Nevermor (56 page)

It was terrible
to feel so awkward. 

Without her
urging, Rifter did as she’d wanted him to.  He’d retreated to the tent alone,
and had not dared to approach her.  Wren was glad.  It was what she’d wanted –
but after only a short while, she discovered that it wasn’t good enough.  She
couldn’t stop thinking about him, and being ignored was suddenly the worst
thing she could imagine.

Trusting that
the others would keep an eye on her young brother, she swallowed her pride and
went to the tent.  She was more nervous and sick than she’d ever been at the
thought of speaking with him, her heart thudding inside.  Her breath shuddered
as she sighed heavily, preparing herself.

“Rifter?  Can I
talk to you?”

She wasn’t sure
if he would grant her an audience at all, fearing that she would have to speak
to him through the flap.

Or maybe he’s
asleep.  I shouldn’t disturb him.

Wren was just
about to change her mind and turn away when he met her at the door, his eyes
bloodshot and tired.  He didn’t say anything, but he stepped out of her way to
let her enter.  She went into the shade of the tent and turned to him, but took
a moment before she could bring herself to speak.

“There’s
something I have to say,” she started, but he cut her off.

“There’s
something I have to say to you, too.”

His face was set
with a firm expression.  Wren was quiet, letting him speak first, perhaps for
no other reason than she wasn’t sure how she wanted to begin.

“You don’t know
what’s going on here – not with this world or with me,” he started.  “You don’t
know my enemy or what he might do if I just roll over.  You don’t have any
right to speak against this war or ask me to stop.  I won’t hear it anymore. 
Maybe this will be the last time I have to fight him; maybe it won’t.  I won’t
make any more excuses for your sake.  And I won’t make you any more promises
about the end.”

Wren found that
she didn’t have a way to defend herself against that, looking at the floor like
she was a child being scolded.  She knew that what he said was true.  He wasn’t
going to stop for her.  He wasn’t going to do anything just because she wanted
it, but the way he said it was harsh.  It made her feel abused.

She thought of
telling him what the boys had revealed to her about his fights with the
Scourge.  Could she make him understand?  She didn’t have the energy.

“I’m sorry,” she
said instead.  “I know you have to fight him.  It’s what you do.”

He was stunned
by her admission, but he kept silent.

“And I know that
you don’t have to do anything for me,” she went on.  “You won’t.  I’m not any
more important than the others, and it’s clear that you don’t listen to them
either.  You don’t care about me like I thought – like I’d
hoped
.  We
can’t be together like I wanted.”

“I thought we
were
together,” he said severely.  “At least, that’s what I thought until last
night.”

Backed into a
corner, Wren brought out the only thing she could bite back at him with.

“I saw her kiss
you,” she blurted.

Several different
emotions flashed across his face in quick succession.  Bewilderment, anger,
shame, and finally he rocked back on his heels.

“That wasn’t a
real kiss,” he said.  Was that his defense?  How could it be?

“Of course it
was a kiss!” she said angrily, coming out of her stupor.  “I saw it!  That
savage girl kissed you and you kissed her back!”

“You defined
it”, he countered.  “You said that a
kiss
is when you have affection for
someone.  There was no love in it, so it wasn’t real.  It wasn’t like when I
kiss you!”

It was strange
logic, but Wren couldn’t help but feel a little touched by that.  Still, she
wasn’t sure that she believed him.  She didn’t know how she could.

“How do you feel
about me?” she asked, defeated.  “Be honest.”

He sighed
heatedly and looked away.  “Do we have to talk about this
right now
?”

Was that her
answer?  No, she couldn’t accept that.  She would try again.

“Do you think of
me as a partner?  An equal?  Or am I just some
girl
that you happened to
come across?  Someone you could put beside you just so that someone would be
there?”

He didn’t seem
to understand her, but he was smart enough to be careful with that question,
spending a moment to try and unweave her thoughts, but he still couldn’t grasp
what she wanted from him.

“Wren,” he
started, but it didn’t take him long to give up.  “If you don’t already know,
then there’s nothing for me to say.”

She smiled
sadly, accepting this.  She did know the answer to that.  He didn’t know what
to say because there wasn’t anything to be said.  Of course she had known.  She
had always known it somehow.

“It’s not about
what you say.  It’s about what you really mean, and if you don’t even know what
that is…”  She paused, and didn’t give much thought to what she said next
before it was coming out of her mouth.

“I want to go
back,” she told him resolutely.  She didn’t feel like crying this time, even
though her eyes were still red from before.

“There’s nowhere
to go back to,” he answered, thinking she spoke of the underground. 
“Everything is burned.”

“I mean, I want
to go back to my old life.”

He looked at her
like she’d just slapped him across the face.  Maybe she had; maybe he deserved
it.

“What?” he
asked, his face contorted in anger.  “Why?”

“Because I’m not
ready for this.”

“Yeah, you said
that before,” he fumed.  He was getting frustrated now.  Clearly he hadn’t
forgotten.  “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that
if I stay here, one of us is going to have to grow up, and it’s not going to be
you, which means it has to be
me
and I’m just not ready for that!”

That summed it
up pretty well.  Either she would have to grow up to accommodate for him, or
she would have to be content to only be
a girl
to him, and in the
meantime she would never see her brothers progress.  Henry would grow wilder,
more violent.  She’d never wanted that for him.  She would never get to see Max
– her baby – grow up to be a respectable man like she’d always dreamed.

Rifter shook his
head.  He still wasn’t getting it, but he was definitely angry now.

“If this is all
about the kiss then—”  He paused, fighting with his tongue and his mind to get
the words out.  “Then I’m
sorry
!  I didn’t mean it.  I was feeling
crazy!  But I stopped.  It didn’t go further than that.  I swear.”

“It’s not just
about the kiss, Rifter.  It’s my brothers.  I didn’t know it before I came
here, but I
want
to see them grow up – I want to see them grow up better
than
this
!  My life wasn’t perfect before and maybe I’ll be forced to
grow up faster than I think.  Someone might come for me tomorrow…”

“Some man?” he
asked angrily.

“Yes, maybe,”
she relented.  She’d once claimed that the future was uncertain, but thinking
on it now, she realized she’d always known how it would go.

“No,” he
protested strongly.  “You belong here with me.”

“I’m not sure.” 
She felt herself tearing up and she couldn’t look at him anymore.  He was
staring at her, nodding, finally getting it.

“You swore
yourself to me – you all did.”

“I didn’t know
what I was saying,” she protested.  “I had foolish hopes.  I was being a
child.”

Then, he brought
up the one thing she’d hoped he wouldn’t say – the final dagger in her chest. 

“I thought you
loved me.”

Those words
stung.  Perhaps it might have been better if he’d taken his knife and cut her
heart out – kept it as a trophy.  She did love him, so much more than she could
hide, but yet she couldn’t help seeing an eternity of heartache ahead of her.

“I do love you,”
she confessed.  “I always will, but I can’t keep doing this – back and forth
between happiness and heartache, feeling like you love me and then thinking
that all you care about is yourself!”

He looked
stunned.  “I have
always
put you first.”

She couldn’t
imagine how he thought that.  Did he really believe it?

“I can’t let you
keep hurting me.  This is supposed to be a place of dreams – of happiness. 
Well I’m not happy here.  I may not be happy without you, but I have to go. 
You have to
let me go
.”

“That doesn’t
make any sense, Wren!”  He was near to yelling now.

“It’s
complicated,” she said quietly.

“It doesn’t have
to be complicated!  It’s simple!  If you love someone, you stay with them!  You
support them in what they have to do and you stand by their side, no matter
what!”

“I don’t really
expect you to understand.”  Her voice was colder than she’d intended, but that
had done it.  She had insulted his intelligence, and he couldn’t abide by that.

“
Shit
,”
he groaned.  He began to pace then, cursing, not knowing what to do with
himself or with her.  Wren just stood there, staring at the ground with her
arms wrapped around herself.

She wondered if
she cared about how he might have reacted.  Was she beyond being hurt by him? 
All she knew was that it was ending here in this moment.  Whatever she’d
thought that she had with him had never existed.  She had matured enough to
realize that.

“Fine,” he said
finally, giving up.  “If you want to leave, then leave.  But if you go, you’ve
broken the Vow.  You’ve abolished all ties to me and this place.  You’re
unclean.  You can’t ever come back.”

“Don’t say
that,” she said meekly, suddenly afraid of the idea.

“I’m not just
saying
it.  It’s my last promise to you.”

His words hurt
her so terribly that she didn’t know how she kept herself from sobbing, but she
looked at him with uncharacteristic indifference.  He saw it and bit back
harder.

“So, when you go
and then you decide that you’ve changed your mind, it’s going to be too late. 
I’ll have already forgotten about you.”

“That’s cruel,”
she told him.  She knew that he could see the sadness in her eyes now, but he
didn’t care.

“Well, so are
you.”

They stared at
each other, hard, but there were no words left in their mouths.  Rifter turned
and left her in the tent, and Wren found that she could shed no more tears for
him today.

1

The night fell
on them once again, and the silence had not been broken within the group.  The
only thing that came up between them was talk of the coming battle.  They
prepared their weapons, knowing that tomorrow was the day they were going to
set out to find the evil one, and they had best be prepared in case they found
him.  The boys were quiet in their work, and they did not ask Wren many
questions when she finally decided to return to them from the tent.

Just as they
were, Wren was also preparing herself to leave.  She didn’t do this physically
for it was not as if she had any belongings to pack, but she did so staring at
the fire with her knees drawn up against her chest, making plans in her mind.

She had not told
the rest of them what she was thinking, or about the fight that she’d had with
Rifter, but she suspected that they could tell something wasn’t right between
the two of them.

Though she had
resolved herself to go, she didn’t think she would be able to get Rifter to
take her back in the middle of this war, and she wasn’t sure how she might get
back on her own.  She couldn’t decide if she should travel to the beach by
herself or sit here and wait until he was done with the fighting, but she was
still determined that she should go.

Rifter had vowed
never to change, and spending more time here was not going to make him learn
real feelings for her.  She was sure of that now.

She was also
unsure whether or not she could convince Henry to go back with her, but she was
going to try again.  Max was coming for certain, and she was going to make sure
he got to that family who wanted to adopt him.  As for herself, she couldn’t
say what would become of her, but she couldn’t keep living this delusional
life.

After a while of
being alone by the fire, she heard light footsteps approaching her and then Sly
had appeared, stepping over the log to sit beside her.  He didn’t acknowledge
her, but took up a branch and stoked the fire a bit.  She watched him a moment,
but when he didn’t offer her any eye contact, she turned her face away from
him.  Only then did he speak.

“I’m going to
tell you something,” he said clandestinely.  He shifted his eyes around to see
if the others were watching, but he didn’t give her any regard.  The only way
she knew he was talking to her was because there was no one else around.  He
didn’t continue until she had looked back toward the fire.