The Space Between Enemies

We didn't sleep that night, scratch that, we couldn’t sleep even if we tried. Everybody tried to play it cool but we were all on high alert. My body was weary, my mind was not at peace, my heart was heavy but I didn’t dare close my heart for fear of what would happen if I did.

 Orion took the first watch by the mended window after doing some kind of magic to cloak the house. Selene sat apart from all of us in the corner with her knees drawn up, eyes closed but clearly not resting, from where I was I could feel the wheels in her head turning. Cillian found me on the back steps sometime past three in the morning, staring at nothing in particular.

"You should be resting," he said, easing down beside me, careful of the side Selene had gotten a good hit on.

"So should you." I said without raising my head to look at him

"I asked first."

The night had gone very still, the particular stillness that comes right before a sky decides whether to stay dark or start turning grey, and somewhere behind us I could hear Orion's low voice, murmuring something to Selene that I couldn't make out — not friendly, not hostile, just careful, the sound of two people deciding how much space to leave between them.

"I don’t think I remember how," I admitted. "Every time I close my eyes I see the book. Or the fire. Or my parent’s face. It’s an unpleasant rotation."

He didn't say anything right away. He just sat with me, close enough that our shoulders touched, and let the silence be something other than empty.

"Does it get easier?" I asked after a while. "Losing people, I mean. You said you’ve had longer to get used to things not making sense. Does that include this part?"

"No." He said it plainly, no cushioning. "It gets different, not easier. You learn to carry it in a way that doesn’t stop you walking, eventually. That’s the best I can honestly offer you."

"That’s bleak."

"You said you wanted the truth this time. I’m attempting to deliver."

Something in that landed softer than the words themselves, and I found myself, absurdly, almost smiling.

"Who did you lose?" I asked. "Your mother, you said, earlier. Was there anyone else?"

"A lot of people over the years, if you count it the way I’ve started to count it lately." He looked out at the yard, at the scorched grass still smoking faintly in patches. "I try not to make a habit of counting. It doesn’t leave much room for anything else."

"And tonight? Are you counting tonight?"

"Tonight I’m trying very hard not to," he admitted. "I find it easier when you’re talking to me instead."

"Then I’ll keep talking. It seems like the least I can do, given everything else you’ve done tonight." I said softly, warmth in my stomach that I could make things ease up for him a bit.

"You don’t owe me anything for tonight.

"I know. I’m offering anyway."

Behind us, through the window, I could see Orion's silhouette pass once, twice, still packing, still moving, giving us , exactly as much space as he could afford to give without actually leaving his post.

"For what it’s worth," he said eventually, "you were terrific tonight in the yard. I’ve known Selene’s reputation for years. I have never once seen anyone make her recalculate like that."

"I nearly burned your face off."

"You didn’t, though. You knew exactly where I was the whole time." He turned his head to look at me, and in the porch light his eyes had gone that impossible color again, green and gold refusing to settle on one or the other. "I noticed that. I don’t think you did."

I didn't have an answer for that and I couldn’t risk him seeing my cheeks heat up, so I looked down at my own hands instead, ordinary again, no trace of flame, like the last several hours had happened to someone else's body.

"Can I ask you something," I said, "and will you actually tell me the truth this time?"

"I’ll try."

"Tonight on your porch when you approached me to speak to me, did you know? What I was going to become?"

He was quiet long enough that I thought I'd finally asked the one question he wouldn't answer.

"Yes, I did" he said slowly. "I knew something was going to happen too. I’d felt it for months before tonight. There is something about you that didn’t sit like an ordinary person sits in a room. I told myself it was just — " He stopped.

"Just what?" I probed him further.

"Just you," he said quietly, almost embarrassed by it. "That you were simply the kind of person a room noticed. I didn’t let myself look much closer than that, because I didn’t think I was allowed to."

Something in my chest went warm that had nothing to do with fire.

"Allowed by who?"

"Myself, mostly." A ghost of a smile, rueful. "I’m very good at making rules I have no intention of following consistently."

"Name one. A rule you broke." I smiled at him and waited patiently for him to speak.

"I told myself I wouldn’t learn your schedule." He wasn’t looking at me anymore, focused very deliberately on the middle distance. "I knew what time you opened the shop. What time Nova came by for coffee. What time you’d be walking home, most days, and roughly how long I had to find a reason to be outside when you did."

"That’s either extremely sweet or deeply concerning, and I genuinely cannot decide which."

"For the record, I couldn’t either. I still can’t."

"Cillian." My voice had gone very quiet. "For what it’s worth, I’m glad it was you. Across the street. All this time. Out of everyone it could have been."

Something in his face came undone, just slightly, just for a second, before he caught it and let it show anyway.

"So am I," he said. "More than I know how to say properly."

I found myself leaning toward him without entirely deciding to, and he didn't pull back, and for one long, suspended moment the porch and the dark and the war I hadn't agreed to fight all fell away to something smaller and quieter and entirely about the six inches of space between his face and mine.

"Aurora—"

The back door creaked. We separated so fast I nearly fell off the step, and Orion stood in the doorway with the particular expression of a man who had absolutely seen something and was choosing, for now, not to comment on it.

"Sorry," he said, entirely unconvincingly. "It’s time. We’re out of nights to waste in this world. We cross into Elaria before sunrise."

"Tonight?" My voice cracked on it, more than I wanted it to.

"Tonight," Orion said, gentler now. "I’m sorry, Aurora. I know it’s fast. It’s about to get a great deal faster."