Chapter 20 - Part 12

Delegado watched Orphan go, then crept up to the grate and waited. Ois moved next to him as well, her mithril breastplate making only the lightest of sounds. He smelled her hair, and found his heart beating in tune with her breathing.

“Your friend is extraordinary,” Ois told him in a whisper.

“Yes, he is,” Delegado said back just as quietly. “He is.”

“How did you meet him?” she asked.

Delegado turned to regard her. “Are we just doing a job together?” he asked. “If we are, then there’s no need for small talk, is there? But if it’s more – let’s discuss that now. Right now, while we wait for Orphan’s distraction, because we won’t get another chance. So which is it?”

Ois set her jaw, and stared into Delegado’s eyes. “Which do you want it to be?”

“I want you,” he said. “I always have. You put the obstacles in my way.”

“You made them obstacles,” she said. “They were a part of me, but you just didn’t want to share me. Why didn’t you come for me? Why didn’t you save me? Because I wouldn’t let you bring Shaidan’s head in for the bounty?”

“Do you really think I’m that immature?” he demanded. “Do you really think I’m that selfish?”

Ois swallowed. “No, I guess not. I just – I feel like…”

“You feel like causing me pain,” Delegado said. “You feel I let you down. The pain that the torturers of Droaam put you through didn’t equal the pain you felt when I abandoned you.” He closed his eyes, then opened them. “I didn’t sleep for days. If not for an attack by Riedran pirates, I probably would have killed myself in Sharn once I delivered Marcuiss. Yes, I got drunk with Meddin. He and I were one of the few who survived the Riedran attack. But I thought you were dead, Ois. If I had known you were alive, if I had suspected, I would have called in every favor owed to me, every coin I had, every resource I could beg, borrow, or steal, and I would have been there.”

Ois looked down, fiddling with the silver arrowhead holy symbol of her faith that was tied to a cord on her neck. “Do you think it was easy to tell you to leave Thrane?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I may have once thought so, but – no.”

“You’ve matured since I last saw you,” she said. “I can tell that. But I have to ask. What was your price to come along? Orphan’s was the headband. Thomas said that Oalian granted you all an audience, and that he was promised peace. He has begun to find it with the Flame. But you…Thomas said he didn’t understand what you were promised, and that I should ask you. Apparently every time Orphan stepped near the subject, you gave a violent response.”

“You.”

“What?”

“My price was you.” Delegado pinched the bridge of his nose. “Drorin told me that you were alive. I didn’t believe him. I saw you die. But I came anyway, just in case there was a chance that you were the prisoner that Drorin spoke of, that you had been held here by the fiends in retaliation for taking Shaidan out.”

“You came into Ashtakala to find me?” she asked, bewildered.

“No, Oalian told me the prisoner wasn’t you,” he said. “By then, by the time I left Greenheart, I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

She was silent for a while. “What changed you?” she finally asked. “Drorin?”

“No,” he sighed. “Drorin is dead, killed by an Aundair wizard. Aundair mounted an attack on Merylsward, killing civilians indiscriminately to get at him.” He shook his head. “There’s no one thing that changed me. I’m not even sure that I changed, maybe I just – it’s not an easy answer, Ois.”

“I would like there to be an ‘us’ again,” she told him. “I would. But I’m scared.”

“Maybe because we have a habit of making commitments in life-threatening situations,” Delegado said. “Ois, let’s finish this, then let’s make sure we can still be ‘us.’ I’m afraid of – I’m afraid of…” He couldn’t finish the thought.

“I’m afraid,” she said, leaning in. “I’m always afraid. But – but sometimes – sometimes you have to – to –”

They next thing he knew they were kissing, their lips joined, and their tears mingling.