Chapter 55: THE BORDER

Sable came through the shelter door without knocking.

Aria was awake — she hadn't really slept, just moved in and out of a shallow restless half-sleep that left her more tired than before. She sat up when Sable came in and looked at her face and felt her stomach drop slightly at whatever was on it.

"What?" Aria said.

"He's at the border," Sable said.

The shelter went completely quiet.

Elara, on the opposite cot, opened her eyes and sat up properly.

Aria looked at Sable for a long moment. Then she looked at the fire. Then at her hands in her lap. The bond was right there — warm and steady and so close now that it felt less like a pull and more like a presence standing just outside the room.

Which wasn't there earlier. He arrived so fast.

"Vaska turned him away," Sable said.

"He's outside the markers with his wolves. She told him to wait."

"His wolves?" Aria said surprised.

"Seven of them. Hidden in the treeline." Sable looked at her carefully. "He came alone to the clearing. Hands open. Didn't fight when she told him no."

Aria said nothing.

Her hands trembling already without knowing why.

"Do you want to know what she said to him?" Sable asked.

"No," Aria said.

Then —

"Yes."

Then —

She wasn't sure with her answers.

"I don't know." She pressed her lips together and looked at the fire again. "What did she say?"

"I wasn't there," Sable said. "But she came back in and she didn't look angry so whatever happened didn't go badly." She paused. "She said to tell you he's there. That's all. She's not asking you to do anything about it."

"I'm not going out there," Aria said.

"I know," Sable said.

"I'm not," Aria said again. More to herself than to Sable.

"I know," Sable said again. Same tone. Completely without judgment.

Elara had sat up on her cot and was watching Aria with the quiet attention she gave to things she had already formed an opinion about but was choosing not to voice yet. Aria felt it and ignored it.

She pressed both palms flat against her stomach. Liora pressed back immediately. Veyr was still for a moment and then fluttered — three quick movements, more urgent than usual, like he was answering something she hadn't said out loud.

"Stop it," she said quietly to her stomach.

"Did you just tell your unborn children to stop it?" Sable said.

"The second one keeps doing that," Aria said. "He knows exactly when I'm trying not to think about something and he makes his opinions very clear."

"He sounds like his father," Elara said mildly from across the room.

Aria turned immediately to look at her.

Elara looked back with an expression of complete innocence.

"That's not helpful," Aria said.

"I thought it was mildly helpful," Elara said.

Sable made a sound that was not quite a laugh and pressed her hand over her mouth.

"Both of you," Aria said.

She stood up carefully and pulled her cloak around her shoulders and walked to the narrow window gap and looked out at the camp. The morning was grey and cold and the wolves were moving in the purposeful quiet of people who had been given a job and were doing it. The ward hummed at the edges of everything — deeper since Elara had worked on it, more present, more solid.

He was out there somewhere beyond all of that.

Outside the markers. In the cold. Waiting.

She had imagined this moment in various forms over the past weeks — sometimes with anger, sometimes with something she refused to name, sometimes with nothing at all except a tired complicated absence of feeling. She had never imagined it feeling quite like this. Like something that had been stretched tight for a long time had stopped pulling and was just — there. Present. Waiting to see what she would do with it.

She wasn't going to do anything with it.

Not today.

"Aria," Elara said gently.

"I'm fine," Aria said.

"I know," Elara said. "I was going to say eat something."

Aria almost laughed. She turned from the window and sat back down on the cot and accepted the bread Sable was already holding out to her without asking.

"Thank you," she said.

Sable sat down on the stool. "Vaska will come and talk to you later," she said, dusting something almost invisible from her dress.

"About him. About what she's thinking."

"And what is she thinking?" Aria asked.

She was supposed to be calm, she wasn't supposed to be bothered about anything. Elara had been protesting her and she had trust Elara not to hurt her. Elara had also brought her to Ironfang for shelter and she haven't been mistreated for once. She and her twins are doing so well.

So what was wrong?

"I don't know yet," Sable said honestly.

"But Vaska doesn't make decisions based on feelings. She makes them based on what the situation needs." She paused. "Whatever she decides about him it won't be because of you or because of him. It'll be because of what's coming from the south and what this camp needs to deal with it."

Aria looked at her. "You mean she might let him in."

"I mean she'll decide what's useful," Sable said. "And she'll tell you when she's decided."

Aria looked at the fire for a long moment. "And I don't get a say in that?"

Sable looked at her directly. "Do you want one?"

Aria opened her mouth. Closed it again.

She looked at the bread in her hands and said nothing.

Outside, the bond hummed its steady complicated note and Kael sat on the other side of a border he hadn't been invited through and the camp prepared itself for what was coming and the twins moved in their slow deliberate way that said they were listening to everything.

Aria ate the bread and stared at the fire and waited.

Just waited.

A little bit Terrified.