Chapter 119 What He Sees

Chapter 119 What He Sees
Lyanna

Ridan spent most of the morning watching us whenever he thought I would not notice.
At first, I assumed his attention was fixed on Elias. They had nearly killed each other the day before, and travelling together had done nothing to make Ridan trust him. By our first stop, however, I realized that his eyes kept returning to me as often as they returned to Elias.
We rested beneath a stand of firs while Asha watered the horses. Elias opened our pack, handed me bread and waited until I accepted it before searching for the dried plums Asha had given us.
I ate one immediately.
Ridan glanced at the bread I was still holding.
Elias sat beside me, took it from my hand without asking and tore away the hard crust before returning the softer middle. I began eating that as well, while Ridan watched the exchange with a crease between his brows.
I knew that expression. Rubin used to send Ridan into a room full of contradictory reports and tell him to find the lie. He would sit silently until everyone else became uncomfortable enough to start explaining themselves.
Apparently, Elias and I had become his newest problem.
The scrutiny continued once we resumed travelling. The wooded route Elias had chosen kept us away from the exposed road, although several hours in the saddle left a familiar ache spreading across my lower back. I shifted my weight, waited for the pressure to ease and shifted again when it did not.
Elias glanced over his shoulder before stopping beside my horse.
“What?”
“The blanket slipped.”
He loosened the girth and pulled the folded blanket farther beneath the saddle. When he finished, he pressed his palm briefly against my calf.
“Try now.”
I settled my weight differently and found that the pressure had eased.
“Better.”
We continued without discussing it further.
Ridan looked from the saddle to Elias and then at me, but whatever question had occurred to him remained unspoken.
His attention sharpened again that afternoon when Elias signed to me from several paces ahead.
Still quiet?
The baby had moved less than usual since morning, and I had been waiting for another strong kick. I nodded and rested my palm over my stomach.
He usually moves after you eat.
Perhaps he disliked the plums.
Elias glanced back with enough disapproval to make my mouth curve.
He has excellent judgment.
Ridan followed our hands closely enough that I knew he had realized the conversation concerned the baby, even if he could not understand it.
A short while later, a firm movement pressed beneath my ribs. I caught my breath and tapped my stomach twice when Elias turned toward me. The tension across his shoulders eased as he faced the path again.
Ridan saw the entire exchange.
By the time we reached an abandoned shepherd’s shelter near dusk, his scrutiny had begun to irritate me.
Elias searched the shelter while Ridan checked the surrounding ground and Asha inspected a spring farther down the slope. Once they were satisfied that nobody had used the place recently, Elias came to help me dismount.
I leaned toward him and braced my hands against his shoulders while he caught me at the waist. My back tightened when my boots reached the ground, and I remained against him while the ache passed.
“You pushed too long,” he said.
“I spent most of the day sitting.”
“You remain capable of hurting while seated.”
I opened my eyes and found Ridan standing near the shelter entrance. His attention lingered on Elias’s hand at my waist before dropping to mine, which remained curled into Elias’s cloak.
I did not remove it for his benefit.
Nor did I begin policing myself afterward. When Elias passed with his collar folded awkwardly beneath his cloak, I pulled it free and straightened it. When I needed Asha’s salve, I opened Elias’s pack and found it without asking. Elias returned while I was fastening the straps, glanced at the jar in my hand and continued toward the doorway.
Ridan watched all of it with increasing unease.
I finally confronted him after Elias and Asha went to gather wood.
Ridan sat against the wall sharpening his sword, and I lowered myself across from him.
“You can ask me.”
His hand slowed along the blade. “Ask you what?”
“Whatever you have spent the entire day trying to understand.”
Ridan set the whetstone beside him and studied me for several moments before speaking.
“When Rubin first brought you to the western encampment, you refused to let anyone carry your medical chest.”
I frowned at the unexpected memory.
“You remember that?”
“I remember Rubin ordering me not to help you because you had threatened to throw the chest into the river if another soldier tried.”
“He was exaggerating.”
“You threatened the river.”
Despite myself, I remembered Rubin laughing when he told Ridan to leave me alone.
Ridan did not smile now.
“You hated needing anyone,” he said. “Even him, sometimes.”
My amusement faded.
“I know what you are asking.”
“I don't think you do.” Ridan rested his forearms across his knees. “Yesterday I needed to know whether Veras had hurt you. Today I am trying to understand what happened before you reached the point where you could answer no.”
I waited for him to continue.
“You were taken alone into Drakovia. You lost Rubin, your household and everyone who might have protected you. Then one Drakovian became the person who gave you food, found you shelter and kept other people from hurting you.”
His gaze shifted briefly toward the doorway.
“If someone becomes the only safe thing in a place where everything else is dangerous, I don't know how easily anyone can separate wanting that person from being terrified of losing the safety attached to him.”
The question hurt more than his accusations had.
It also made more sense.
“Do you think I stay with Elias because I believe I have nowhere else?”
“I wondered.”
“I don't.”
“Because you owe him for getting you out?”
“No.”
“Because leaving him feels like betraying the person who kept you alive?”
“No.”
Ridan studied my face. “Has he ever made you believe you cannot survive without him?”
“He has done the opposite.”
“How?”
“He taught me the routes he knew. He explained what the soldiers were doing instead of keeping me frightened enough to obey him. When I wanted a different road, he listened. When I stopped trusting him, he did not demand that I trust him again.”
Ridan's eyes dropped toward his hands.
“You depended on him.”
“Yes, and there were times when I would have died without him. That does not mean every choice I made afterward stopped belonging to me.”
Ridan looked toward the doorway again.
“He knows what you will eat before you tell him. He knew your back hurt after you shifted twice, and he watches the child as though he knows its habits.”
“He does know them.”
“And you let him.”
The wording made my temper rise.
“What would satisfy you, Ridan? Should I stop touching him when you enter the room? Should I ask permission before opening a pack I have been using for months? Would sleeping on the other side of the shelter convince you that Drakovia did not destroy my ability to know what I want?”
His jaw tightened. “That is not what I want.”
“Then stop looking at me as though you are waiting to discover which part of this was done to me.”
Silence stretched between us while the fire cracked softly.
Ridan finally asked, “You want him this close?”
There was no accusation in his voice, which somehow made the question harder.
I held his gaze.
“Yes.”
His eyes closed briefly.
Rubin had trusted him with his life. Ridan had crossed into Drakovia searching for us and had spent months believing that if he found me, he might also find his commander. Instead, he had found Rubin dead, his child unborn and his widow travelling beside an enemy officer with an intimacy that required no instruction.
I could understand why the answer hurt him without changing it.
When Elias and Asha returned, Ridan stood to take some of the wood from Asha.
“The eastern side remains clear, Lord Veras.”
Elias stopped just inside the doorway and looked at him for a moment.
“Thank you.”
Later, Ridan called him Lord Veras again, with such rigid courtesy that Elias glanced toward me. I occupied myself with arranging the blankets and left him to wonder.
When it was time to sleep, I laid my bedroll beside Elias’s exactly where I ordinarily would. The stone floor was cold enough that sometime after the fire burned low, I moved closer until my back rested against his chest. Elias shifted without waking fully, making room for my stomach before his arm settled around me.
I woke later when the baby rolled heavily beneath my ribs. Elias remained asleep behind me, his hand resting loosely at my waist.
Across the shelter, Ridan sat beside the dying fire with his forearms braced on his knees. His eyes remained fixed on the coals, and although I watched him for several moments before sleep reclaimed me, he never once looked our way.