Dust

LIII

By the time I stumble to the edge of the Ancient Forest, my legs feel like gelatin, my eyes hurt for some odd unknown reason, and I'm an absolute mess.

    Thorny bushes have dragged holes through my leggings and scraped my arms, and my boots after days of trudging have caused blisters to form on the bottom of my feet. My hair's tangled and dry, and I'm positive I don't smell the best.

    I don't really bask in the glory of being back home again, because I'm too busy trying not to keel over. I can see my house from here, the high bay windows of the basement, the one Gael broke the night Shi attacked him haphazardly taped over, pending repair. A pit forms in the bottom of my stomach at the thought of Shi; I tell myself have to stop thinking about him, as if that will make his absence hurt any less. My fingers go to his necklace again.

    At first, I'm disappointed, as Damien doesn't appear to be anywhere. I drop the load of backpacks off my shoulders, bending to retrieve my phone again, and it's when I straighten back up that I see him—a tall and slender figure wearing a dark cloak over his entirety, marching towards me with a gait on the verge of anger, already over frustration's threshold.

    I draw in a breath as he nears me, and for a second the two of us just stare at each other; I've never gone this long without looking up into those exotically angular rose red eyes, his black hair just nipping his eyelashes softly. I've never gone this long without seeing the intense protective expression on his face, as if he's a guard. In all, it's just been too long.

    "Damien—"

    "Don't say anything yet," he says, then exhales, all of him seeming to relax as he reaches out and pulls me against his chest. His chin rests on the top of my head. "I want a few seconds of this before you give me the details, okay? Just a few seconds."

    I can understand that, so I let him have his few seconds, thankful for the comfort it provides me with as well. This is what I missed. His embrace, his scent, the feeling of his firm chest underneath my cheek. I missed security in its truest form.

    Damien steps back, takes my hand. "You can tell me everything after you've had a shower and look less like a barbarian. It's better if we get out of the sun, anyway," he says, risking a squint up at the giant orb of gas blazing overhead. He looks back towards me as we start the walk towards my house. "And when I say everything, I mean everything. I want to know how you're alive. I want to know if Gael is alive. I want to know why you've got that look on your face like what you're going to say is going to hurt me."

    "Well, Dame," I say, scratching at the back of my neck, "the answer to that last one is simple: because it is. It is going to hurt you."

    I look down at the ground as it turns to sidewalk. "It's going to hurt a lot of people."

    The reunion with my blood family is emotional, and I mean tears and all of it. My mother looks up from sending a business email, Finn looks away from his cartoons, and they both run at me, waterworks going off the record, wailing as they both demand why I had been so stupid. Once I've told them how much I missed them, it's Damien who has to pull them off me for a moment while I go to clean myself up.

    There's something different about being in your own shower as opposed to Meredith's, or the Echeart's guest bedroom's. There's something different about knowing you're back home but still unsafe; that, in a few hours, it will be up to you to decide if Maris lives or dies. There's something different, painfully so, about letting the water drip from your hair into your eyes, thinking about the people you left behind: the whisper of their names in my ears. Shi, Gael...

    I step out of the shower a little too hastily and nearly fall on the slippery tile, as if the shower is the reason the thought of them both jabs at my heart. I may not be able to bring Shi back, I think, but I can avenge him, and I will return to Gael, if it's the last thing I do.