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Jesinia is watching the door to the Archives when Violet strolls in. She’s gotten into the habit of keeping an eye out for her friend, grateful for the brief moment of companionship in her day, and she’s quick to move forward to intercept her before another scribe cadet can.
As Jesinia moves towards her, however, her eyes lock on the person trailing into the room, pushing the library cart with one hand and holding the door open for Violet with the other. He’s beautiful. Tall, much taller than Violet (although it isn’t hard to be). A lock of blonde hair falls into his eyes and a dimple appears in his cheek as he gestures dramatically to accompany whatever he’s saying. Violet’s making the face that she makes when she’s trying not to laugh—lips twisted, biting her cheek—and Jesinia should know, as she saw it all the time when they signed across the table to each other during boring moments in Professor Markham’s lessons.
“Jesinia!” Violet’s face lights up as she hurries towards her, her hands flashing in quick sign. Jesinia is fast to glance down, hiding the start of a smile on her face. The boy follows Violet, pushing the cart to her side, and then looks at Jesinia, his smile not lowering in wattage as it reaches her. “This is Liam,” Violet signs, spelling out his name. “Liam, this is Jesinia, my friend.”
She prepares to read his lips, hoping not to focus too much on the perfect pink swell of them, when to her surprise, Liam lifts his hands and signs to her. “It’s nice to meet you.”
It’s unclear who’s more surprised— Jesinia, who signs her own greeting back quickly, or Violet, whose jaw drops dramatically. “Where did you learn to sign?”
He shrugs. “I used it growing up. My mom taught me.”
Clearly confused by this answer, Violet’s eyes narrow before she turns back to Jesinia. “He’s my new shadow. He’ll be on Archives duty with me, probably for the foreseeable future.”
“Lucky me.” Liam’s smile grows even brighter, all of it fully focused on Jesinia, and she feels her cheeks heat.
Violet ignores this, passing her the list of requests for that day, and she hurries back to the shelves, sneaking a furtive look back at Liam through the stacks as she gathers the books and scrolls. He’s leaning against a table, one leg crossed casually over the other. Violet looks annoyed, but his expression is easy. He glances towards her hidden spot in the shelves, and on instinct she ducks, although realistically he shouldn’t be able to see her ogling.
Minutes later, she bustles back out, certain to keep her face down so that neither of them can see her blush. She glances up when Liam takes the stack from her arms, and it’s a critical mistake. This close, she can make out the smatter of freckles across his nose, the dusting of blonde eyelashes around his cornflower blue eyes. They seem to twinkle at her before he turns to deposit the books carefully onto the cart.
“How’s training?”
“It’s going okay.” Violet’s smile is unconvincing. “How are the Archives treating you?”
“As well as to be expected.” Jesinia’s head dips, a sign of respect, as she sees one of her leaders enter the room. He’s not paying any attention to her, but she doesn’t want to be caught socializing more than she should while on duty. “I have to return to my work, but it was nice to see you.”
“It was nice to see you, too.” Violet looks as if she wants to reach out, but turns instead to the cart.
“I’m glad to have met you,” Liam signs, and his smile is one that she knows will etch itself onto the inside of her brain for days. She wonders if his signing is rusty, or if he meant to say it that way— I am glad to have met you.
___
If Violet’s visits weren’t already her favorite part of the day, the addition of Liam would have made it so without a doubt. The sight of his blonde head dipping into the doorway behind Violet’s silver braid every day has Jesinia’s heart unwillingly skipping a beat, her stomach alight with nerves. She finds herself brushing her fingers through her brown curls when she knows they must be on their way, although she knows that this is a shameful way for a scribe to behave— appearance is nothing. She is not supposed to care about anything besides the deliverance of information. She is failing.
It’s hard to feel like failing, though, when Liam is cracking a joke in sign that she’s not allowed to laugh at and Violet is rolling her eyes and Jesinia feels warmth spreading through her. He’s got a thousand different smiles, and she wants to memorize each one. There’s the teasing, cheeky grin that she knows means he’s getting on Violet’s nerves, and the respectful, reserved one he aims towards other cadets when they cast curious glances at the relic trailing up his arm (it always shocks her how rude her peers can be, even without speaking). Her favorite of his smiles, however, is the quietest, shyest grin that seems reserved for when he’s meeting Jesinia’s tentative gaze.
She knows she’s not imagining it. Understands the weight of his look following her into the stacks every day, the way he never breaks eye contact first, the way he’d handed her a scroll once and let their fingers gingerly brush against each other (after this last incident, she’d watched Violet smack him when she thought Jesinia wasn’t looking, visibly scolding him). Although it’s been what feels like forever since she’s experienced it, she knows the feeling of a man’s interest.
She also knows that there could not be a worse idea. He’s a rider. A marked one, which she knows makes life even more dangerous for him. There is no reason for her heart to flutter into her throat at the slightest turn of his lips, but she can never quite shove it back down to where it belongs.
Violet acts as a nice buffer, something she can focus on when she’s certain that the distraction of Liam might actually send her into a swoon.
Until one morning, when he shows up alone.
Jesinia almost doesn’t notice him until she feels the tall presence over her shoulder, waiting patiently as she traces a finger through a case of files.
“Hi.” If there’s a way to sign shyly, she’s certainly doing it.
There’s that dimple of his. “Hi.”
“Where’s Violet?”
He looks wounded, placing a hand on his chest dramatically. “Ouch. It’s like you don’t even want to see me.”
There’s no one else in the room, so she takes the risk of rolling her eyes. “Is she okay?” Jesinia checks the death roll every morning before it gets read at formation, so she knows that Violet wasn’t on it, but that doesn’t mean that something hasn’t happened, that she hasn’t been hurt.
Understanding dawns on his face, replacing his joking offense in an instant. “She’s fine. Waiting on information about whether or not her sister made it through the attack at Montserrat, so I’m solo this morning.” She wonders if she might actually go blind when he flashes that grin at her.
She wants to ask if Mira is okay, but if Violet is waiting on information, then there’s no way Liam knows. Looking up at him, she gestures towards the cart. “Are there any requests for today?”
His eyes widen just a little bit, and he starts frantically patting his pockets in search of the list that Violet usually has neatly rolled in her hand. It takes a second for him to dig it up from his pants pocket, and Jesinia presses her lips downward to avoid a smile.
“Thank you.” She takes the cart from Liam and pushes it back towards the stacks, trying to keep her steps even. When she risks a look back at him, he’s gazing steadily at her, his face soft. She exhales and whips her head back to focus on the task ahead.
It feels like it takes longer than usual, her fingers fumbling with nerves in a manner totally unlike her. There’s something about knowing that Liam’s waiting outside of the shelves for her that makes her incredibly nervous. Something about knowing that she’s going to have to go back out and talk to him, and that he’ll talk to her back, and that maybe he’ll crack a joke and she might not know how to respond. She’s not allowed to match him in the way that she desperately wants to, and something in the truth of that devastates her.
When she makes her way back out, pushing the cart in front of her, Liam’s head is craned towards the ceiling, his arms folded across his chest in the picture of leisure. She bumps his leg a little with the cart, and he makes a show of jumping, as if he hadn’t noticed her approach. She fights the urge to roll her eyes and smile, again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Cadet Mairi.”
“Wait.” His cheeks are red. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
She pauses, biting the inside of her cheek. The nerves flare brighter inside of her stomach. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you would want to hang out sometime.”
Her breath hitches. “Hang out?”
“Yes.” Liam’s brow furrows, and his hands posture in the air for a moment as if he’s thinking about what to say next. “I’m not sure if I used the right sign— I meant, spend time together.”
“You used the right sign.” Immediately, he looks embarrassed, his freckles darkening and his smile dimming just a little. Jesinia hesitates, hating what she’s about to say next. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
The downturn in Liam’s eyes is like she kicked a puppy. “Why not?”
She’s gone over it with herself a dozen times. He’s a rider. She’s a scribe. He risks his life every single day, taking daggers to the side and climbing onto dragons and scrapping with his peers for fun. She’s designed for a life within the shelves, the scent of paper, of peace and quiet. There is no room for fire in her life. Yet, as her mind flickers over it, she just can’t bring herself to articulate the thought.
When she doesn’t answer, he tries again. “Violet told me you were not someone to mess around with, and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to do that. I mean this. Seriously. I want to get to know you.” His face is pleading, just a little.
“I want to get to know you too.” Her hands nearly fly through the air, and his shoulders sag with relief. “But I just think it’s dangerous.”
“Being a rider is dangerous.” His lips quirk upwards. “Spending time with a beautiful girl is not.”
Jesinia blushes. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to be—” she pauses, thinking of how to put it. “—involved with a rider.”
He nods, slowly, his eyes downcast as he seems to process her answer. Before she can feel too bad, he’s springing right back up as an idea lights in his eyes. “What if I just walked you back to your room, tonight? Made sure you got back safely?”
“I always get back safely. Scribes don’t attack each other the way the riders do,” she reminds him.
“Humor me, please. If you really mean it, and you don’t want to spend time together, then I won’t bother you about it again.” There’s the slightest bloom of hope in his eyes, and she just can’t bear to crush it.
Jesinia takes a moment to glance around, ensuring there’s no one around to pick up on their conversation. “Okay. But don’t get any ideas, alright? You’re just walking me to my room.”
Pure light spreads across Liam’s face. Something deep within her tells her that everything is about to change.
___
In the beginning, he truly is just walking her home.
That first night, she finds Liam a little ways down the hall from the Archives. In the moments before he notices her approach, she tries to be subtle as her eyes trace down his legs in the tight leathers, the broad stretch of his shoulders leaned casually against the wall, the bulge of his biceps beneath his black t-shirt. The moment he sets eyes on her, his posture relaxes, his arms settling at his sides instead of being folded across his chest.
“I thought I was getting stood up.”
Her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. I was helping another cadet with a research question.”
“Oh no, no need to apologize. I’m just glad you didn’t get cold feet.” Gods, that smile. He must know the effect it has on her, the instantaneous way her heart melts between her ribs.
She guides him down the hall towards the scribe dormitories, suddenly grateful that it’s a bit of a trek. She’ll take all the time she can get with him, even if she won’t admit it.
“So, how was your day?”
She wonders if he’s making fun of her, when he knows that her day has just been spent sorting books and in class as it always is, but when she looks up at him, Liam’s face is completely sincere.
“It was good. I had class in the morning, and spent the afternoon working on a research project. Probably nothing as interesting as yours.” She’s dismissive on purpose, certain that he can’t be that interested in the life of a scribe. He seems like he’s been flying today, unless his hair always looks that windswept and she’s never noticed.
“I’m glad you had a good day.” Gods help her, he clearly means it. “What were you researching?”
“Nothing.” She shrugs.
“Well, it has to be something, otherwise you wouldn’t be researching it.” His shoulder nudges hers unexpectedly. “Unless it’s top-secret scribe business.”
Jesinia shakes her head, sighing, although it feels like her shoulder might start honest-to-Gods tingling at the contact. “We’re researching other ways to preserve texts and copy them to make them more accessible to non-academics.”
“That’s cool.” Liam’s smile is genuine, and her cheeks warm again. She locks her gaze on the stone floor before them, too shy to look him fully in the face again.
“This is the part where you tell me what incredibly risky thing you did in the Rider’s Quadrant today,” she signs.
She sees his shoulders shake with a laugh. “Nothing, really. I did some training by myself, because Violet was working with Xaden on something, and I had a class on wielding, but we were focused on smaller magics. Not to flex, but I’ve just about mastered making a coin float.”
She can’t help but be curious. “I’ve heard some things about that. Violet and Xaden, I mean. Is there something going on between them?”
A wicked smile curves onto Liam’s lips. “Are you, a scribe, trying to get some gossip out of me?” Although he can’t really convey a tone in his signing, she can see the teasing shock and glee written across his expression.
“It’s my job to collect information!” She signs defensively, although she can’t help but let a humorous smile slip at his reaction. Liam stops dead in his tracks.
Her face drops. “What’s wrong?”
His throat bobs and she tries her best not to track the movement. “I’ve been imagining it all this time, but you have the loveliest smile I’ve ever seen.”
Her stomach launches into free-fall. “You can’t mean that.”
“But I do.” Liam blinks at her, total and vulnerable honesty on his face.
Jesinia glances around, her face on fire. There’s no one in the hall around them, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be soon. Without responding, she turns on her heel and continues to walk. In her periphery, he rushes to catch up to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
She wants to duck her head down, but she has to look up to watch him sign back. “Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t know—” As she moves to continue her response, her foot snags on a loose stone and she stumbles forward. Not even half of a second passes before Liam’s got an arm around her waist, his other hand pressed firmly into her lower back to catch her. Her heart pounds in her chest, her wrists, her throat, as she meets Liam’s wide eyes. The moment freezes, briefly, and she’s aware that one of her hands has landed on his broad chest, and she can feel his breathing, steady underneath her palm.
He blinks, seemingly coming back to himself, and quickly steadies her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m alright.” Jesinia brushes imaginary dust off of her scribe robes, pretending she can’t still intimately feel the warmth of his hand on her back. “Good reflexes.”
His chest deflates with an exhale, the corner of his mouth lifting once more as they keep walking. “I’ve been told those are important in a rider.”
When he finally delivers her to her door, Liam bids her goodnight and makes his way down the hallway. Although she can’t help but keep her gaze fixed on his retreating figure, he doesn’t look back. Jesinia falls asleep dreaming of his arm around her waist.
The next morning, she doesn’t say anything out of the ordinary to Violet, although she does ask after Mira, who is thankfully okay. Liam’s eyes linger on her, but they always do, and her cheeks flush the same way they always have. She grabs their books, makes the returns. He tells her to have a good day as they make their way out of the Archives.
As far as they’re both concerned, it seems, it will not happen again. Nothing has changed between them. Because she knows this is how it has to be, she’s a little relieved. Because she secretly wants it to be different, she’s a little dejected.
Surprise jolts through her that night when Jesinia exits the Archives and spots a familiar silhouette leaning against the wall.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, I was thinking about you tripping in the hall last night, and worried it might happen again.” His smile is slightly goofy, but his eyes are sincere. “Would you mind if I walked with you?”
Although she can feel the embarrassed blush spreading across her cheeks, she’s too weak to deny herself more time with him. She nods, slowly.
It becomes a regular event. More nights than not, Jesinia emerges from the double doors of the library, says goodnight to the guard on duty and turns to find Liam waiting for her. Eventually, it’s more than just a walk back to her dormitory. Soon, he’s convinced her to take ‘the long way’, which involves a loop around most of Basgiath’s grounds, although they avoid the hotspots where their peers might be likely to hang out.
Conversations about their days turn into details about their personal lives. Liam tells her about his sister, Sloane, and how she’s stubborn and smart and funny and he hasn’t seen her in five years. Her chest hurts at the thought of being distanced from one of her siblings for that long. She tells him of her younger brother, who wants to become a rider, but spends more time working on puzzles than training on any sort of combat or skills necessary to do so. They discuss what they liked to read growing up (he had an affinity for fictional war novels, while she read just about anything she could get her hands on). Jesinia tells him of the garden she’d dreamed of starting since she was young. Liam tells her that his father was the one who taught him how to carve the little figurines he carries around in his pockets (“I usually carve while I talk”, he admits, “but I need my hands to talk to you”).
There are some things that they don’t discuss. The rebellion, for one, although Liam doesn’t shy from brushing against it with mentions of his family or growing up in the foster home. Sometimes, he shows up with a black eye or another obvious injury from training, and Jesinia can never muster the courage to ask how he deals with all that pain. She knows that he wins all of his fights, that he’s the best in their year, although not because he tells her— this is information that she has to find out for herself, mostly through the gossip trains that run through Basgiath.
They don’t totally avoid suspicion. Violet cuts curious eyes between them every day, but has never asked Jesinia about it. The other scribe cadets whisper behind their hands when she leaves to see Liam, and although she can’t hear what they’re saying, she knows that they know, that they can see her and Liam making eyes at each other every morning when he passes through with the library cart.
She grows used to him. Everything about Liam seems relaxed, easy, soft, and all she wants is to sink into him like a warm bath at the end of every day. On the days he doesn’t meet her, usually when he’s been caught up in some rider business, she has to struggle with the disappointed sinking of her stomach, promising herself that she’ll be tougher the next time. She has to be. Jesinia cannot be catching feelings for him.
Despite it all, she thinks she is.
There are moments where they don’t sign back and forth to each other as they meander the halls, just enjoying each other’s presence. Liam’s knuckles occasionally brush against hers, and shivers race up her arm. Some nights, she leans against the wall by her door and Liam braces an arm on the other side of her, leaning just a hint too close for comfort. If anyone were to see them, she’d be ruined, but she gets lost in his glittering blue eyes, the intoxicating scent of him, something like a field after a storm, warm and clean and electric.
“I should get going,” he signs on one of these nights. He’s standing so close to her that she can nearly feel the warmth of his body, and she keeps her eyes trained on his freckled hands, the movement of his deft fingers.
She sighs. “You probably should.”
Despite their sentiments, Liam doesn’t move, and she looks up at him. His eyelids are heavy, every inch of him focused on her.
He leans in. She stills.
Slowly, he brushes his lips carefully against her cheek. He lingers there, for a moment, and she fights the urge to lean into him, to shift her chin and let their mouths meet.
When he finally leans back, his eyes are closed, something like bliss on his face. After several moments, his eyes crack carefully open. “Sweet dreams, Jesinia.”
Before she can respond, he’s moving down the hallway at a decent pace, and she’s sinking back against the stone wall, wishing she could memorize the feel of his lips on her.
___
One afternoon, Jesinia wanders the shelves, lost in thought over the tenderness of a cheek kiss and the sweet smile of the boy who had gifted it to her. She almost doesn’t notice another scribe cadet, flagging her to the table where a second cadet frowns over a scroll.
“What is it?”
“Cadet Mairi is the one who comes in with Sorrengail each morning, right? The one that you’re...” The cadet pauses. “Friends with?”
Jesinia’s stomach drops. “Yes, why?” In an instant, she’s craning to see what the other cadet is looking at, and it becomes quickly obvious why she’d been brought over.
It’s the infirmary roll for that day— the record of all the cadets that have been brought in. She’d heard that War Games were occurring soon, but this list is long, stretching across two pieces of parchment. Somewhere in the middle, where her friend’s finger hovers, is Liam’s name.
Every instinct in her tells her to flee. This is what she’d feared, the entire time, what she’d known had been coming. Liam had been hurt— more than just a scratch or a bruise. From the markings on the scroll, he’d needed to be mended. She felt almost nauseous at the thought, reminded of all those times she’d seen Violet after mending.
Jesinia backs away, unable to focus enough to sign her thoughts back to the other cadets. Before they could reach out, she's stepping sharply back further and further until she's buried in the stacks, whipping around to move with a sudden purpose until she was in one of the deepest, most remote areas of the shelves. When she's certain no one would find her, she curls in on herself and begins to cry.
___
That night, of course, Liam wasn’t leaning against the wall waiting for her.
She’d been ruminating on what she’d do for the remainder of her day’s duty in the Archives. She could, of course, go back to her dormitory, wash her face and brush her teeth and turn in for the night. Get some rest, as Liam would’ve suggested.
Even as she considered the thought now, her feet lead her in the opposite direction, towards the covered bridge connecting her to the rest of Basgiath’s campus. Almost on auto-pilot, she finds herself making quick, careful steps towards the healer’s quadrant.
She’d been prepared to sneak in, but there wasn’t a guard outside the doors, and the inside is still busy enough that no one even seems to notice her creamy robes ducking down through rows of people in rider black. The place stinks of antiseptic and metal, and she’s grateful not to be subjected to what she knows are the shouts of those around her. The place is in chaos. Healers and menders rush from bed to bed, doing the best they can. She winces as she passes a bed where someone vomits, hunched over a bowl.
The more time that passes, the more foolish it feels to be here. She doesn’t even know that he’s still in the infirmary— he could have been roused hours ago, he could be back in his own bed.
It takes several minutes of careful, quick glances at injured cadets in beds before she spots him, a head of golden hair gleaming on the pillow.
She’s at his side in a heartbeat. Liam’s eyes are peacefully closed, his chest steadily rising. He’s without a shirt, his muscled arms exposed as white gauze wraps thickly around his ribs. Freckles dance all down his neck and across his chest, underneath the wrapping.
When Jesinia feels certain that no one is paying attention, she carefully draws the curtain closed around them, and pulls a chair to his bedside. If she keeps her eyes on his face, and ignores the bright lighting, the harsh white of the sheets, she might be able to pretend he’s just asleep. Asleep, and very pale. There’s a jagged cut on his cheek, and she itches to fix it, somehow.
His hand lies limply at his side, empty fingers stretched upwards. Jesinia can’t help herself. She leans forward and interlaces her fingers with his, immediately appreciative of the warmth seeping through her palm.
It’s a late night for her, and it’s been a long day of sitting in the Archives and worrying herself sick about whether or not Liam was okay. She still doesn’t technically know that he will be— just that he sleeps. Before she spends too long sitting and staring at him, painfully beautiful even in rest, a yawn rips through her.
She could always go back to the Archives. Technically, she’s done what she wanted to do— seen that Liam is alive. But something in her nearly breaks open at the idea of him waking in this bed alone, and so she leans her arm onto the sheets next to him as a pillow to let herself rest.
It’s unclear how long she’s been asleep when Jesinia’s roused to the feel of someone’s hand, brushing over the side of her hair. Everything is stiff— her neck, her back, even her legs as she sits up, blinking against the light. Liam is there, awake, smiling softly at her. He waves.
She blushes, realizing she’s still got his hand trapped in hers, and it’s probably sweaty now, so she lets it go. She waves back.
“How long have you been here?”
She casts a look around, but there’s no way to indicate what time it is. “Maybe an hour?”
“You didn’t need to come.” His face is somber now. “How did you know I was in here?”
“I saw the infirmary roll in the Archives earlier. You got mended.” She gestures to his wrapped chest. “What happened?”
His lips turn up a little. “Some asshole put a sword in my side and I fell off my dragon.”
Everything in Jesinia goes cold. It somehow sounds worse than she had imagined.
“I’m okay, though, I promise. Violet saved my life, according to everyone else.” His smile grows wider. “And now I have the prettiest girl in Basgiath holding my hand at my bedside.”
Her immediate instinct is to look down and hide her blush, but Liam’s fingers are there in an instant, cradling her chin and turning her face to him. His calloused thumb rubs her jaw, so gently. “I’m okay,” he mouths.
For a long moment, all they do is stare. Jesinia is drinking him in— the thick eyebrows, the prominent nose, the barely-there dimple as he seems to study her right back. He’s okay. He’s here. He’s alive.
She thinks that she’ll see the blue of his eyes in every body of water she sees for the rest of her life.
The moment is eventually interrupted by Liam’s attempts to stifle a yawn. Jesinia straightens in an instant. “You should rest.”
“So should you.”
Although they agree, neither of them moves. Liam doesn’t stop looking at her, his eyes tracing her face. Then—
“Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
Everything inside Jesinia goes soft. “Of course.”
She expects him to tuck back into the sheets, but instead, he scoots off the center of the bed, making a space on the other side of him. He looks like he wants to sign something else, maybe a question, but the motions fail him and his cheeks redden instead.
This is, Jesinia thinks, a moment they won’t be able to come back from.
Carefully, she places a knee on the bed and moves to crawl in beside him, but hesitates realizing that she doesn’t know where he’s been hurt. He reads her face.
“Don’t worry, I got stabbed on the other side.” His smile is teasing. She rolls her eyes, but slowly settles in next to him, letting him curve an arm over her shoulder and pull her gently into the warmth of his body. Her cheek settles on his bare shoulder, freckled and soft, and the wide expanse of his hand rubs a circle on her back. Something rumbles in his chest and she looks up at him, but Liam is settling back into the pillows, his eyes flickering shut.
She takes a moment to appreciate it. The solid heat of his chest underneath her hand where she stretches it over his heartbeat, the way her legs curl against him on the mattress, the knowledge that she can stay here for a while and nothing else will matter. Despite the sterility of the air around, he still smells pleasantly of soap.
She lays with him, her eyes soundly shut, until his breaths even out beneath her and she knows he’s asleep. Even then, she gifts herself another fifteen minutes to enjoy the feel of Liam in her arms before she slowly disentangles herself from him and makes her way out of the infirmary.
___
A few days later, when Jesinia leaves the Archives for the night, Liam is in his usual spot, leaning against the wall and breaking off his conversation with the guard to grin at her. Her heart immediately and embarrassingly begins to pound.
“How are you feeling?” She asks, eagerly sliding into step beside him.
“I’m great. Never better.” His knuckles brush against her arm. “I missed seeing you, though.”
Jesinia frowns. She hadn’t visited him again in the infirmary, although she’d noticed when his name disappeared from the log. “I’m sorry. I wanted to visit you again, but—” Her fingers pause in the air.
“It’s okay. I know you want to keep this…” He pauses, thinking of the sign. “Discreet.”
Her cheeks flush at the idea of this , that there’s even something to be discreet about, although she knows there is. The last several nights, as she’d tried to fall asleep, she’d wrapped a pillow to her chest and tried to pretend it was Liam, solid and comfortable beneath her.
Before she can respond, Liam’s fingers wrap unexpectedly around her wrist and turn them both to tug her down a hallway, a deviation from their normal route. “I have a surprise for you,” he explains, although the minute he’s done signing his hand slides back down to grasp hers again. She relishes in this giddy feeling, a cute boy holding her hand and pulling her along, feels her smile stretching across her face and is grateful no one is there to see it. Besides him, of course.
He pulls her into a windowed alcove, so they’re sheltered from view of the rest of the hallway. It’s incredibly inappropriate for them to be hiding like this. Something in her stomach thrills at the thought.
The large window faces out onto the mountains, rolling grass awash in moonlight. She’d take longer to appreciate the beauty if it weren’t for the sight she appreciates far more— Liam, standing before her, suddenly close in this tight proximity.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She smiles shyly at him, and he doesn’t sign anything else for a minute.
“Close your eyes. I want to give you something.”
Jesinia hesitates, but she trusts him, so she lets her eyes flutter shut. Shyly, Liam gently slides his fingers around her wrist and lifts it. There’s a tense moment where she waits there, delighting a little in the feel of his gentle fingers against the back of her hand, before something smooth and hard glides into her palm.
She glances down. It’s a wooden flower, long-stemmed and gorgeous. The petals gather in a stunning explosion of shape at the top, dancing over each other. She gasps and holds it to the light so she can see it better, tracing her fingers over the delicately carved leaves.
“It’s so beautiful. You made this?”
Liam’s face is red, like he’s embarrassed, but his smile doesn’t dim. “I wanted to make you a full bouquet, and maybe I still will, but I couldn’t wait to give you this one.”
Much to her surprise, Jesinia feels tears prick at the back of her eyes. “I love it.”
“There’s something else.”
Liam reaches out, carefully, and twists the flower in her hand, lifting one of her fingers so she can feel that something small is carved into the underside of one of the petals. She holds the flower closer to the moonlight, squinting to make it out.
When she sees it, her heart soars into her throat. It’s tiny. If she hadn’t known it was there, she’d have missed it, but there it is: a tiny J + L in endearingly clumsy script underneath the petal.
“I’m sorry, maybe it’s silly.” Liam sheepishly rubs at the back of his neck. “I can always buff it out if you want—“
Surprising the both of them, Jesinia leans onto her tiptoes and kisses him.
There’s a heartbeat where he’s frozen beneath her, and she convinces herself that he must not reciprocate her feelings, despite the wooden flower clutched in her hand, despite him pulling her into his sickbed, despite their initials, how carefully and delicately he must have carved them.
In a sudden rush, Liam reanimates beneath her, his hands wrapping around her waist, pulling her closer to him, and oh. Oh. He's so much softer than she’d imagined. He sucks at her lower lip and she parts beneath him, sliding one hand up his neck and into his hair. The other, still gripping the rose, finds purchase on his shoulder.
She doesn’t know how aware she’d been of it, but this is what she’d been waiting for. He kisses her like a man starved. He gives and takes, tracing her lip with his tongue and framing her face in his hands so that he can tilt her backwards, kiss her deeper. She’s sure a whimper has escaped her, and an answering moan follows from Liam, which she feels vibrating in his chest.
They spend a truly indecent amount of time in that alcove. It’s so easy to let him slip a thigh between her legs, bracing her carefully against the wall as he kisses her until she’s breathless, shaking, wanting in his arms. She is a candle, and Liam is a match. Twin flames, intertwined in this clandestine way. Her heart soars.
The kissing slows, eventually. She is tired, although she tries to fight it, and when Liam’s mouth, soft and warm against hers, begins to draw sleepy kisses from her, it’s all she can do to avoid going limp in his arms and letting him carry her back to her room.
He walks her back, like a true gentleman, their fingers tightly interlaced. As they approach the scribes quadrant and run the risk of actually being spotted, she bites down so hard on her lip in an attempt not to smile that she tastes blood on her tongue. The scribes are all in bed, anyways, and it’s this knowledge that has Liam pinning her to the wall outside her room, pressing a final lingering kiss to her mouth.
“Goodnight, beautiful.”
With another heartbreaking smile and a wink, Liam is making his way back down the hallway, and Jesinia finds herself half-swooned against her door. She fumbles with the knob.
Once inside, she risks a glance in the mirror above the sink, and gasps at her appearance. Her hair is disheveled, brown curls tumbling over her shoulders. Her lips are swollen, and there are spots of bright pink high in her cheeks.
She looks like a girl in love.
She thinks, as she sets the wooden flower just so on her nightstand, that she just might be.
___
When she sees Liam the next morning, she’s certain that her cheeks could start a fire with how furiously they blush. Immediately upon laying eyes on him, she’s remembering his strong hands on her hips, the swell of his mouth underneath hers, the rumble in his chest when she’d curiously felt his tongue with her own.
Violet glances suspiciously between them, and Jesinia doesn’t understand how she doesn’t just know, but she doesn’t say anything. He just smiles and greets her like always, his freckles pleasantly pink, and hands her the list of book requests. Jesinia can’t hold in her answering grin, so she quickly retreats to the shelves before unfolding it.
She hadn’t been expecting it, but there’s a smaller note wrapped in the requests list. I can’t stop thinking about you, reads Liam’s boyish handwriting.
An overjoyed, nearly hysterical giggle rises in Jesinia’s chest, but she quickly tamps it down, clamping a hand over the smile she can’t fight and ignoring a judgemental stare from another cadet as she bustles through the shelves. When she returns to Liam and Violet with a freshly full cart, she checks in with Violet and, with much effort, ignores the weight of Liam’s gaze and sweet smile on her.
She practically dances through the Archives through the rest of the day, although, as always, she keeps her face respectful and drawn.
___
She doesn’t expect to see Liam after the Reunification Day party. He’d told as much her the night before, after tugging her into their usual alcove and pressing kisses to her jaw, which is why she’s surprised to feel a hand on her shoulder as she moves to her dormitory and turns to see Liam. There’s a gust of air that accompanies him, as if he’s been running to catch up to her, but he’s in such good shape that his breathing would never make it obvious.
“I was worried I’d miss you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be with Violet tonight?” She casts a look behind him, as if her friend is hiding around the corner.
“She went to go talk to Xaden.” Liam wiggles his eyebrows suggestively at her, and Jesinia covers her mouth to hide a laugh. They’d been speculating about Xaden and Violet for months, at this point— he’d been nearly bouncing with excitement to tell her when he’d had to move a whole new armoire into Violet’s room after what they thought was a late night visit between them. Jesinia was happy for her friend, although still wary of Riorson. Not because of his relic, of course, but because the stories of his violence had traveled widely across Basgiath. Everyone knew how dangerous he could be if you got on his wrong side.
Jesinia takes a moment to appreciate Liam’s outfit— the black sash over his matching doublet, one lock of hair curling over his forehead. “You look exceptionally handsome tonight.”
Liam beams, sliding his hand into hers. “I could say the same to you.”
“You think I look handsome?” She raises a quizzical eyebrow at him as they move down the hallway.
He shakes his head. “You’re funny.”
“I know.” When she pulls him down the hall to her room, she can almost sense the frown that will adorn his face without having to look. She never cuts their nights short like this— and she doesn’t plan to tonight.
She turns to face him in front of her door. Surely enough, he’s got an almost comical pout scrawled across his lips. “Are you tired?”
“No.” There’s no amount of gnawing on the inside of her lip that could hide this smile. “I was wondering if you wanted to come inside.”
Liam’s face lights up immediately, and then he visibly tries to calm it down. “Sure.” The sign is casual, but his face is certainly not, and she giggles as she catches his hand in hers and twists the door knob with the other.
She’s never paid much attention to her room before, but there’s an immediate urge to see it through Liam’s eyes. It can’t be much different than what’s in the rider’s quadrant— a matching wooden dresser and desk, a plain double bed with a light blue comforter stretched over the top. She’s gathered candles over most of the surfaces, and sets to work lighting them while Liam plucks the wooden flower from it’s spot on the nightstand, rubbing his thumb over where she knows their initials are carved.
When yellow light stretches across her room and every candle has been lit, she turns to Liam, who’s holding a book from one of the stacks in her direction. “I didn’t know you were a fan of horror,” he signs.
“I’m a fan of everything,” she replies simply, leaning against the dresser. They’re on opposite sides of the room from each other, but the tension feels thick enough to cut with one of Liam’s blades.
He flips to a random page of the vampire novel she’d been perusing the night before, wincing in disgust at something in the text. She laughs, and he glances up at the sound. His face instantly softens.
“There’s just no reason to read about someone’s spine being ripped out, I think. Too much description of the blood and guts.”
“You deal with violence all day, but you can’t handle it in a book?” Being alone with him is so freeing— there’s no reason to restrain herself as she smiles, as she teases him.
In two broad steps, he crosses the room to her, suddenly devastatingly close. Her eyes catch on his long eyelashes, brushing the tops of his cheeks as he blinks slowly, his eyes trained on her mouth. “I prefer to occupy my free time with softer things.”
She can barely restrain her shiver at the feel of his breath ghosting across her cheek. One of his hands finds her waist, a soft grip through her robe. She twines her arms around his neck. It’s hard to sign and to hold onto him, but Jesinia doesn’t need to see his hands to understand the liquid desire in his eyes, the way they drop even lower when her lips part.
Kissing him is quickly becoming as familiar as breathing. She indulges in it, gasping at how thoroughly he returns her endeavor, nipping and sucking at her mouth. One of his arms wraps tighter around her waist, while the other slides smoothly up her spine and into her hair, which has tumbled loosely from her hood.
The room feels like it’s grown twenty degrees warmer since they entered, hotter still as Liam presses her back into the dresser. Jesinia fumbles for the first knot at the top of her robe, dragging it loose to expose more of her neck.
The undressing is slow, patient. Liam kisses what feels like every inch of new skin that’s revealed to him. Jesinia makes quick work of the buttons on his doublet, pressing a hand to his abdomen and enjoying the ripple of warm muscle there. Before long, neither of them has much on at all, and Liam is walking her towards the bed, where they collapse, a mess of tongues and teeth and lips. He tells her how beautiful she is as he traces delicate fingers and breath along every centimeter of her. He is attentive, and careful, and sweet, just as she knew he’d be.
It’s not her first time in bed with a man, but it is by far the most special she’s ever felt.
When it’s over, their bodies coil together on her bed, and she traces constellations between the freckles on his arms, lets him draw her close and tuck her head underneath his chin. Jesinia almost wishes she could seal this moment with wax and live in it forever— the rise and fall of his chest, his fingers sketching soothingly up and down the base of her spine.
With time, they shift apart and begin to sign. It feels like something has unlocked within Jesinia— she finds herself telling Liam things she’s never told another. That she loves the Archives and the mission more than anything, but sometimes wishes she were more free. That sometimes she feels a little lost. That she misses her family. His eyes are so kind as they watch her fingers move, as he nods in understanding. He tells her about the loss of his parents, about how he’d recently learned that they hadn’t even bothered to put his father’s name on the death roll.
“Sometimes, I’m afraid. When I’m about to go into a fight, or when something is about to harm somebody I love. A lot of the time, though, I’m not allowed to be scared. I have to be brave. Always.” He blinks quickly, looking almost surprised as he signs it.
Jesinia sighs, and fits her hand to his face, soothing her thumb along his cheekbone. He turns his head and presses a kiss to her palm. Somehow, it feels like the most intimate touch they’ve shared all night.
“You don’t have to be brave around me,” Jesinia signs. “It’s okay to be a little scared, sometimes.”
He nods, chewing his lower lip, but doesn’t continue.
Then, slowly— “I’ve never felt this way about someone,” he tells her.
Her breathing shallows, just a bit. “Me neither.”
It’s terrifying to admit. To Jesinia’s utter mortification, her eyes start to mist a little, and Liam immediately reaches out, cupping her face the way she had his.
He pulls his hand away for a second. “What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head, shutting her eyes for the briefest moment. Liam’s calloused hand cups her jaw, petal-soft. This is what she had feared. She’s fallen for a rider, and anything could happen to him, at seemingly any moment.
She slowly opens her eyes. He’s still looking at her with almost overflowing compassion and understanding written on his face. “Sometimes, I’m scared too. I’m scared for you. You come back to me with bruises and cuts, or you end up in the infirmary...”
She can’t finish signing, her eyes now full of tears. Liam pulls her into his chest, wrapping both arms around her and holding her tight. She sinks into the embrace, inhaling the scent of him, soap and something earthy, breathing carefully until she feels calmer.
He pulls back so she can see his hands. “The important thing is that I’m always going to come back to you.” Liam hesitates. “I belong to you, you know?”
Her eyes fill almost instantly with tears again, and he blanches, which makes her laugh even as a tear streams down her face.
“I meant that to be a good thing,” he signs, wiping away the tear. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”
“I belong to you, too.” Jesinia feels like she’s unzipping her ribcage, baring her soul. “I’ve been yours for awhile now.”
Liam smiles. “Good.” He kisses her, sweetly and slowly, and Jesinia thinks that she doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve someone as kind as him. She tucks herself back into his arms, and he holds her close like it’s an instinct, like it’s something he’s been doing his whole life.
Jesinia’s just beginning to feel sleep tugging at her when he stiffens underneath her.
She glances up. “What is it?”
Liam’s gaze is far away, locked on the wall as if he’s hearing something. He doesn’t notice her signing before he’s sitting up and she’s giving him room on the mattress, confusion flooding her system.
“Is something wrong?” She tries again.
“It’s Deigh,” he signs. “Something’s going on. I need to go.”
In less than a heartbeat, he’s out of the bed, tugging his leathers over his hips and his shirt over his head. He pauses in the lacing of his boots to smile reassuringly at her, although she’s blinking at him in concern.
“Please be safe,” she signs.
“I’ll come back to you,” he says.
He presses one last kiss to her lips, and then her forehead, before he’s ducking out the door, leaving no evidence that he had been there at all besides her rumpled bed. Still shocked at his abrupt exit, Jesinia curls back into the duvet. His warmth lingers for a little, but before long the sheets have gone cold.
___
She spends the next day wracked with anxiety. No one quite knows what happened in the riders quadrant the night before, although they’d all heard about the commotion. Jesinia mentions to no one that she had been with a rider, that she had seen the concern in Liam’s face before he fled.
There’s no death roll that morning— no lost riders, which makes sense given that most of them had been celebrating Reunification Day the night before and probably not tried to kill each other. Still, despite her knowing how improbable it is that he or Violet would be on it, she lets out a sigh of relief.
The days that follow get progressively worse. Jesinia buries herself in research, ignores the thundering of her heart each night when she opens the doors to the Archive and some silly part of her expects Liam to be standing there, that ridiculous grin on his face before he pulls her in for a kiss right there in the hallway. It’s all she wants. It never happens.
She gets to the death roll on the fourth morning before any of the other scribe cadets do. The ink is still drying. And there is his name.
There are others. Violet’s. Xaden’s. Jesinia’s whole body trembles, some cold hard unfamiliar feeling lodging itself right into her lungs. The parchment shakes in her hand and although all she wants is to shove it away, she holds it closer, forcing herself to read the names over and over again. Cadet Liam Mairi. Cadet Violet Sorrengail.
Another scribe sets a hand on her shoulder, gesturing to ask if she’s alright. The scroll is close to ripping in Jesinia’s hands and she thrusts it onto the nearest table, frantically signing some frivolous excuse before she nearly trips out of the Archives and back down the hall. No one follows her.
Liam. I belong to you. Liam. I’ll come back to you.
Her best friends. The people who knew her best in this whole school, in this whole world. Both gone, just like that.
She spends the rest of the day weeping in her room. At some points, she retches. Snot drips down her face, onto her pristine robes. She rips them off, collapsing into the center of her bed— the last place she’d seen him. It doesn’t even smell like him anymore.
Technically, she might get into trouble for shirking duties, but when someone comes to check on her in the afternoon, her pallid face and the wastebasket full of vomit is enough to convince them that she’s got food poisoning. No one will ask anything else of her for awhile, even if they’ve made the connection between her sudden illness and the names on the death roll.
___
She’s a terrible friend.
When Jesinia learns that Violet had stormed into formation, still alive, her heart rises sharply in the hope that maybe the rest of the roll had been wrong. There’s a chance that Liam might have survived, too.
The glimmer of happiness is so immediately and painfully squashed that she returns to her room, citing the same illness she’d claimed before.
She mourns alone.
She has so little of him. A smattering of notes in her desk drawer— you look beautiful today, one reads. I dreamt of you last night, reads another. Her tears smudge the ink on a silly scribble of hearts and she shoves the notes back into the desk out of fear she’ll grind them into dust in her hands.
She sleeps each night with the wooden flower in her hand, tucked under her pillow. It doesn’t bring her comfort— it’s cold and hard and sometimes she wakes up with painful indentations on her skin where she’s laid on it wrong. She dreams of him. Flashes of freckled skin, of kind blue eyes, the sort of heart-stopping smile she always felt like she couldn’t look at too long. She wishes she'd looked longer. Every single night, she walks back to her room with her eyes locked on the cobblestones, afraid to look up and be devastated by his absence. Her entire existence, it seems, is devastated by his absence.
The benefit of Jesinia’s scribe training, however, is that she’s excellent at compartmentalizing. At hiding it. After the first two days, it’s as if nothing has transpired. There is no more fighting to keep a smile off her face, no more giddiness hidden in the shelves. She is stone-faced, as she should be. It is only in the safety of her own room that she’s allowed to feel.
She can’t talk to anyone about it. Violet is lost in her own world, clearly up to something with her strange requests from the Archives. The other scribe cadets couldn’t possibly understand. Her family wouldn’t understand. Really, she thinks the only person who would get it is Liam himself. They had talked about loss, about fear, about love, while he pressed soft and idle kisses into her shoulders and hair.
She knew he’d understand, but he just wasn’t here.
___
Jesinia’s never been stabbed before, but she imagines that she knows exactly what it must feel like when she lays eyes on Sloane Mairi for the first time.
It’s formation, two months into her second year. The girl is glaring ahead in her squad row while the death roll is called, those bright blue eyes focused but unseeing. Jesinia’s knees nearly go weak, even at the distance that stretches between them. She’s not close enough to see if the girl has his freckles.
She takes in a deep breath and stares ahead, locking her eyes on a stone in the wall far above their heads and digging her fingernails into her palm to avoid screaming.
___
Sloane doesn’t approach her until they’ve been in Aretia for weeks. Jesinia’s making her way out of a meeting room with a stack of scrolls when the blonde girl steps right into her path, nearly causing a collision.
If she’s honest, Jesinia’s been avoiding her. At meals, passing her on her way to meet with Violet— she can’t bear to look, to be reminded of the constant thrum of pain where Liam had once been. It’s not like Sloane knows who Jesinia is. She couldn’t. No one had known about her and Liam, and the secrecy is something that she regrets now.
Sloane always looks angry. Violet’s mentioned that she hates her, that she’s been struggling to train with anyone, that she’s been struggling in general. Jesinia can only imagine how tough it must be, entering the quadrant that killed your brother.
Even now, her eyes are smoldering a little. They are, to Jesinia’s dismay, exactly like Liam’s, sparkling sky blue. Her lashes are stubbier than his had been, and her freckles fainter, but there’s no missing the resemblance.
She’s surprised when Sloane signs her own name to her. “Jesinia.”
She nods.
Sloane looks suddenly nervous, almost shy. Jesinia imagines it’s not a look that she wears often. “I’m Sloane Mairi. Liam’s sister.” Her signing is clumsy and a little awkward, but Jesinia understands.
She nods again. Her hands are full of scrolls, so she can’t exactly sign back.
“Can we talk?”
Jesinia swallows, but follows Sloane to where she leads them. It’s a small room that might have originally been a large closet, except someone’s shoved a couple desks and chairs into it. Jesinia sets the scrolls down, but neither of them sits.
“You’re prettier than he described.”
Her head nearly jerks back in shock. It’s not what she’d expected Sloane to say.
“He told you about me?” She doesn’t understand how he could have, but it’s worth asking.
“Violet saved the letters that he wrote me from being burned. You were mentioned in a lot of them.” Sloane’s face is grim.
Jesinia gnaws on her lower lip. “I’m glad you got to keep them,” she signs, but isn’t sure what else to say. “He spoke of you often. He’d be proud to see you here.”
It’s like she watches Sloane’s face try to shutter itself off, to not react. “I just wanted to talk to you. Wanted to know you, I guess. He really cared for you.”
Jesinia pauses, blinking away the sudden tears in her eyes. “I cared for him, too.”
Their last night together is flooding back. Liam, telling her about his little sister, laughing into her pillow, kissing the soft inside of her elbow. I belong to you.
“He was special,” she signs, and suddenly can’t help the overflow of tears. “No one knew we were together, so I don’t get to talk about it often, but he was the brightest soul I’ve ever known.”
Sloane’s lower lip wobbles. Without thinking, Jesinia reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezes it softly. She doesn’t know what else to say.
As it turns out, there’s nothing else she can say. Sloane takes the touch as an invite and barrels into Jesinia, hugging her tightly. She trembles under Jesinia’s hands. They stay like that for a long time, and when they pull away, each one has tear-stained shoulders.
“I miss him,” Sloane signs.
“I miss him, too.” It feels like such an oversimplification, but it’s the closest thing to the truth that she can say. There is no other way to convey the loss of Liam than to somehow unlatch her own heart and let it spill onto the wood floor, and that is not something Jesinia is equipped to do.
“Do you think,” Sloane stops, as if rethinking what she’s going to sign. The movement reminds her so much of Liam that it takes everything in Jesinia not to cry again. “Do you think we could spend more time together? I’d like to hear stories about him, if you have any.”
“Of course,” Jesinia tells her. “I’d love that.”
When she makes it back to her room that night, Jesinia is relieved that the cadet she shares it with is not there. She pauses by the bed before turning to her pack, digging carefully until she finds what she knows is tucked safely in the bottom.
She clutches Liam’s wooden flower to her chest, rubbing her thumb over their carved initials. I belong to you.
Jesinia shuts her eyes and thinks the words over and over, remembering the way Liam had sounded when he said it, the way he’d felt when she’d still had him. When she opens her eyes, she’s still alone, but maybe a little less.