LYSANDER
This isn’t how he wants her to whisper, this isn’t the bedside voice he might (if he is honest) sometimes dream of hearing from her. The words are right, but the tone is oh, so wrong.
He has never been a man given to pretending, but now he wonders if he should. The thought lasts only as long as one of his too-quick heartbeats. Florentine deserves better than lies, however well-intended – and besides, she knows the truth anyway. They both do.
Her touch is warm along his jaw; can she feel the flutter of his heartbeat, the futile rush of blood in his veins? Surely she can feel the smile that grows on his lips; it keeps no secrets.
You are dying, she says, and he nods. No longer does he feel tangled in the gauzy confusion of unconsciousness; his mind is clearer, his fear is buried beneath his curiosity. There is something almost academic about the way he lifts his head, runs his green-eyed gaze down his body, bandages and bruises. It lingers on a strip of linen wound tight around his ribcage. “Yes, he agrees, and the pain sings sweetly on.
He looks up at her question, and finds her eyes on the same place his own had been. Oh, here is the thing he should have told her before, and even now his tongue wants to keep it back.
But they are beyond secrets.
“The riftlands are ending,” he says, and wonders if she will be angry with him, for withholding such news of her family, her homeland. He is careful to keep each breath light and slow, and he says no more – nothing of whether it is ending quickly, or in fire or water or sickness. He does not know, he only knows it’s true.
Do you know how I might save you? Lysander does not answer, save for the weight of his gaze on hers before it slips again to her dagger.
“It would be foolish to change so much,” he answers her, finally. His eyes lift again to hers; he shifts on the bed and winces at the bright bite of pain, hidden away beneath those bandages. He does not look to see if there is blood on them as there is on the sheets. There is no need, because he can feel it slick and hot on his skin.
Lysander does not tell her that he doesn’t want her to go back, that he can’t bring himself to be sorry for what happened, and for all the ugly truths it revealed.
Ah, but there is this: he does not want to die. Not here.
When he closes his eyes he ignores the pain, forgets each whispered breath; he searches his memory of that night. There is so little he can remember before his world went black. There had been to time at all. Except –
Again that glint of a knife. And a voice, angry, swearing, silver as a ghost. A black laugh that followed before the world crashed down. Had there been a glint in the snow, or was it only the blood in his eyes?
“I think,” he begins carefully, and opens his eyes again. Florentine is all gold, a halo of drifting sunlight around her; he feels a little remorse at what he must ask her now. Hopefully there would be time to repent. “That there is a piece of metal still inside me.” He swallows, tastes the copper of blood. There isn’t much of it, but he has a good imagination; he knows what it might feel like, to have it coat his throat.
“Can you cut more than worlds with that dagger of yours?”
He does not beg, he does not say please, but there is something in the dark undergrowth green of his eyes that asks save me.
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