Chapter 122 I Don’t Need Him Erased

Chapter 122 I Don’t Need Him Erased
Elias

Whatever Ridan had said to Lyanna while Asha and I were gone remained with her for the rest of the afternoon.
I saw it when we returned to the overhang and found them standing apart, Ridan looking as though someone had stripped several layers of certainty from him and Lyanna too composed for me to believe she was unaffected. When I asked whether she was all right, she did not answer. I wanted to ask again, but there were some silences I had learned not to force open.
So I packed the horses instead.
Ridan spoke little once we resumed travelling. He kept ahead with Asha while Lyanna rode beside me, and whenever the trail narrowed, I watched the ground beneath her horse rather than watching her face. She would tell me when she was ready.
It was nearly evening before she did.
We had found shelter in the ruins of an old charcoal burner’s hut. Most of the roof remained intact, and the surrounding trees concealed the horses well enough that we risked a small fire. Ridan had taken first watch along the ridge while Asha slept inside.
Lyanna sat beside me outside, close enough that our shoulders touched.
For a long while, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, “Rubin hated pears.”
I turned toward her.
She was looking into the fire.
“I didn't know that.”
“He claimed they had the texture of wet sand.”
“That seems excessive.”
“It was. He once attended a dinner where the host served poached pears for dessert. Rubin ate the entire thing because the man had spent the evening trying to persuade him to support a trade agreement.”
I could see the beginning of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“He told me afterward that diplomacy required sacrifices no soldier should be expected to make.”
I smiled despite myself. “Did he support the agreement?”
“No.”
That pulled a quiet laugh from me.
Lyanna's smile lingered for a moment before fading.
I did not ask why she had told me.
Until now, Rubin had usually entered our conversations through pain. I knew about the man she had lost, but very little about the man she had lived with. Apparently, he hated pears, could endure them for politics and had enough flair for misery to describe dessert as a military sacrifice.
It was not much.
It felt like she had opened a door.
“He used to steal the blankets,” she continued. “Then deny it while wrapped in all of them.”
“That sounds difficult to deny.”
“He was very committed.”
I looked down at our hands resting between us.
“What else?”
Her eyes came to mine.
There was surprise there, faint but unmistakable.
I waited.
“He sang badly.”
“How badly?”
“Terribly. He knew it too, which somehow made it worse because he would become louder whenever anyone complained.”
I imagined a man I had never met deliberately tormenting an entire household with bad singing and understood, suddenly, why Ridan's stories had made her laugh.
“He sounds irritating.”
“He was.”
She smiled again, but this time grief moved through it without destroying it.
“He could be impossible.”
I let her have the silence that followed.
Eventually, she slipped her hand into mine.
“I still love him.”
There it was.
Not an apology. Not quite a confession either.
Just the truth.
“I know.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“Does that bother you?”
I considered lying because the complete truth was not particularly flattering. I had disliked hearing Ridan speak Rubin's name with familiarity. I had resented memories that belonged to a life before me, and yesterday I had allowed that resentment to help me say something cruel beside a swollen stream.
But none of those feelings changed my answer.
“No.”
Lyanna studied my face.
I turned my hand beneath hers and laced our fingers together.
“You lost him. That didn't erase what he was to you.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I thought it should change.”
“What should?”
“What I feel.”
I waited while she searched for the words.
“Sometimes when I want you, I feel as though I am taking something from him.”
The admission came quietly.
“If I am happy with you, then I wonder whether I am grieving him enough. If I think about you more often than I think about him, I wonder what that means. Every time you become more important to me, some part of me starts measuring what is left for Rubin.”
I understood then what Ridan's conversation had touched.
Lyanna had been treating her heart like contested ground, as though affection could advance only by forcing something else into retreat.
I lifted our joined hands and pressed my thumb across her knuckles.
“I don't need him erased.”
She stopped breathing for a moment.
I continued before she could misunderstand me.
“I don't need you to love him less so that whatever this is between us can matter more. He was your husband. You had a life with him. You expected to have more of it.” I looked at her. “I would be more worried if you could simply stop loving him because he died.”
Her eyes had gone bright.
“Elias.”
“I am jealous of him sometimes.”
That startled a wet laugh from her.
“I thought you said it didn't bother you.”
“I said you loving him doesn't bother me. I did not claim sainthood.”
She lowered her head, and I felt her shoulders move with another quiet laugh before she pressed the heel of her hand beneath one eye.
“I disliked Ridan yesterday,” I admitted. “He knew how to make you laugh with stories I had never heard. He knew people you knew, places you lived, the person you were before any of this happened. I wanted things that were never mine to have.”
Her expression softened.
“Asha.”
“Yes.”
“I hated that too.”
“I know.”
She shifted closer until her head rested against my shoulder.
I released her hand only to put my arm around her, and she settled against me with the ease that had apparently driven Ridan halfway to madness the night before.
I could live with that.
For a while, the fire was the only thing moving between the trees.
Then Lyanna said, “Ridan thinks they may not accept you.”
My hand stilled against her arm.
“Aeloria?”
She nodded.
“He said the Aramesis may be grateful to you for bringing me home. They may even protect you because I ask them to. But accepting you as the man who rescued me is different from accepting you beside me.”
I looked toward the ridge.
Ridan was barely visible between the trees. He had turned away from us, giving us a privacy I suspected was deliberate.
“He's probably right.”
Lyanna lifted her head.
“You agree with him?”
“On that? Yes.”
Her brow drew together.
“I commanded Drakovian soldiers, Lyanna.”
“You deserted.”
“After years of service.”
“You saved me.”
“That matters to you. It may matter to some of them.” I rubbed my thumb slowly along her sleeve. “It doesn't undo anything that came before it.”
She looked unhappy with that answer, but she did not argue.
“There is more,” she said.
I waited.
“The child.”
I understood immediately.
“The Aramesis may consider the baby part of Rubin's house.”
“He is.”
“And me being close to him may be considerably harder for them to tolerate.”
Her hand covered the curve of her stomach.
“He is my son before he is anyone's heir.”
“I agree.”
“They don't get to decide who can be near him.”
“No.”
The speed of my answer made her look at me.
I held her gaze.
“But Ridan was warning you about what they might do, not telling you they have the right to do it.”
She looked back toward the fire.
That was the difficulty neither of us could remove by refusing to respect it. Aeloria was her home. It was also a kingdom at war with mine, populated by people who had excellent reasons to hate the uniform I had once worn.
For months, reaching the border had been the only future we allowed ourselves to discuss. Every route, every hiding place and every risk had been measured against it.
We had never spoken much about the morning after.
Lyanna's fingers found mine again.
“What are you going to do when we reach Aeloria?”
I had considered dozens of practical answers. Surrender my sword. Submit to questioning. Give them everything I knew about Drakovian positions if it bought Lyanna protection. Leave before my presence endangered her.
None of those answered what she had actually asked.
“I don't know.”
Her face tightened.
I hated putting that uncertainty there, but I would not offer her a promise I had no power to keep.
“I don't know what they'll allow me to do,” I said. “I don't know whether they'll imprison me, use what I know and send me away, or decide a former Drakovian commander is worth more as a prisoner than an ally.”
“And if they let you choose?”
That was harder.
Before I could answer, movement along the ridge caught my attention. Ridan was returning from his circuit, and when he saw us together beside the fire, his steps slowed.
His gaze passed over Lyanna's head against my shoulder and our joined hands.
Yesterday he would have found a reason to approach.
Tonight, he turned toward the horses instead.
Lyanna settled against me again.
Neither of us returned to her question.
We sat there with the border somewhere ahead of us and Drakovian hunters somewhere behind, caught on a road we had spent months trying desperately to survive.
For the first time, I found myself wishing it were longer.