Page 58 of Artemysia
“Maybe because he was raised by an Academy cleaning lady? Why do we do anything we do? Fear. Hope. And feeling like we’re in control of our fates—making the best of what we’re given, I guess.” Ivy shrugs and hands me another wedge of pie, which I eagerly take.
“Insightful. Should I eat a slice of pie in bed and see what happens?”
“Do it. He’ll have a stroke.”
I muffle my laughter.
“Morrigan? Ivy Morrigan, love, where are you?” Throg’s deep, rumbling voice calls from the bedroom. “Come feed me a bit of whatever you’re having.”
“I definitely have something you can eat.”
“Woman, you’re insatiable. I smell meat pie. But maybe after? Outpost boy is dead to the world, so it’ll be all aboutyou.”
She gasps with delight and flashes me a smile that could outshine all the gas lamps in Stargazer. She takes the pie with her. “Gotta go. Nice chat, Captain.”
As I chew my savory pastry, I mull over whether we’re all acting on the assumption that we may not make it back alive—if our impending deaths make us depraved and irrational—but I come to the conclusion that it’s only me acting out of the ordinary.
Everyone else seems to be themselves.
When I return to the bedroom, Riev is on his knees by the fireplace, feeding logs into the fire until it blazes again. His dark hair falls in soft, loose waves around his jawbone, the strands freed from his usual knot thanks to me. I’d threaded my fingers through them while his head was between my legs.
My stomach takes a deep dive.
He sinks back into bed and rolls under the covers.
I shake the crumbs off my shirt before edging back onto the quilt, prepared to defend my midnight snacking. Surprisingly, he refrains from any sort of snide comment.
Instead, propped on his side, he asks, “If there were no Syf to fight, what would you be doing instead?”
I search his face, in case he’s mocking me. But his face is earnest as he waits for my answer, and I wonder what made him suddenly imagine a world without Syf.
“I’d raise elk on the farm we used to have. Read. Snack on candy all day long. You?”
“Huh,” he grunts, frowning. The flames of the hearth flicker strange shadows on his face.
He doesn’t have a reply to his own question. Has he never considered this? He must have. We all have.
“We all save dreams in a jar and count them before we go to sleep,” I say. It’s what Academy soldiers do in the cold, quiet hours of the night. We imagine a different world. It’s what gets us to sleep.
“I just close my eyes and go right to sleep.”
“Pssh. You must have dreams. Tell me,” I prompt.
“Dreams are for better men,” he mutters.
“See, this is why Ivy calls you a crotchety grandpa—that’s exactly what a grumpy old man would say. You’re only proving her right.”
“Alright, fine. I’d like to…” He hesitates, fixing me with a vulnerable look that liquefies my insides, as if asking me not to make fun of his response. “I’d like to do all of that too. What you said.”
“You can’t stealmyanswer.”
His solemn restraint collapses, and he laughs so hard that the edges of his wintry eyes crinkle, the tension of his honesty breaking apart. “Can you imagine me being a bartender or doctor? With my social skills? I don’t have the patience to be a tailor or baker. I can read, but I can’t write, and that’s most city jobs. Being an assassin is all I know how to do. It’s how I’ve survived. I don’t fit in anywhere else.”
“I can imagine you doing something else. You sewed me up just fine.”
The crackling fire launches tiny red sparks into the air as he considers this.
“I meant…I’d like land of my own. I’d build a cottage. Farmhouse and field, all my own stuff. Ride into the city on weekends to buy suits. Go to summer fairs and shit.”
