Saving the Immortal

Chapter Twenty-Three: One Day Remaining

With only a single day remaining before the army marched, I found myself wanting to give him something — some small piece of myself he might carry with him onto whatever battlefield awaited, some tangible reminder that he had somewhere, and someone, worth returning to.

I chose my necklace.

It had been my grandmother's before it was mine — a slender chain holding a single sapphire, small but finely cut, catching light in a manner that had always reminded me of the particular blue I had come to love in Ruselon's eyes. I had worn it every day since childhood, through every occasion that mattered, and had brought it north with me among the few possessions I considered truly my own rather than simply my family's property.

I found him in our chambers that evening, already reviewing the maps once more, though I suspected by then he had memorized every detail of the coming campaign considerably better than any further study could improve.

"I want you to have this," I said, holding out the necklace where it lay coiled in my palm.

He looked at it, then at me, something careful crossing his features.

"Ivy, this is precious to you—"

"That is precisely why I want you to carry it," I said. "So that whatever battlefield you find yourself upon, you carry some piece of what waits for you here. I would rather you return with it against your skin than have it sit safely in a drawer while you face whatever comes without any reminder of home."

He took it from me carefully, turning the small sapphire between his fingers, and then, without a word, fastened it about his own neck, tucking it beneath his collar where it would rest close against his heart.

"I will guard it," he said quietly, "as fiercely as I intend to guard everything else that matters to me."

That night, rather than the quiet, careful conversation I had expected — final instructions, solemn promises, the particular gravity that seemed to hang over everything since the war's declaration — Ruselon surprised me entirely by beginning to laugh.

"Do you know," he said, settling beside me on the bed, some lightness returning to his features that I had not seen since our morning in the garden, "that Marrow once convinced Caspian an entire hive of bees had taken residence within his boots, simply by scattering flower petals inside them while he slept?"

"He did not," I said, unable to help the smile tugging at my own mouth.

"He did," Ruselon said, clearly delighted by the memory despite everything. "Caspian screamed loud enough to wake the entire eastern wing, convinced he was about to be stung a thousand times over. It took Fennick nearly an hour to convince him the petals were simply petals."

"And what did you think of it," I asked, "watching your brother's misadventure?"

"I laughed harder than I had in years," he admitted. "Even then, our relationship was complicated, but that particular morning, I confess I found it entirely worth setting aside for the sake of watching Caspian dance about his chambers in a state of pure terror over flower petals."

He told me more — a whole evening's worth, tumbling out of him with an ease I had not yet witnessed, each story pulling laughter from me more readily than the last. The time he had accidentally set his own eyebrows alight attempting to demonstrate control over a small flame before a visiting dignitary, and had spent the following fortnight explaining their absence with increasingly elaborate falsehoods. The occasion he and Marrow had, as boys still young enough to be forgiven such things, released an entire cage of the royal aviary's finest songbirds simply to see whether they could catch them again before their tutor noticed.

"You did not catch them," I guessed.

"We did not catch a single one," he confirmed, laughing properly now. "Our tutor discovered the empty cage before we had managed even one, and Marrow and I spent the following week performing every unpleasant chore the household possessed as punishment."

I laughed until tears gathered at the corners of my eyes, though I understood, even as the laughter came, that it carried within it something considerably more bittersweet than simple amusement.

Tomorrow he leaves, I thought, watching him laugh so freely, so unguardedly, the particular boyishness of his stories offering a glimpse of the man he might have been, had his childhood carried more kindness within it. Tomorrow, and I do not know for how long, or whether he returns to me at all.

The laughter faded slowly into a quieter warmth, and he drew me against him, still smiling, though something more solemn had settled beneath the humor now.

"I have not laughed so freely in longer than I can properly recall," he admitted quietly. "Thank you, Ivy, for giving me a reason to remember something other than fear, on the night before I march to war."

"I will miss this," I said, my voice catching slightly. "I will miss you, Ruselon. More than I know how to properly say."

"And I you," he said, pressing his lips to my hair. "More than any words I possess could adequately express."

We lay together a long while after, his stories still echoing warmly between us, and I found myself memorizing the particular sound of his laughter, the exact weight of his arm about my shoulders, every small detail I might need to carry with me through whatever nights of waiting lay ahead.