Work Text:
“His heart will not be in his work,” said Attolia, and she saw the flicker of relief that passed over Costis’s face. She watched him leave, riding nearly as fast as he had ridden in, and she felt her throat tighten. “May the gods guide you back to your heart,” she whispered, watching his trail of dust fade into the distance.
She turned from the window and smiled at her husband, sitting at a desk, his hand buried in his hair, looking over documents. Her husband. Words she would not have believed not all that long ago. She thought of Costis and Kamet, thought of the looks and closeness she had seen between them, thought of Costis riding through the night to return to Kamet. To deny him permission to return...she had thought about it, but only briefly.
How could she ask him to stay, knowing that the man who held his heart was in danger, could at any minute be dying somewhere? He would have spent every night lying awake, thinking horrible thoughts; he would have lingered by every window, staring towards Roa, wondering, worrying.
She would know.
How many nights had she spent tracing the movement of the moonlight across her bedroom floor, thinking of Gen feverish, dying, because of her? How many days had she paused by windows looking towards the mountains to wonder, to worry? How many times had her heart been squeezed in her chest, her ribs felt tight and painful as she thought of him?
Her heart had been elsewhere, miles away in the mountains, in the hand of the man she’d maimed. Gods, how complicated the workings of the heart are, how fickle the directions they decide to pull, how grateful she is that hers led her to him.
She stoops to kiss the top of his head, rests her hands on his shoulders, and sent a prayer up to the gods that one day Costis would be safe with his love at a desk, grumbling about paperwork.