Oleander

XIX. Harbors (part two)

Rain came in a shivering sigh that bought them time to ride back to the high city, to tend their wounds, to plan and prepare before the next battle. Bearing both of their weights, after a poor dinner of wild summer grass and terror, Shadow walked slowly through Semyra. The city, cloaked in slumbering gray, sleeping witness to their ambling journey, did not rise to meet them. And it was, perhaps, how Yalira preferred it, her spirit still sore in the aftermath of their refusal, still small in facing her smaller place in the world. Andar's breadth shielded her from the brunt of the mist, his breath soothed the cold born of her dismay, and, in quiet words that matched the hiss of storm over cobblestone, he offered to reveal the unwelcome fates of her priestesses.

Only she could not bear to know.

Not yet.

Not when she recognized his tone—the same she'd used so many times before—the soft, sorrow-touched cadence that meant to ease the unforgivable sharpness of truth.

So it was in exhausted silence they returned to the palace that overlooked the grey-streaked Semyra. Trapped between his tense arms, this homecoming felt as foreign and foreboding as her first glimpses of the high city. Only now, veiled in rain, there was no joyous crowd, no waiting assembly of queens.

A single shadow stood before the unflinching columns.

Andar did not rush to help her dismount. He let his hands linger against her chilled skin. He pressed his lips to her brow, and the gentleness seared through the cold. But when he turned to embrace the lone figure, heedless of that gravity that lived between them, Andar moved with a swiftness that shamed wind.

Their masculine greeting, arms clasped, bore none of the affection that Andar had afforded her. But in its details, Yalira could see the threads of emotion far deeper. It was in the tightness of their fingers around the other's arm, the way Andar's muscles sighed in fractions, the watery softening in Oristos's mismatched eyes.

Though the question had plagued her, Yalira had not voiced it. It had felt too dangerous to know. And now its answer rang through rain.

Andar loved Oristos.

Deeply. Fully. Beyond the friendship he so cherished.

You make me thoughtless. You make me small. You make me weak.

Even against his feathered kisses, the gentle offerings he'd meant to ply her with, those were not the words of love. A stinging fissure cracked in her heart, and the unwelcome sharpness of it flooded Yalira's cheeks with heat. She blamed their new physical connection, her inexperience, the unexpected sight of him kneeling before her. Shared trauma had paved the path to bodily intimacy, and in naïve, girlish foolishness, she had let that act threaten her resolve against him.

It cannot be true jealousy, she promised herself. Swallowing at the tightness in her throat, Yalira stroked Shadow's neck, searching for some small ember of warmth to soothe the foreign feeling cut into her heart.

Oristos broke their greeting to turn to her. His soft brown hair was slick in the rain, eyes swimming in relief. He bore none of the bruises and burns she and Andar had collected in the chaos of the night, but for all of his untouched skin, his suffering lingered in the insistence of his frown, the shadowed darkness to his gaze.

Understanding answered in that brown and blue, and the underserved gentleness of it cut sharper than her undeserved jealousy. Yalira did not know what conversations had occurred, what truths lived between the two men, but in that moment of misted silence, she realized that there was nothing Oristos would not forgive.

A pained smile softened the stubborn lines at his worried mouth, and Yalira recognized the invitation. In a heartbeat, she was in Oristos's arms. In fractured breaths, she wanted to apologize, to explain. The careful defense she'd built, the denying wall—the fire, her priestesses, pain, powerlessness, guilt—crumbled in the face of his gentle, enduring friendship. As hard as she fought against it, the words became quiet sobs.