#cypriet

Violet crashed to her knees at his side. “Cyprian! What did you do? Why would you—?”

The hair slid sinuously over Cyprian’s shoulder, trailing from his clenched fist—as steady as it had been around his sword hilt through every practiced motion of the triten. His face was pale, though, as he looked at what he had done.

“A Steward’s hair is a badge of honor,” he said. “I don’t deserve to bear it. Not anymore.”

Violet laid her hand over his, dark fingers on light. “Cyprian, you are not dishonored. You’ve done nothing that every Steward before you hasn’t d—”

“We are all of us dishonored.” He shook loose of her hold and cast his shorn hair upon the ground. “Every Steward who has ever taken a shadow has disgraced himself and the Order for which he stood. I more than any other, for I betrayed both my own oath and a dear friend to do it.”

He regained his feet with only a fraction of his usual grace. Violet had never once seen him stumble, not in all the months they had known each other nor all that they had been through in that time, but the ground now seemed unsteady beneath his feet. He shuddered as though with cold. His back, when he turned it to her, looked alarmingly unprotected.

Before Cyprian could take another step away from her, Violet caught hold of his hand.

It was known between them that she could not hold him in place now like she could before. That he possessed nearly as much strength as she. If he wanted to free himself from her grip, there was little she could do to stop him.

But he stilled. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to wield the power of his shadow against her. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t bear to pull away from her touch. 

He did not turn, even as she rose to meet him, keeping hold of his hand. Violet brushed her other hand over his shoulder, feeling the warmth of him through his tunic, the way his muscles were bunched and tight. He shivered again. He did not turn toward her, but neither did he turn away when she came to stand before him. He even allowed her to nudge his chin up until he met her gaze.

What was left of his hair swung about his face, barely brushing his chin. Something about it gave a sharper cast to his features, as though the last of his youth had been cut away with the same stroke. His green eyes, though fierce, were wet. They seemed to dare her to speak against his pronouncement again.

She knew better. Instead, she let her fingers trace the line of Cyprian’s jaw, over the shell of his ear, and up. The strands of his hair were soft and familiar, though she hadn’t had leave to touch him freely for very long. She had only gotten to run her hands through his hair a few times; to do so now and reach the ends so quickly was surreal. She did it again. Cyprian’s eyes fluttered closed. His breath warmed her wrist at even, careful intervals. It hitched, just the tiniest bit, when Violet let his hair slip through her fingers to frame his face again.

“For whatever it’s worth—”

Cyprian’s eyes opened at the sound of her voice, low and hoarse from a throat gone tight with emotion. She pushed his hair back once more, this time tucking it behind his ear. Her thumb lingered on his cheek until it pinked.

“—I think it looks good like this.”

The breath Cyprian released was almost a laugh; it startled him out of his stillness. He ducked his head away from her touch, but he found her hand with his own instead and gripped it tightly. The short curtain of his hair nearly hid a bleak approximation of a smile.

“It’s not meant as a fashion statement.”

“I know.”

With both her hands now caught in his, there was nothing for Violet to do but lean in closer. An offer rather than an imposition. It was four more long, measured breaths before Cyprian turned his face up to accept her. The kiss was soft and simple—still new to them both. Beneath the careful stillness of him, Violet could feel the hesitance, the fear that even this much indulgence would be enough to release what lurked within.

It wasn’t. Cyprian remained himself when Violet drew back to look at him once more, though the short hair and the ruinous expression rendered him very different from the boy she had met so many months ago. Violet finally released his hands to cradle his face instead.

“We’ll find him,” she said. Then, again, with all the conviction she had: “We will. And when we do, we’ll make it right.”

Cyprian shook his head as much as he could with her holding him in place. “You say that as if it will be simple.”

After all that had happened, all they had seen and done and suffered, the mere concept of simple seemed laughable. Simple was something that had ceased to exist when Violet had first laid eyes on Will in the belly of the Sealgair. Maybe it would feel possible again when she had him at her side once more, when all that was broken between them had been fixed.

“Of course it won’t be,” she said. “It might be next to impossible, for all we know. But I’ve never known you to back down from a challenge before, Cyprian, no matter the odds. Don’t give up hope now.”

Cyprian closed his eyes. Leaning into the touch upon his cheek, he let out a long, slow breath. Some of the tension released from his shoulders. Slowly, tentatively, his arms found their way around Violet’s waist, pulling her to him.

They stayed that way for a long moment, settled in the embrace. The warmth of Cyprian’s arms around her warded off the wind’s chill and soothed the raw, aching places inside her. The morning sun shone brightly, the trees that ringed the field throwing dappled shadows in lacy patterns around them. Still, there was a sense of something missing; the feeling hadn’t left Violet since the moment everything had gone wrong.