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Ariel is very used to having confusing emotions that cause her trouble to explain, but she hadn’t realized before now that there are some things for which there aren’t any words for at all.
There’s nothing that Ariel can say. There’s nothing she can do that can fix this. She can’t even articulate it within her own head. So she wraps her arms around Alexei’s leg and says nothing at all. She doesn’t look up. Not at Alexei’s face. Not at Cornelia.
The air is hot around them, and so is Alexei’s armor. It feels like knives against Ariel’s already stinging burns. Around them, there is still the sound of crackling fire, though less encompassing than before. Heat still billows like breath from an oven, but now there is also the trickle of water over ash and charcoal.
Approaching footsteps splash through the water spreading over the ground, and Ariel lifts her face away from Alexei’s hip where she had rested it. Coronis. She had been the farthest back. Coronis’s face is stark with the same emotion that is surely reflected in Ariel’s own, but she looks—hopeful? How—?
Coronis raises a chain, from which are hanging two glittering gems. One of them is a diamond. It sparkles red and white, sharp glimmers refracting in the firelight.
Ariel feels her heart drop from where it sat cold in her stomach, down into her feet. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears, because a diamond means—but Ariel—she hadn’t changed her spells this morning.
She could have.
She hadn’t.
She thinks she’s going to be sick.
Ariel’s sure her face is doing something awful. She shakes her head. She does not speak.
Her tense arms spasm around Alexei’s leg, and—she should let go, right? She shouldn’t be touching him. She shouldn’t be near him or Cornelia. She hadn’t…she can’t. She can’t fix this. But she could have.
Ariel closes her eyes tight, and rests her face back against Alexei’s side. Her head feels warm and wobbly and stuffy and not quite there. She thinks her ears are ringing.
Ariel can feel her chest twinge; her breaths want to hitch. She won’t let them. She breathes long and slow, the barest passage of air between her lips. She can’t cry right now. That’s not her place. It’s not her sister that’s dead.
Ariel tries to focus on the smooth press of Alexei’s armor against her temple, and the warm sloshing of the water around her ankles. It smells like smoke—it has been smelling like smoke since they’d arrived, and she can’t pick up anything else underneath it. Not even from Alexei, right next to her, who usually smells uncomfortably like dog.
Alexei is so still. She can’t even feel him breathing. Can’t hear him either. It’s almost enough to make her look up, to check on his physical well-being—but she can’t. If she looks up…. She can’t look up. She can’t look at his face. She can’t see Cornelia.
On Alexei’s other side, one of Vesper’s feet shifts slightly in the sooty water, sending ripples out around them. He’s hugging Alexei too. He had moved first, and Ariel had just copied him, because she didn’t know what to do.
Vesper is still alive. When Alexei had dragged him out of the building, Ariel hadn’t been sure…he’d looked….
Ariel clenches her eyes shut enough to hurt. She clings to Alexei. She wonders if he’d notice if she let go. The ringing in her ears is so loud.
Ariel wishes that she was anywhere but here.
She lets her head go soft and faded and buzzy. She isn’t here. She isn't here. She isn’t here or anywhere.