Creusus's Arc

Chapter 37 of 43

Creusus sat on the grass above the ocean and did not open his hands. The warmth inside them shifted. It was not the small hard point he had carried out of the dark. It was bigger. It moved on its own. He looked down and saw a shape curled against his chest, and his arms wrapped around it the way a man shields a child from rain. He pulled back to see what he held. A woman. Black hair spilled across his forearm in a long dark wave. Her cheek pressed to his bare chest. Her breath was warm and steady on his skin. She was not Thane. Thane was a man, thin and tall, a mage from the northern spire. This was not him. This was Kallista. Creusus stopped breathing. He had buried her under a fig tree. He had checked her pulse and closed her eyes. He knew what dead was. He knew it in his hands. She stirred. She looked up at him with brown eyes and smiled, sleepy, as if she had only just woken from a nap in the grove. "You have hair," she said. She lifted one hand and brushed his scalp. "When did that happen?" He reached up. His fingers found hair. Thick and long. It fell past his shoulders. He had shaved his head every week of his adult life. He had no beard, no hair, ever. Now a dark mane hung down his back like a horse's tail. He did not answer her. He could not. He understood then, all at once. When Diablo killed her, the demon had not taken her body only. The demon had swallowed her soul into the orb with the rest. She had been one of the small stubborn lights in the dark. She had been the one his hands closed around. He had thought it was Thane. He had carried her out instead. "Creusus?" Kallista said. She sat up a little. "You're squeezing me." He loosened his arms. His hands shook. He looked at them and saw the black wrappings still there, the knuckles dark and quiet. "You died," he said. She frowned. "I fell asleep. In the shack, silly!" She did not know. Whatever she had passed through, it had not stayed with her. He decided in that moment he would not tell her yet. Not here. Not on this shore with the salt in the air and her breath warm on his skin.