Summary: Tessa needs a break but when her chosen spot is already occupied, truth finally starts to break the surface.
Notes: this is technically part of a chapter in Troubled Waters BUT it fit so well for day 1 of Ridoc Week with @empyreanevents I just had to use it!
Warnings: angsty fluff????
Word Count: 1.1k
Tessa never meant to lose Ridoc.
It just… happened.
He went to Basgiath while she was a legacy at Clifsbane
Different territories.
Different futures.
Different worlds.
They promised to write. They swore it wouldn’t change anything. But every letter Tessa sent was met with nothing in return.
By the time they both ended up in Aretia — fliers and riders shoved together like oil and water — they weren’t friends anymore.
If anything, they were… kindling to the fire.
Every time Tessa tried to give Ridoc space, he filled it with jokes.
Every time Ridoc tried to ignore the tension, she pressed his buttons.
They bickered. They bristled. They circled around each other like two people terrified to admit they missed what they’d lost.
Which is exactly why she climbs to the rooftop of Riorson House tonight.
To breathe.
To be away from him for five minutes.
Except she pushes the hatch open and—
Ridoc’s already there.
Sitting alone on the ledge, legs dangling over the edge, posture too still to be casual.
He doesn’t turn around, but the muscles between his shoulders tighten just enough to tell her he knows she’s there.
Of course he does. He always had a keen sense for her presence.
“Didn’t know this spot was taken,” Tessa says, keeping her tone neutral.
Ridoc shrugs without looking at her. “Big roof, Karis. Plenty of room to pretend we don’t hate each other.”
She rolls her eyes. “We don’t hate each other.”
“No?” he asks, glancing over at her just long enough for the moonlight to catch on the exhaustion etched beneath his eyes. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Her stomach twists. Gods, when did everything between them turn so sharp?
“It was never hate,” she says quietly. “We just… grew up.”
Ridoc lets out a humorless huff. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
She bristles automatically but reminds herself why she came up here in the first place. Not to fight. Not to dig up the past.
Just to breathe.
So she moves farther onto the roof, sits on the ledge a few feet away from him. Not close enough to assume familiarity, not far enough to pretend she doesn’t care.
The wind is cold and thin, rushing over the cliffs, stealing some of the sting from their tension.
“Are you alright?” she asks.
“Peachy.”
The lie is instantaneous — and horrible.
Ridoc was always the worst liar when it mattered.
“You know I grew up with you,” Tessa says softly. “You can’t lie to me.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “You’d be amazed what I can lie about these days.”
Silence stretches between them — tight, thin, and fragile.
Then Ridoc speaks, voice quieter than she’s ever heard it.
“It’s my brother’s birthday.”
Tessa’s breath leaves her in one sharp exhale.
Because gods — she should have remembered.
She did remember, two years ago, back when she still knew every detail of Ridoc’s life the way he knew hers. Back when he showed up on her porch steps shaking and silent the night the dragons returned home one rider short.
“I— I forgot,” she whispers. “Ridoc, I’m so sorry. I should’ve—”
“It’s fine.” He says it like it’s not.
She studies him. The bowed head, the stiff shoulders, the way his fingers drum a restless staccato against stone.
She remembers his brother teaching her how to braid leather for a knife hilt.
She remembers how Ridoc adored him — hero worship, pure and bright.
She remembers how everything in Ridoc’s house went quiet after the accident.
She remembers him forcing jokes only weeks later, too bright, too loud, drowning under his own performance.
She just never realized how long he’d been carrying that weight or how much he’d hidden from her before their paths split apart.
“You know,” she says softly, “I thought your jokes were annoying on purpose.”
He snorts. “They are.”
“But I didn’t realize they were protecting you too.”
Ridoc blinks like the thought physically hit him.
He stares at his hands. “After he died, my parents just… fell apart. They stopped eating, Tessa, stopped talking. I figured if someone didn’t act normal, we’d never climb out of it.”
Her heart aches.
He was thirteen.
A child forced to be the strong one.
“So I smiled,” he continued quietly. “I made jokes. I kept everything light so they wouldn’t drown. And I guess somewhere along the way, I forgot how to stop.”
“Ridoc…” she breathes, reaching out before she thinks, brushing her fingers over the back of his hand.
He goes still.
Completely still.
“I miss him every godsdamned day, Tess,” he says hoarsely.
“I know,” she whispers. “I know you do.”
His hand turns under hers, slowly,fingers threading through her own like muscle memory he’d long tried to ignore.
For a moment, everything feels like it used to: warm, familiar, easy.
And then he asks, voice low and rough,
“Did you really forget today?”
Her chest twists. “I did. And I hate that I did. I hate that we let things fall apart so badly that I didn’t know how to see that you haven’t been okay.”
Ridoc swallows hard. “I didn’t know how to tell you I wasn’t.”
The wind whistles softly between them, carrying some of their old hurt away with it.
Then Ridoc squeezes her hand.
Soft.
Steady.
Like choosing her is an instinct he’d buried but never lost.
“You’re here now,” he murmurs. “That’s enough.”
She squeezes back. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He exhales — relieved, unguarded — and leans his shoulder against hers in a quiet, hesitant offering of closeness neither of them has touched in years.
“Tessa?” he says after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell anyone I was sincere. It’ll ruin my reputation.”
She laughs — a real laugh — and the corner of his mouth lifts.
Maybe, she thinks, this could be where they start finding each other again.
This is my submission for the last day of Ridoc Week where I kind of just smashed all the prompts together. Kind of. This is my take on a potential back story for me and why he is the way he is with some things.
Found on AO3: HERE
Summary: Everyone laughs at Ridoc Gamlyn’s jokes. That’s the point.
They don’t see what happens after the punchline lands. They don’t ask why the funny one fucks strangers he’ll never remember and counts cracks in the ceiling while they finish.
When Xaden’s eyes flash and Ridoc asks where the line is, he has his own answer. He’s lived it. He just never told anyone.
Until now.
Warnings: Explicit sexual content, childhood physical abuse, domestic abuse (referenced), trauma/PTSD, dissociation during sex, self-destructive coping mechanisms, disordered relationship with intimacy, graphic violence, murder, character death, body horror, near-death experience, vomiting, emotional abuse, unhealthy relationship dynamics, possible onyx storm spoilers
Word Count: 5,657
Rating: Explicit
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
I snap my hips and grind against the swollen ridge inside the body beneath me, and a moan pitches into a whine I’ve heard a hundred times from a hundred different throats. I don’t know her name. Asked, probably. Definitely flashed the grin that gets doors open and clothes off. Names vanish before the sweat dries. One of my many talents. Ridoc fucking Gamlyn, at your disservice.
Her thighs vise my waist, heels digging into my spine, her back bowing off the bed. I know I’m fucking her right. I always do. Her, him, whoever. Bodies are bodies. It’d be impressive if it meant anything.
I lower my mouth to her neck, drag my teeth along the tendon, and taste brine and, beneath it, stale rosewater she must have dabbed on hours ago. Her cry hits the walls, the thin ones that won’t keep anything private, and I don’t care. Dark hair tangles across yellowed linen, catches against my knuckles where I’ve pinned her wrists. Wrong shade. Wrong texture. I thrust harder and don’t ask myself why I noticed.
Her cunt clenches around my cock and I think about breakfast. What they’ll serve. Whether there’ll be eggs. The woman beneath me is close to finishing and I’m thinking about fucking eggs. I shove myself back behind my own eyes, curl my lips against her throat—or maybe I just bare my teeth—and murmur filth that isn’t meant for her.
“Fuck, yes,” she pants, raking her nails down my back. I groan into her neck. Not for her. For the burn.
Rough cotton rasps against my knees as I fuck her until my thighs burn, until my lungs ache, until every muscle begs me to stop. I don’t. If I can just exhaust this body completely, maybe I’ll be able to sleep without dreaming tonight.
“Look at me.” Her lips drag against my collarbone. I trace the crack in the ceiling instead. The water stain. The shadow in the corner where the candle doesn’t reach.
“Please.”
Fuck. She’s one of those—the ones who want this to mean something. I should’ve spotted it earlier. Picked someone less earnest. But she asked, and I can’t refuse. Never learned how. I pry my mouth from her throat.
Brown eyes. Thank the gods. Brown is safe, brown is ordinary, brown is every woman in every village in every—
Then the candle gutters, and her eyes catch the flame, and I’m looking at a dead woman.
Ice spurts from my fingers, crackling across her wrists, and feeling dies from my knuckles up. My hips falter.
“Fuck—” She twists under me, eyes wide. “You’re freezing.”
“Perks of fucking an ice wielder, sweetheart.” I wink at her—gods help me, I actually wink. “Ever had someone trail ice down your spine while their cock stretches you open?” Her eyes widen—brown, just brown, not honey, not warmth, just—and she shakes her head. I release her wrists, drag my frozen knuckles down her arm, over her breast, and pinch her nipple between iced fingers until she gasps. She drips down my shaft. Some women like the cold. Lucky me. “Get on your knees for me. Face down. I’m nowhere near done with you.”
She rolls onto her stomach and rises onto her knees, pressing her face into the pillow. From here she’s just the back of a skull and a cunt and nothing, nothing that can look back at me.
My frozen finger traces each vertebra. She flinches from the ice and fucks herself back onto me. I clamp down on her hips and let her.
My flight jacket has a knife hole through the leather. Missed my ribs by an inch on that last godsdamned isle. The thing needs stitching and I hate sewing. Should’ve done it last night instead of finding this inn and this woman whose name I don’t—
Every muscle in her pulls taut. She comes with her teeth in the pillow, cunt clenching in waves I barely register.
I pull out and stroke myself twice, three times, and come across the small of her back. It drips down her spine.
She hums into the pillow, loose-limbed. I collapse onto my back and she slots herself against my side, cheek on my shoulder, fingers drawing shapes on my skin I don’t bother to track. Seventeen cracks branch across the ceiling. I count them again.
Her hand goes slack against my ribs. Her breath deepens. I give it twenty more breaths, then peel myself free.
Cold leeches up through my feet. Saliva pools under my tongue. I reach the washroom, shut the door, and my stomach folds in on itself.
My knees crack against stone. I white-knuckle the basin and vomit until my throat shreds, bile scorching my chest on the way up. Saliva floods my mouth again and I heave on nothing, dry retching until my ribs bow outward and tears streak down my face.
One last spit into the basin, then I drag the back of my hand across my mouth and haul myself upright, yanking the flush chain on the way. I cross to the sink and the pump groans under my grip. Cold water sluices chunks from my knuckles.
I watch it swirl down the drain. Once the porcelain clears, I cup fresh water to my lips, swish, spit, then splash my face. Water drips from my jaw when I straighten and force myself to look in the mirror.
The face in the mirror wears my father’s bones. I hate that. Hated it at twelve, puking on his boots after he ran me until my legs failed, and he stood there, arms crossed, mouth flat.
You’ll never amount to anything. You’re weak. Pathetic. Can’t even run without throwing up.
I splash water on my face again and scrub my cheeks until they sting. The words don’t wash off. They never do.
I look again. My own face stares back. The funny one. The easy one. The one who learned to laugh so no one would see him cry.
Knuckles rap the inn door.
Shit.
“Give me a sec! Takes time to look this good!” I crank the tap closed and flick water from my hands. Droplets hit stone. My fingers won’t stop shaking. It’s the worst part after retching.
I shoulder through the doorway and my shin cracks against the bedframe. The woman lifts her head from the pillow.
“Ridoc.” Violet calls from the hall. “You’re going to miss breakfast.”
I drop to my knees and fish my smallclothes from under the bed. “Tell me there’s eggs.”
“There’s eggs.”
“Beautiful women, actual mattresses, and eggs for breakfast.” I yank my smallclothes up my thighs and snag my trousers from the tangle near the washroom door. “I’m in love with this island.”
“You’re leaving?” The woman props herself on one elbow, sheet pooling at her waist.
“Duty calls.” I shove my legs into the trousers and snag my shirt from the floor.
“It’s the first island that hasn’t tried to kill us.” Violet says.
“If this one kills me, at least I’ll die smiling.” I pull the shirt over my head.
“That’s not funny, Ridoc. Not after the last isle.”
Oh, fantastic. That’s the wingleader voice. She’s been spending way too much time with Riorson.
“Your life isn’t a joke. Not to me.”
My fingers slacken on the bootlaces.
“Be down in five, Vi.”
Her footsteps fade down the hall.
I pull the laces tight and push to my feet. The woman’s eyes follow me across the room as I fasten my flight leathers.
“Will I see you again?”
“Yeah, probably not. I’ve got a full day of riding dragons, terrorizing venin, and looking stupidly good in leather.” I buckle my belt and shrug into my jacket. My thumb catches the hole in the leather. “Unless you can sew. Then I’ll heroically return… for repairs.”
She laughs. “I’m a barkeep, not a seamstress.”
“Tragic.” I shove the door open. “Do your best to survive without me, beautiful.”
That’s not a lie. She is beautiful. The iron-gray dawn leaches the gold from her skin and the shine from her hair, and she watches me from the bed with eyes that are just brown. Beautiful, but it’s the wrong kind of beautiful.
Finally. I was starting to think you’d settle down.
Aotrom’s voice slithers through my mental.
I snort and slip out of the ballroom. Each step down trades music for grease-smoke and the clatter of pans. “She’s a barkeep, Aotrom. Not exactly wife material.”
Since when do you care about wife material? You don’t have standards, Sparkles.
“Bold of you to assume I have standards.”
I literally just said you don’t. His smugness blares through the bond. Are your ears as bad as your judgment? The only time you pretend to have standards is with healers.
“Relax, Milk Chocolate.” I huff a laugh. “That’s not standards. That’s a no-fly zone. Healers are off-limits.”
Eight riders in black crowd the back corner table. We’re not exactly subtle.
A server hoists a tray above his head and muscles through the crowd. Well, hello, biceps. I snag a plate as he passes. “Thanks.”
He spins and opens his mouth to yell, but his gaze snags on my leathers. His jaw snaps shut. Perks of the job.
He turns away. Great ass, too. Yeah, today’s looking up.
I swipe a juice from another passing tray and drop into the empty seat beside Garrick.
“Good news, your day just improved. I’m here.”
Violet shoots me a look. Gods, she’s like my sister—only mine can’t fry me with lightning. Which is a good thing, considering I was a pain-in-the-ass older brother.
“Next time, exercise some discretion.” Dain sets his fork down. “We’re here to find Andarna’s kind, not entertain the entire inn. Some of us actually care about this mission.”
My father used to say the same thing. Different words, but the same fucking tone that makes me want to break his jaw.
“Who says I wasn’t exercising? I was exercising. Very discreetly.”
Garrick snorts. A muscle ticks in Dain’s cheek.
“I can do both, Aetos. You should try it sometime. Loosen up. Get laid. Might help with—” I circle a finger at all his rigid posture. “All of that.”
The fork is a goddamn icicle. I drop it before my skin fuses to the metal.
He doesn’t get to tell me I don’t care. I’ve known about venin longer than any of them. Done things none of them will ever hear about.
The joke lands. Everyone laughs. No one ever looks past the joke.
I press my palms flat against my thighs. The ice recedes. I grab the fork and shovel eggs and toast into my mouth.
“Do you ever stop talking?”
Cat sips her water. Could be aimed at me. Could be Dain. With the Royal Headache, safe bet it’s both.
Trager’s hand spans her thigh under the table. His thumb circles her knee, and when she tips into his shoulder, he turns his head and murmurs something against her ear. She laughs. It’s not the performance she gives the rest of us. It’s something quiet. Something for him.
I drain half my juice and study the pulp at the bottom.
Found you.
Her voice. Years later and I don’t just hear it; I see her lips shape every syllable, the way they did the last time she stood in front of me.
The glass hits the table too hard. So much for playing it cool.
Mira stands. “Saddle up. We fly in ten.”
I shove the last bite of toast in my mouth and follow Garrick out.
Aotrom’s haunches bunch beneath my thighs and we launch, sand spraying behind us. His swordtail whips through the surf and cold water spatters across my face.
You looked like you needed that.
“Asshole.”
You love me.
His wings catch air and my stomach lurches. The island shrinks to a smudge of green.
Up here, I don’t have to be anyone but myself. No punchlines. No room to read. No crowd waiting to see what Ridoc does next.
Zehyllna greets us with half the damned city and a woman named Calixta whose smile shows too many teeth. She’s been expecting us. Something about a card game to earn an audience with their queen.
I don’t like any part of that.
Spoiler: my gut was right.
The cards come out. Gifts, they call them. We’re expected to be grateful no matter what we get.
Mira draws first and gets wine. Gods know she needs it. Maren receives two orange tunics. Someone slaps Dain across the face. I clamp my hands behind my back before they start clapping on their own. A native hands Aaric a broken mirror. Another holds a rusty bucket out for Garrick. He takes it.
Xaden draws and gets an empty glass box. The look that makes first-years piss themselves slides over his face. Violet receives a broken compass. Of course Cat gets a ruby-encrusted gold necklace.
Drake draws and gets a kitten. A fucking kitten. Honestly, I’m jealous.
I get kissed on both cheeks by a woman who smells like cardamom.
Could be worse.
Then Trager draws.
An arrow punches through his chest. Funny thing about death—you can share a table with a man at dawn and watch him bleed out by noon.
Cat screams. The sound opens a fault line from my skull to the base of my spine.
I’ve made that sound before.
We burn Trager and his gryphon the next morning. Cat watches the flames eat her lover. The woman I watched across the table this morning dies standing up. Trager got the easier death.
The pyre eats through log after log. Violet and I stand there until it collapses into a heap of blackened wood. Then we go looking for Andarna’s kind.
Turns out, they’re assholes.
The Irids preach peace from their little paradise while the rest of us bleed. Self-righteous pricks. Andarna gives them hell. Good for her.
One of them calls Xaden an abomination.
His eyes flash red.
Ice races down my arms before I can stop it. I’ve seen those eyes before. They stole someone from me once. I know what comes next.
And I fucking hate it.
I pull Violet aside.
“So where’s the line? At what point is he too far gone for you to defend him?”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“There isn’t one. Not one he’d actually cross.”
“Really?” I lift my brows. “What if he hurts someone you love? Will that change your mind?”
“I can’t imagine not loving him.” Her hands find my forearms.
“Never said you couldn’t love him.” I squeeze her shoulders. “You can still love someone after you let them go.”
She stares at me.
“Fine. Hypothetically, he’d have to kill another rider without cause or hurt civilians. Hurt my friends, my dragons. Hurt—” She swallows. “Me. If he hurts me, then he’s not him anymore.”
“Tell the others. Rhiannon, Sawyer, Jesinia. They deserve to know.”
Violet nods. “I will. When we get back.”
“Good.”
She squeezes my arm and walks back to Xaden. His hand settles on the small of her back. They slip into the tree line together.
He fights it. Every day, he fights it.
I ball my fists until my knuckles ache.
I find a tree and drive my fist into the bark.
It shreds my knuckles raw. Warm blood pools in the creases of my fingers before it spills over.
I pull back to do it again and—
Stop.
I’ve seen these hands before. My father wore them after my mother hit the floor. After he left my room.
I flatten my palm against the trunk and drag a ragged breath into my lungs.
The blood drips onto the roots.
That’s not me. That’s not who I am.
Or maybe it is, buried under every joke.
He never touched Nora.
I knew his footsteps before I knew how to read. Heavy on the third stair. Pause at the landing. I pressed myself into the corner of my bed and counted boards in the floor until he passed my door or didn’t. Fourteen boards from my bed to the door. Some things you count so many times they put dents in your skull and never come out.
Some nights I crawled into my mother’s bed. Some nights I couldn’t look at her.
Nora slept through it all. Her nightmares had monsters under the bed. Mine stood at the door.
She never learned his footsteps. Never had to count.
I wanted that for her.
I just wanted it for me too.
Then she found me.
I was eighteen, and gods, I was an idiot. Still am, but at least now I know it.
I dropped a shirt on her counter with a tear down the side. She had brown hair pinned back with a ribbon and thread between full lips, and I forgot why I was there.
I’d never wanted to earn a kiss before. I took what I wanted, had my fun, and went home. But I wanted to deserve hers. That felt new. Stupid new. I didn’t even know her name.
Small nicks crisscrossed her fingertips from years of needlework. She picked up my shirt and the thread tumbled from her mouth onto the counter. Her thumb traced the bloodstain on the collar, then the crooked stitching I’d done myself.
“Ripped it on a fence.” The lie came easy.
Her lashes swept up when she looked at me, and her eyes were this deep amber-brown.
Those eyes couldn’t lie. They were bright and too open, every thought crossing her face half a second before she meant it to. She gave a shit about the world and everyone in it, and she couldn’t hide that even if she tried.
A crack split through my chest.
I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms before I did something stupid, like touch her face. That tends to get you slapped.
“So what’s it cost to get the prettiest seamstress in town to fix a shirt for a devastatingly handsome stranger?”
She didn’t laugh.
She was the first person who didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with that. Everyone laughed. That was the point.
“Ouch. Nothing? That was one of my better ones.”
She set my shirt down.
“Name? For the order.”
“Ridoc.”
“Ridoc,” she repeated, writing it down. “I’m Apricity.”
“Bless you.”
She bit her lip. I watched the indent her teeth left in the soft pink.
“That’s my name.”
“That’s a lot of syllables.”
“My mother liked the meaning.”
“Which is?”
“The warmth of winter sun.”
The gods were definitely laughing somewhere. A boy made of ice falling for a girl named after warmth.
“Come back Thursday, Ridoc. I’ll fix it.”
I liked the way she said my name. Liked it way too much.
I came back Thursday. She handed me my shirt, mended and folded. I paid. I left.
I came back Friday with a button that didn’t need replacing. Saturday with a hem that wasn’t frayed. Monday with thread I’d never use.
She raised an eyebrow but took my money every time.
The second week, she handed me a spool instead of a receipt.
“Sit. Wind this.”
I wound thread until my knuckles locked. She hummed while she worked, soft and off-key. I memorized every note.
I talked. She listened. Her hands would go still on the fabric when I said something that mattered. She’d look at me with those amber-brown eyes and the jokes dried up. Real words came out instead.
I never meant to tell her about my father. She was mending something by candlelight and I was talking because quiet made me pace. I opened my mouth to say something stupid. My whole life fell out instead. The footsteps. The counting. The way my mother’s eyes went somewhere else when she saw the bruises.
Her needle stilled. She crossed the room. Her hands cupped my face, rough and scarred and steady.
“Found you,” she said.
And she had.
That year thawed something in me I didn’t know was frozen.
She understood because she lived it too.
Her sleeve rode up one afternoon. I saw the bruises. Deep purple fading to a sickly green and shaped like fingers.
I headed for the door.
“Ridoc.” Her voice stopped me. “Don’t.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“And then what?” She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You think I want to watch you become him?”
I shook. She held on.
She was still soft after everything. I never understood how.
The next day I brought her apricots because her name sounded like them, close enough anyway. She looked at the bag, then at me.
“Apricots.”
“Apricots. For Apricity.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I know.”
She ate three before I left, and I brought more the next week and the week after that. A month later, she held out her hand when I walked through the door.
Her shop became home. I swept without asking, learned where the bolts of fabric lived, which threads she reached for most, how she liked her tea.
One afternoon I knocked a jar of buttons off her counter. Glass shattered and buttons scattered across the floor. My whole body flinched before I could stop it—shoulders up, hands curling in, bracing for the yelling, the insults, the fist that always came next.
She walked over and knelt down. Started picking up buttons one by one.
“You going to help me or just stand there?”
My hands shook so badly I dropped half the buttons I picked up. She hummed that off-key song of hers and never mentioned it.
“Apricot,” I called her once, and she threw a thimble at my head. We both laughed until our sides hurt.
The first time I kissed her, I asked. My voice cracked on the question, and she said yes before I got the whole thing out.
I’d kissed plenty of people before her. Girls. Guys. Whoever was willing and warm and didn’t ask questions. But I never let it go further than that. Hands wandered and I made a joke. The second clothes started coming off, I found an excuse to leave. I didn’t want anyone seeing what my father left behind.
She told me once she didn’t want to be touched like that unless it was safe. Unless the hands on her skin were hands that would never hurt her. Her father broke her body whenever he needed to feel strong. She wasn’t handing that power to anyone else.
I told her I felt the same way.
I meant it. Back then, I meant every word I said.
The first time she undressed me, her fingers shook on my buttons and mine shook worse on hers. We laughed at ourselves. We had to. Two people who’d spent their whole lives guarding their skin, fumbling in candlelight like the nervous kids we were.
I kept apologizing. She told me to shut up. When I laughed, she kissed me to stop the sound.
She pressed her hands flat against my bare chest and the air left my lungs. Every touch before her came with a price. Hers didn’t.
I cried. I don’t know when it started. One second I was fine and the next my face was wet and she was wiping it with her thumbs and pressing her forehead to mine.
Gentle. Gods, she was gentle. I didn’t know touch could feel like that.
I didn’t have to be funny with her. Running away used to mean alone. Then it meant taking her with me.
We made plans. I told her I was going to be a rider. I’d look incredible in leather, obviously, and my father could choke on the sight of me flying overhead on a dragon.
She didn’t laugh at the leather part, just looked at me and said, “You’re going to prove him wrong.”
Apricity always heard what I actually meant.
She’d be a healer. We’d settle in a post somewhere far from both our fathers and build a life that looked nothing like the ones we came from.
Apricity belonged in a healer’s robe. She saw the wounds other people missed.
I should have seen it coming.
“Have you ever heard of venin?” She lay with her head on my chest, my fingers lost in her hair.
“The monsters from the stories? The ones that eat babies or whatever?”
“They’re real.”
I laughed. “Sure they are.”
She propped herself up. The look she gave me killed my laugh.
“They pull power straight from the land. The stories say they go mad, but think about it. All that power. Endless. Never running out.”
“The stories also say they rot from the inside out and kill everyone they ever loved.”
She didn’t answer. Her thumb brushed my collarbone, back and forth.
“Imagine never being weak again.” Her voice quieted. “No one could touch us. No one could ever hurt us again.”
My hand stopped in her hair.
“I don’t need that kind of power. I just need you.”
She kissed my jaw and settled back against my chest.
“I know.”
Her thumb kept moving. Back and forth. Back and forth.
I found her three days later.
The smell hit the back of my throat before I reached the door. My feet stopped before I understood why.
Her mother lay face-down in a lake of dried brown. Gouge marks scored the wood floor where her fingers had clawed toward the door. She’d made it halfway.
Apricity sat cross-legged in the middle of it. Dried blood stiffened her dress. Her hands combed through her mother’s hair. Her fingers snagged on tangles and she smoothed them out, tucking strands behind blue-tinged ears.
Her father slumped against the far wall, gray and shrunken. Skin hung off his skull. She had hollowed him out and left the husk.
“Apricot.”
She raised her head and the movement belonged to something else.
Red had stolen the amber from her eyes.
“He killed her. So I killed him.”
My knees hit the floor. Cold seeped through my trousers. I crawled to her, palms slipping, sliding through what was left of her mother.
“We go. Now. Tonight.” I grabbed her face with both hands. “I don’t care where.”
“Ridoc.”
“We disappear. We run. I don’t care what you did. I don’t care. I don’t care.”
Her fingers wrapped around my wrists and lifted my hands away.
“I’m not sorry.”
I cupped her cheeks again. Red smeared under my thumbs.
“Then don’t be sorry. Just come with me.”
Her eyes landed on my face and kept going.
“Okay.” The word dragged out wet. “Okay. We’ll figure it out.”
I pulled her against my chest and held on until my arms shook. Her arms hung limp.
I slept on the floor outside her door that night. Told myself I was keeping watch. That was the first lie.
The red faded by morning. I told myself it was over.
Two days later she woke soaked in sweat.
Food sat untouched on her plate. She circled the shop, picking things up and putting them down, and when a bolt of fabric fell she stepped over it and kept moving. Her fingers dug at the veins inside her wrist. Whatever she needed was deeper.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was thin. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
By nightfall she was shaking.
“I just need—” She didn’t finish. She walked out the door.
She knelt in the dirt behind the shop before I caught up. She drove her hands into the soil and drank until the earth grayed in a perfect circle around her, head tipped back, eyes closed.
When she stood, her hands had stopped shaking.
She grabbed my wrists and pulled me down. “Here. Right here. Put your hands in the dirt.”
“Apricot—”
“I can feel the roots under the shop. The worms turning in the soil.” She pressed her thumb into my wrist. “Your pulse. Right there. Can you feel it?”
“I don’t want it.”
She let go of me. Her head angled, bird-like.
“You don’t want to be strong?”
“Not like that.”
Pity. She looked at me with pity. I’d bled my ugliest stories into her lap and she’d never looked at me like that. Not once.
“You will.”
She kissed my cheek and went inside, humming.
I searched for answers.
Books had nothing. Scribes either laughed or lost color in their cheeks. Both ended with the door. One sent for the guard while I was still sitting in his shop. I spent three days in a cell. Why did I want to know about venin. Who told me they were real. Who else had I talked to.
I smiled. Told them I was a fool who read too many fairy tales and got curious. They bought it.
Venin were bedtime stories. You can’t cure something that doesn’t exist.
She didn’t want a cure.
The red stopped fading. It owned her eyes now. Veins crept out after it, thin red threads spreading across her temples, darkening each time she stole from the earth. She drank every day. Hunger, not need.
I thought I could love her back to who she was. It wasn’t enough.
“Please.” I reached for her. “I’m begging you.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“I do understand. I understand better than anyone.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t. You can’t. You’re still scared, Ridoc. You’re still that boy waiting for the next hit. I’m not waiting anymore. I’m never waiting again.”
“I know what it’s like. I know—”
“You don’t know anything.” She turned on me. “You know what it’s like to be scared. You know what it’s like to be hurt. You don’t know what it’s like to not be. To stand there and know that no one can touch you. That no one would dare.”
“Apricot—”
“They’ll be scared of me now. Not the other way around.”
“That’s not strength. That’s—”
“Don’t tell me what strength is.” Everything soft emptied out of her voice. “You, of all people. Don’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re weak.”
I flinched.
“Look at you. I say one word and you flinch like your father’s in the room.” She stepped toward me. “You had the same chance I did. You could reach for it right now. But you won’t. Because you’d rather stay the scared little boy whose father beat him bloody than become something no one can hurt.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m done being a victim, Ridoc. I’m done being scared. I’m done being small.” The red veins pulsed at her temples. “I’m a god now. And you’re still just… you.”
“You’re right. You’re a god.” I turned toward the door. “And I’m just the idiot who fell in love with a girl who doesn’t exist anymore. If you see Apricot, tell her I miss her.”
“Don’t walk away from me.”
I kept walking.
“I said don’t walk away from me, Ridoc.”
I reached for the handle.
“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you need a reminder.”
I turned around. “A reminder of what?”
“Maybe if I remind you enough of your father, you’ll finally understand.” She stepped toward me. “Maybe you need to feel it again. The fear. The helplessness. Maybe then you’ll see why I never want to feel it again.”
“Apricot. Stop.”
“Make me.”
She pressed her palms to my chest and my blood thickened. Each heartbeat dragged slower than the last, the gaps between them stretching until I wasn’t sure the next one would come.
“Stop.” I barely heard my own voice.
My knees buckled. Her hands rode me down. Cold bled from her palms into my ribs and crept down my arms and drained every sensation below my elbows.
She didn’t stop. My lips cracked and my mouth dried and my throat closed. She kept pulling. She drank me dry from the inside.
“Apricot.” The word scraped out. “It’s me.”
Red eyes looked down at me.
I would have let her finish if it meant seeing the amber one more time. That’s me. Ridoc Gamlyn. Dying for a glimpse of color.
“I love you.”
The sound that came out of her when she tore her hands away wasn’t human. She hit the counter and stayed there, staring at her trembling palms.
“Ridoc.” Her voice splintered on my name. “I didn’t— I tried to stop. I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I planted my palms on the floor and pushed and made it halfway up before my arms gave. I hit the floor. Caught the doorframe on the second try and hauled myself up hand over hand.
“Please.” Tears dripped off her jaw. “I love you. I didn’t mean it. Please don’t go.”
I grabbed the handle. It shook against the frame. My fingers couldn’t close right.
“Ridoc. Look at me. Please. Please look at me.”
I wrenched the door open and cold air flooded my lungs. Dead grass. Rot. The stink of everything she’d killed.
Shriveled stalks spread from the workshop to the road. Beyond that the orchard loomed skeletal and gray, bark peeling, branches brittle as bone.
“Ridoc!”
I stopped. Every part of me wanted to turn around and go back. Hold her. When was the last time I held her? I don’t beg. Not really my style. But I would have crawled back through that door and let her finish what she started if I thought she was still in there.
I didn’t.
I kept walking. One foot dragging in front of the other through the dead earth, past the gray trees and into the dark.
I made it to the end of the road before my legs quit.
I woke in a ditch with the sun on my face.
She hadn’t come looking.
So yeah. You can still love someone after you let them go.
