Bastien’s jaw clenches. “I guess I should’ve known that would happen. A part of me thought it was a way for me to show you I was okay, still kicking and all that.”
I grab my bowl once more, simply needing something to hold until the tremor in my fingers passes. “It was a good plan.”
“Didn’t help though, did it?” He tosses a handful of needles into the fire and the flames surge into the air, igniting before burning out rapidly. He stares into the flames for several minutes. “No matter how bad things got, he should never have abandoned you.”
“Why not? You did.”
The instant the words cross my lips, I wish I could take them back. The color leeches from his face. “You know why I had to.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t alone.”
“Eamon was supposed to take care of you. To make you happy when I couldn’t.” Color rushes back in like a tidal wave, crashing over his face in splashes of scarlet. “I left so you could have a life, so you could be with him like you were supposed to be.”
His words cut through me like a poison-tipped dagger, deep and visceral. A wound I wish was fatal. I drop my head to my hands, feeling the tremor rise from my fingers to encase my entire body. I feel nauseous, ill with regret.
“Why didn’t you send word to me?” he says so softly I struggle to hear him over the crackling of the flames. “You know I’d have found a way to help you.”
I lift my head. Despite how much it would’ve hurt him, I know, staring into the depths of his pain-filled eyes, that he would’ve done anything to protect me. Even if that meant protecting me from myself.
“I couldn’t do that to you. The way things ended between us…” I trail off, shaking my head, knowing we shouldn’t be speaking of such things. “I didn’t want to hurt you again.”
Bastien rises onto his knees, closing the gap between us before I can draw in a breath. He reaches out as if to touch my cheek but draws his hand back. It hangs awkwardly in the air between us as he searches my face.
Warm tears streak down the curve of my cheeks. My throat feels raw as I clear it and the moment passes. He sinks back down and looks away. “Nothing ever ended between us, Illyria. We just… we needed space.”
“Did it help?” I wipe at my nose, wishing I had a cloth to use instead of my sleeve. This uniform is going to need a serious washing when we arrive at his base!
“No.” He pushes himself upright, rising to his full height. I would have to crane my head to meet his gaze, but I don’t even try. I can’t bear to see the emotion that I would find if I did. “But you should have given me a choice.”
Dipping low, he grabs his bowl of cooling soup and disappears into the shadows. I watch his silhouette in the moonlight until he disappears into a dense grove of trees. I clutch my arms tightly around myself as a chill that the fire can’t touch settles into my bones.
Ten
I rise at dawn, my back and neck stiff from lying on the hard ground. The air within the tent is cold, much colder than it had been when I turned in last night.
I waited up for Bastien, stoking the fire and adding kindling when it burned low, but he never came back. At some point in the middle of the night, I heard him return, the covers of his makeshift bed rustling as he burrowed deep into its layers.
Rubbing my eyes and stretching my arms high overhead, grazing the canvas roof, I realize the material is damp to the touch and drooping low. It snowed last night and Bastien was stuck out in it.
Guilt cinches tightly around my gut as I grab my boots and shove my feet into them. It’s my fault, of course. I should have stuffed down my misgivings and invited him to sleep inside.
The tent is more of a glorified tike-tent, as Eamon likes to call it. Big enough for one full-sized adult to crawl into or a couple of kids to mess around in. Considering most of the soldiers are used to roughing it, I’m sure they don’t mind the cramped quarters, but when it comes to Bastien, his nearness is something I’m not sure I’m ready to handle.
When I emerge from the tent, I see the fire has long since died out. The embers are clumped together in balls of damp ash among the newly fallen layer of snow. It has drifted against the side of my tent and at the base of trees, making the two-inch snowfall seem more like half a foot. Bastien’s bedroll has been lifted off the ground and slung over a crudely constructed lean-to, made of the remaining bits of firewood and our laser guns. Hardly ideal for sleeping in a winter storm.
As I turn in a slow circle, gazing deep into the woods, I realize Bastien is gone. Did he leave sometime during the middle of the night?