I want you both to know something," I said. "When I first woke up with this curse, I thought it was a joke..."

’I thought the universe was laughing at me, and honestly... I still think the universe has a pretty weird sense of humor."

"But I’m not stronger because of the class... I mean, sure, the class does the heavy lifting."

"And for me... it’s what lets me stand up to people like Garrick." I chuckled. "But the reason I keep standing up..."

"The real reason I got up in that plaza when my body was telling me to stay down... well... it is because the two of you are standing beside me," I said, taking turns looking at their faces.

Neither of them spoke.

"If I’d gotten this power and had nobody to protect... I think I’d have been a mess." I sighed. "I’d have been strong and miserable and scared of everything..."

"But... You... give the power a point."

"You make me want to be someone who’s worth the effort."

"Roland," Alicia said, very softly.

"I’m not finished... and look, I know I’m terrible at not getting hurt."

"I know I’ll probably keep doing stupid things... But I swear I’ll trust you more, I’ll ask for help, and I’ll try my damnedest to still be here at the end of this."

"Because I want to be here..." I tried to hold back a tear as well. "That’s the part I’d never have believed a year ago..."

"I actually want to see what happens next."

The silence stretched out, and a pair of sparrows landed on the bench and began arguing over a crumb.

Then Alicia leaned over and kissed me...

It was warm and quick, the kind of kiss that doesn’t ask for anything, and when she pulled back... she was smiling with her eyes shut.

"I love you, dummy," she said.

"I love you too... idiot..."

Laura had gone completely still. I turned my head, and she was looking at me with a mixture of fear and determination, like a soldier about to cross a river.

She took a long breath. Then she put one hand on my cheek and kissed me too, shy and careful and a little unsteady, her thumb resting against my jaw.

"I love you," she said against my mouth, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it. "I know I said it already, but... I wanted to say it in daylight now."

My throat did something complicated. "Thank you for doing it in daylight."

"Don’t be all smug now."

"I’m not smug... it’s just that I’m overwhelmed."

"That’s worse."