Fear That Knew Him

Maeril sat on the edge of the bed and listened to Nashkel celebrate beneath her.

Cups struck tables. Voices rose. Laughter followed, softened by the floorboards but not silenced.

Rishi’s staff stood beside the door where he had left it earlier. Against the wall, its dark wood and faint arcane glyphs looked harmless. On the ridge, Maeril had watched that same wood rise beneath a giant’s falling tree trunk and blaze with the ward between them.

Maeril pressed her hands together between her knees and locked her fingers tight.

She saw it again: smoke folding cold, fire thinning, guards stepping back without understanding why, and Rishi cloaked in dread.

Rish.

The sight pulled another image behind it: the Lady of Pain’s tattoo on Rishi’s skin.

What else do you carry beneath your skin?

Do I want to know?

A soft knock touched the door.

For a breath, Maeril stayed still.

Then she asked, “Rish?”

The door opened slowly. Rishi stood behind it with tea steaming from their chipped, mismatched travel cups.

He nudged the door shut behind him and stayed there, silent, waiting for permission to come closer.

Maeril almost laughed. Her mouth softened, then tightened again. The tea had not comforted her.

Rishi saw.

Maeril unlocked her fingers and reached for one cup. Rishi gave it to her, keeping the other.

“Not the best I’ve tasted,” he said.

She looked at the cup in her hands.

Steam curled up, warm and harmless.

“Then why bring it?”

“Because bad tea is sometimes better than no tea.”

“That sounds like something monks say when they have failed at tea.”

Her shoulders eased by a fraction, but only for a moment.

The silence came back.

Rishi did not fill it.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, leaving a careful span of blanket between them. He held his cup between both palms.

For a while, only the steam moved between them.

“I knew it was you,” she said.

Rishi listened without speaking.

Her shoulders tightened.

“I stepped back. I knew you, and I still couldn’t understand what I saw.”

He breathed slowly.

“I saw,” he said.

Two words.

No anger in them.

That did not make her fear vanish.

Maeril looked down at the tea.

“What frightened me was not only what I saw,” she said. “It was knowing there may be more I cannot see.”

Rishi’s thumb moved once along his cup.

She looked at him then. Sandals. Torn robe. Ash at the edge of one sleeve. He was Rishi in every familiar detail.

“I don’t know if I want to see it.”

He accepted that without looking away.

Maeril held his gaze.

At last, Rishi set his cup on the floor.

“I am afraid as well.”

Maeril went still.

The words seemed too small for what they carried.

“I know how to train, suffer, and endure,” he said. “I know how to make myself useful.”

Maeril did not speak.

“I do not know how to hold it away from you.”

The noise below receded.

The fear did not leave. It remained under her ribs, awake and honest.

He was not asking her to be unafraid. He was admitting his own fear: that he might hurt her.

Maeril set her cup beside his. Then she reached across the span of blanket and touched the back of his hand.

Rishi went still.

She almost pulled away. Instead, she left her fingers there.

He turned his hand slowly beneath hers until their palms met.

They sat that way, hands joined across the narrow space between them. Fear remained, but it no longer held the whole room.

After a while, he said, “Thank you.”

Maeril blinked.

“What for?”

Rishi looked toward the staff.

“For saving my life,” he said.

Maeril followed his gaze.

She remembered the tree trunk falling, the impossible size of it, Rishi setting his feet because there had been nowhere left to go.

“I wasn’t going to lose you today,” she murmured.

Rishi’s fingers closed gently around hers.

Maeril leaned into him first. He waited until her weight settled against his chest, then rested his temple against her hair.

What frightened them was not solved. Neither of them carried it alone.

Below, the inn kept telling the story wrong.

Beside them, the tea cooled.