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Rook awoke to her heart pounding. The stiff mattress was unforgiving against her side, the heat of her blanket oppressive. She sighed and turned to the clock – 2:16am. She’d managed to fall asleep for an hour and a half.
It had been like this more and more often since arriving at the Lighthouse. She was mostly fine during the day. Fielding one crisis after another meant a constant stream of stress, but at least it kept her occupied - she didn’t even have time to think about how she felt, really. But it all came back with a vengeance at night. She supposed it was the pressure of leading the team, but at the moment she awoke she didn’t have images or words or a name for the feeling. It was just the aching, deafening echo of her pounding heart through her skull, the bile that took advantage of her precious moments lying down to rise in her chest, the skin that refused to cool down.
After a certain point there was no use fighting it anymore, and tonight Rook was admitting defeat. She sat up, grabbed her water glass and headed for the door. If she stayed up the rest of the night reading in the library, at least her mind would have something to focus on. Maybe she would sleep better tomorrow.
Rook rounded the corner at the bottom of the curved staircase and stopped in her tracks. A dark-haired figure was already sitting on Rook’s favorite bench with a book in her lap, reading by the light of a small lamp on the end table.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Trouble.”
It was Neve.
It had been a little over a week since Rook and Neve had kissed, but during the day it was almost like nothing had ever happened between them. Neve had seemed preoccupied from the moment they’d seen the spirit echoes in Dock town. Even at the rare times when she descended from her study to eat with the team, it was as though her mind was still shut up in her research. Rook had called her name three times the other night at dinner before she’d answered.
Privately, Rook was tying herself in knots over whatever she and Neve were - or weren’t - but more than anything she didn’t want to push. Whatever this was between them was so new – if Neve was distracted with the case, better to give her some space than to spook her.
The only time they’d spent together lately was on nights like this. Three times in the past ten days Rook had heard the front doors creak as she sat on the bench in the library, reading the same sentence over for the third or fourth time. Each time, her heart had leapt to see Neve’s silhouette in the backlight of the fade sky. Neve usually picked out a book for herself and came to sit beside Rook on the bench, but this time she had beaten Rook to it.
Rook looked down at Neve, unexpectedly here sharing in her insomnia, and felt on a knife’s edge of excitement and anxiety. She tried to cover it with a joke.
“Trouble sleeping again? We’ll need to have Emmrich search up some manuals on the undead for you at this rate.”
“Doesn’t seem like you’re doing much better yourself.” Neve’s tone was airy, if a touch defensive, and she raised an eyebrow to punctuate her jab. But her eyes told a different story – bleary and rimmed underneath from lack of sleep.
“Can’t argue with that,” Rook conceded. She set her glass down on the end table and picked out a book for herself at random – Dragon Growth and Development. Taash would be happy tomorrow. She sat down next to Neve and cracked it open.
There was something comforting for Rook about these late-night reading sessions. They rarely said much, but it was nice having Neve to share the quietest, darkest hours of the night with. In the early hours of the morning, it always felt like the world was already on the brink of ending, but somehow Neve’s presence at her side kept her tethered to reality – whatever kind of reality this was.
Tonight, though, she found herself staring at the dragon book without taking it in. She was still recovering from the realization that Neve was already at her side. Rook’s eyes were on the page, but her mind was on the warmth of Neve’s body next to hers. When Neve lifted her hand to turn a page, the feeling of her skin brushing against Rook’s was like a jolt of electricity.
Rook gave up on focusing on dragons. The book in Neve’s hands was a thick one. “What’s the book about?” She asked.
“The catacombs. I’ve never used the south-southwest entrance, but if she’s been coming and going from there…”
Of course.
“Neve,” Rook began, “Please tell me you’re not working on Aelia’s case at three in the - ”
“It’s fine. If I don’t look it up it’ll keep me up all night.“
“I just worry - you’re going to run yourself -”
“I don’t need you to worry about me, Trouble. I’m a big girl.” Neve’s voice was even and gentle, but somehow Rook felt like she’d been hit in the stomach with ice magic. She’d overstepped after all. Neve’s nose was still firmly in her book.
“I know,” Rook said. I’m just…”
Here for you. She stopped herself from saying it for the sixth time this month. If Neve wasn’t ready to hear it, Rook would only drive her away.
She opened her book again, but as she turned the pages, she felt Neve’s eyes on her. She tried to focus, to find some detail she could share with Taash about dragons in the morning, but after a few minutes she was unable to ignore the feeling of Neve’s gaze any longer. She lifted her head to meet those brown eyes. Neve looked… lost.
“It doesn’t really matter,” she began, “what I’m reading about the catacombs.” Her eyebrows knotted together, and she seemed to push herself to continue. “I already found what I needed earlier today. About Aelia and the Vena Vitalis.”
It was not the type of news Rook had been expecting to hear at 3am. “Oh,” she stumbled, trying to catch up. “So the ritual…”
“Three nights from now.” Neve’s voice was huskier than usual. “In the catacombs. The south-southwest entrance is probably the closest, but it… doesn’t really matter.”
Neve had turned her gaze back to her book, but her eyes weren’t tracking the words on the page. The air was heavy around them. Three more nights until they faced a Venatori so dangerous that she had rattled even Neve’s composure. Rook threw up a silent prayer – who to? She didn’t know - that they would both come out of this unscathed.
“Okay, three nights from now,” Rook said, trying to keep her tone steady. She knew what she wanted to say, but she hesitated, not wanting to face another rejection tonight.
But no, this was too important to shy away from. “I’m there,” Rook finished, “if you want me there.”
Neve looked up, and for a painfully long moment her expression was unreadable, almost as though she had been frozen in place. Then, just as Rook started to search for a way to break the deafening silence, Neve nodded stiffly. She swallowed, and looked down to close her book.
Rook exhaled. Hesitantly, she placed a hand over Neve’s on the book cover. When Neve turned her hand around to hold Rook’s, the warmth of it spread from the tips of Rook’s fingers all the way to her navel.
They sat together for a while, all pretense of reading now dropped. Neve’s next words were so quiet that Rook nearly didn’t catch them, even in the echoing, empty library.
“I wish we could be somewhere else.”
Rook held her breath as she digested the words, afraid to do anything that might interrupt this rare moment of candor.
“Yeah?” she asked gently, trying to prompt Neve to say more.
“Someplace with no Aelia, or Venatori, or…” she trailed off.
“Rampaging fucking blighted Elven Gods?” Rook finished, kicking herself as the need to break the tension got the better of her. Neve didn’t laugh, but rested her cheek on Rook’s shoulder.
“Me too,” Rook said, lacing her fingers with Neve’s, “I wish that too.”
Rook sat for a while with Neve’s head on her shoulder, watching the bookcases turn slowly in the air above them. After a few minutes she wondered if Neve might finally have fallen asleep, but suddenly she got up, cleared her throat and walked over toward the double doors of the Lighthouse library. She seemed to be examining one of the tapestries on the wall.
“Well,” Neve said to the tapestry, “We’ll need to get our rest. There’s too much at stake to have our fearless leader tripping over herself in another fade tear tomorrow.” Neve’s tone was playful as she turned back toward Rook, and she was wearing the same arch expression Rook had seen on her face a hundred times.
It broke Rook’s heart. She would hardly have noticed the way Neve’s hand brushed her face as she turned around… except that Rook’s shoulder was wet.
“Caught you,” she said with what she hoped was a sympathetic smile, gesturing to the spot where Neve’s tears had darkened her sleeve.
Neve stood with her mouth open for a second, then shrugged and hung her head.
“Hey.” Rook crossed the room, watching Neve struggle silently with the weight of it all. Neve was right. In some other universe, without blight, and demons, and the end of the world looming around every corner, this might be easier. They might have more space to get to know each other, to laugh together – to figure out what this was.
But they weren’t in another world. There were here.
“Can I hold you?” Rook asked, hovering a hand at Neve’s arm.
Neve just leaned into her, resting her forehead on Rook’s shoulder. She was perfectly still.
Rook wanted more than anything to lift Neve’s chin and look deep into her eyes. To stroke her cheek and tell her it was okay to cry, okay to be afraid. All she wanted was to cup Neve’s face in her hands and wipe the tears away herself, to kiss her until all the rest of it went away.
But it was too much, too soon. Rook knew it.
So she let Neve hide her face in her shoulder. She held her, rocked her, smoothed her hair. They spun slowly in the center of the room, the two of them half pretending this was just a little slow dance in the stillness of the darkened library after midnight.
As they started to turn for a third time, Rook felt Neve exhale, felt the tension in her shoulders relax.
“We really should get some sleep,” Rook murmured, pressing a soft kiss to Neve’s hair. “It’ll be morning soon.”
“We should.” Neve turned quickly and wiped her eyes before turning back to Rook with half a smile. “I should head back.”
“Want some company on the walk?”
Neve smirked. “On the long, lonely journey across the Lighthouse courtyard?”
“Does it matter?”
Neve chuckled. “No. It doesn’t.”
Neve took her hand and led her out through the heavy double doors. After the dim light in the library, the perennial twilight of the fade sky made Rook squint and blink. They were approaching Neve’s stairs much too quickly, and she almost wished she had never mentioned the time.
Neve let go of her hand at the top of the stairs but hesitated for a moment with one hand on the doorknob, eyeing Rook as though considering something.
“What?” Rook asked.
Neve shrugged. “Kiss me goodnight?”
Rook’s breath caught in her chest. It was Neve’s first oblique acknowledgement of the kiss they’d shared in Dock town, the one that had been ended abruptly by a passing cat. She was suddenly aware of how close Neve was to her - the glint of her hair, the way the fade-light flickered in her eyes, catching an expression between playfulness and vulnerability.
Rook curled an arm around Neve’s waist and raised a hand to her cheek, tracing a finger softly across her lower lip. They had finally picked up where they left off ten days ago, and for once, in the quiet of the fade before dawn, there was no wisp, or cat, or crisis to interrupt them. For one precious moment, the look on Neve’s face was unguarded and tender, and Rook wished she could rearrange the whole world to protect the dreamer in her.
Her lips met Neve’s softly, gently, with all the care that she couldn’t yet put into words, but Neve responded with an intensity that took her aback. Neve’s arms wrapped around her, and heat bloomed through Rook’s chest. She heard Neve’s soft breathing as Neve’s tongue brushed her lip, and as the kiss deepened, a small sound came from the back of Neve’s throat.
Rook was lost in the warmth of the moment, the glow enveloping both of them. Then Neve placed a hand on Rook’s chest, and pressing one more chaste kiss against her lips.
“Goodnight.”
Rook smiled. “Goodnight. Try to actually get some sleep this time.”
Neve didn’t miss a beat. “Tell that to yourself, Trouble.”
Rook laughed as she made her way back down the stairs, but just as Neve was about to close the door, she had a thought.
“Neve?”
“Mmm?” For the first time tonight, a genuine laugh lingered around the corners of Neve’s eyes, and it almost made Rook change her mind about saying it. But she did.
“We’ll get Aelia. She won’t get away with this. And then this will all be over.” Rook felt a predictable twinge of regret as Neve’s eyes darkened.
“Rook, just please be –“
“Careful. I know, we will be. Starts with rest, right?”
Neve swallowed and nodded. Her eyes were bright as she closed the door.
***
Neve sat down on her cot, sighed, and rubbed her tired eyes. She’d told herself she just needed a book from the library tonight, only to feel her heart sink when Rook wasn’t at her usual seat on the bench. Ridiculous. Was she a schoolgirl?
Their situation with Aelia was sickening, but at least Rook knew the timeline now. “It starts with rest,” she’d said. So Neve tried to push away thoughts of Aelia as she lay back down for the fourth time this evening. She hadn’t slept properly in days, but tonight she pulled the covers around her a little tighter, trying to remember the feeling of Rook’s arms around her in the library, the soft press of Rook’s nose against her face a few minutes ago. She would regret this tactic in the morning, when she awoke certain that Aelia would take Rook from her, just to twist the knife. But tonight, she was sure she could still sense Rook around her as she finally drifted off to sleep.