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When she had finished with him, she laid down beside him on the airship’s hull. The stars stretched from horizon to horizon overhead, brighter than she had ever seen. There was the rustle of cloth as he tucked himself away, and the sound of a zipper; she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and stared upward with a sigh.
All at once she got the impression that she was the wrong twin. It should have been her sister laid out beside the Black Wolf, cermite at her back and the firmament before her eyes.
Odette was not certain if this was her conclusion or Gaius’s; if she had not owned it a moment before it was hers to keep forever afterward. The ache in her chest was paralyzing. She should sit up, she knew; she should stand and cross to the hatch and descend back into the belly of the ship. Gaius Baelsar could weather a night watch alone.
But she did not trust her legs, under the circumstances, and so she lingered. His feelings were not settled, either—she could not help but get some sense of him, owing to the dubious blessings of light, and he was glad to see her. But still, she was not her sister, and never would be.
Odette turned her head to regard him. Seiryu’s Wall cast a pale blue glow over the scene; with his body betwixt her and the generators, the light traced only the rim of his profile, leaving his familiar features in shadow.
Sadness. That was what afflicted her now, settling in her chest like a leaden weight. Shouldn’t that have been easier to identify? She was familiar enough with the emotion, not least of all after recent events. But that did not fully encompass all she felt. True, she mourned a little what was no longer to be, betwixt her and Gaius—but she mourned it like a little bird, who had sung so prettily once and would not lift its voice to that melody now nor ever again. What she felt was nowhere near as light as birdsong, nor as its absence.
Something else, then.
“I wish to ask you something, Baelsar,” she said, before even she was aware of her intent to speak. “Have I earned that privilege?”
Gaius turned his head to regard her. The motion cast his face in shadow, looking upon hers in light. “You may ask,” he said. “Your rights do not extend so far as to the expectation of an answer, just the same.”
She closed her eyes, as though she could not bear to look upon what came next. “Have you ever been in love?”
He said nothing. She could hear his breathing, feel the roiling of his emotions beneath the surface of his flame-scarred skin. The silence extended on a while, underlaid by the low hum of the magitek generators some yalms away.
“This is not a question I ask in hope,” she added, opening her eyes.
“Good, for you would be disappointed,” Baelsar said.
A curious answer, she could not help but note—in that it was no answer at all to the question she had actually asked.
Guilt, she realized, slipping into it like a tailored jacket. That was a more apt name for the feeling that pinned her limbs. The guilt of having taken from her sister’s plate—yes, that was part of it, but not all. She could not compass the rest of it in Baelsar’s presence, and did not wish to try.
“I don’t believe I have ever been in love,” Odette said. “I am always sure to leave ere there’s any danger of that.”
“There are worse strategies that strategic retreat,” the Black Wolf told her.
“It has been put about that I am broken by this incapability.”
His snort was derisive, dismissive—and not meant for her, she realized. “Look at all you have accomplished, girl,” he implored her. “Even set against one another, I could not deny what you had wrought. Let them call us broken, if they call us broken.” And they had, she knew instantly. “Wolves need not concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.”
She should thank him, she knew, but gratitude did not settle any more easily upon her than had guilt. Instead, she said something else: “I think we should not do this any longer.” There was a smallness in her voice.
“That might be best,” Gaius Baelsar agreed dispassionately. Then he said, “I can finish the night watch alone.”
The sharp sting of dismissal should have compounded the weight upon her, but she felt it like spurs instead, and let it drive her to her feet. But it was not the crew hatch she found herself drawn toward; rather she dared the curve of the hull until she could jump, safely, landing on the soft white sands below.
Odette got the sense, even then, that this was a ritual she was bound to repeat for as long as the three of them remained in the Burn. She put Seiryu’s Wall to her right, and began to walk.