Oh.

That was new. A feeling in his chest that made him want to move closer. So he did. He stepped closer, reached out, placed his hand on the curve where Dayir’s shoulder met his neck – saw his eyebrows raise slightly in pleasant surprise – and kissed him.

It was short, simple, nothing particularly special. But it was the first time he’d ever felt a compulsion to do so, done it without thinking. Without hesitation or even confusion buzzing inside his head.

He’d done it on impulse, without thought.

And then came the realization of what he’d done. He pulled away quickly, face frozen in mortification.

He didn’t even see Dayir’s expression as he muttered, “Um. Sorry.”

“What? You don’t – ” but Dayir’s words were cut short by a much more unusual sound.

Loud sputtering noises coming from Khai’s direction.

And Amba felt his stomach drop further.

“What! Wait, wait, waitwaitwaitwaitwait – ” Amba slowly shifted his focus over to Khai, face still frozen as he turned to see his brother darting a finger back and forth between the two as quickly as he could.

“When!? I mean, waitwaitwait. You’re like…” more finger darting, “A thing?”

Amba’s eyes slid over to Dayir, who was staring at Khai’s reaction with an amused grin, and similarly amused crease between his brows.

Amba took in a breath and regained his composure, giving Khai a guarded frown as he answered, “Sort of. So wh – ”

Now Amba’s words were cut short by Khai’s over-enthusiastic response.

“Holy shit!” Khai grasped Amba’s shoulders and gave him a shake. A prolonged one.

“What the – Khai, stop!” Amba shoved away Khai’s arms as he protested, “Calm down.”

“But, but, but… this is – ” he snapped his mouth shut at Amba’s glare. Shifted in the spot a little anxiously before asking – much more calmly this time – “Since when?”

When no answer was forthcoming from Amba, he turned his face to Dayir.

“Um,” Dayir – still apparently entertained by the sight of Khai’s over-reaction – shrugged a shoulder, “That’s… a difficult answer.”

Khai frowned, turning back to Amba, “You didn’t tell me.”

“No.” Amba’s reply was blunt, seemingly unwilling to divulge any more information. But after a few long moments of Khai continuing to stare at him, waiting for more, he pursed his lips and sighed.

“It’s not – we’re just -” he frowned, let out a frustrated growl at the lack of words.

“We’re just seeing if it works,” a gentle interjection from Dayir. It helped Amba breathe easier, and he nodded confirmation of the words.

Khai tilted his head, confused. “Just seeing…?” he glances between the two.

“So it’s only maybe a thing.”

“So don’t go telling anyone,” Ambaghai put in.

Khai hummed discontentedly. He was practically buzzing with excitement over telling others about this new revelation.

“But – ”

“Khaishan.” Dayir’s tone sounds surprisingly like that of a scolding parent. It stops Khai in his tracks. Ambaghai raised his brows at that, almost impressed.

There was a bit more fidgeting from Khai before he finally grumbled out an, “Okay, I’ll try…”

Amba stared at him with a frown, “Khai.”

“It’s the best I can do…” the words came out as something of a whine. He seemed to genuinely mean it at least.

There’s a stretch of silence as Dayir continues to stare at him, awaiting some sort of enlightenment to the purpose of the question. Ambaghai stares back at him passively as he plucks another piece of dried grass from his hair. He drops it without comment before making to stand up.

“I’m going to throw her into the lake.”

The comment comes out so blunt and matter-of-fact that he might as well have been commenting on the weather. It takes a moment for the words to click into place, but when they do, Dayir lets out a brief snort of laughter. Something he’d long since noticed about Ambaghai was that his flat pattern of speech made it difficult to pick out hints of humor.

“Right.” He presses a fist to his mouth as though doing so might help him fight back the amused grin trying to force its way onto his face. “You know if you do that she’s gonna find a way to make sure you go in, too.”

Ambaghai doesn’t even look at Dayir, his eyes are fixed on Sechen’s back.

“I’ll take that risk.”

Dayir watches as he strides off toward Sechen, unusually quietly for the seeming lack of effort he puts into doing so. Sechen doesn’t even notice him until he stoops down, wrapping his arms about her middle to pluck her from the ground.

She lets out a high scream, kicks her heels at Amba’s knees as the scream dissolves into laughter. The kind of laughter that carries protest on it, the same kind of laughter a child will give in response to being relentlessly tickled by a parent. Or an older sibling.

He watches as Amba swings her out toward the water. Her laughter switches back to a delighted, angry scream that is cut off by the splash of water. Only then does he pick himself up from where he sits to stride to the edge of the water, staring down over the lip of a shallow just as Sechen’s head pops out of the water.

“You!” she shouts, making a fruitless attempt to splash water up at the two of them.

Dayir laughs, turns his gaze to Amba to find the barest smile on his lips. There’s a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

As Sechen starts to kick her way over to the edge of the water, Dayir considers urging Amba to sprint away from the lake. He can all but hear Sechen’s indignant voice calling after them.

But no. Best to end this blood feud before it begins.

He laughs lowly, shaking his head as he turns to walk away from the water’s edge. Stops. And slams into Ambaghai with full force.

Ambaghai’s tumble into the water is much quieter than Sechen’s had been. He makes no noise but for a surprised grunt at Dayir’s impact. And then a splash. And an explosion of delighted laughter from Sechen as she realizes what had just happened.

Dayir peers over the edge, offering a sheepish grin down to Ambaghai as he glares up at him. But there’s a tenseness at the corner of his mouth that suggests a supressed smile. Maybe. That or he’s actually pissed.

The glare is broken as Sechen splashes water at him before attempting to close in, latch her arms around Amba’s neck.

Dayir smiles, he sits cross-legged on the edge of the drop and watches Ambaghai fight off Sechen’s attempts to climb onto his back.

---

He had two memories of the day his husband died.

One carried pain in every moment. Too immediate, too hard, too terribly real. Yet he’d be hard pressed to remember more than a few select details. Images and words that would never leave him. That would always haunt him and never let him go. He didn’t want them to let him go.

The other was distant, cold. There were no feelings wrapped up inside it. Nothing overwhelming or difficult – it just was. Like a story relayed to him by another, and yet he could recall every moment of it with startling clarity.

It had started with a scream. An arrow from an unseen attacker burying itself in Sechen’s thigh.

And then a second arrow, slipping past him as a shield flickered into place just a moment too late. A second scream as it buried itself in Dayir’s chest.

Ambush was a rare thing on the Steppe. Appropriate cover was so uncommon that even where it existed the thought had never occurred to them.

Why hadn’t it occurred to them? Why had they gone out alone?

He’d felt his stomach drop when he’d heard Dayir cry out in pain. He’d kept the shield up when he turned to look. A flutter of panic at the sight of the arrow but Dayir was already moving, drawing a sword, head turned up toward the cliff, eyes searching for the attackers. And Ambaghai had gotten a better view of where the arrow had gone.

Not fatal. His mind latched onto that. Not fatal.

And then they came from around the cliff, not just atop it, charging at their little group.

Completely outnumbered.

The details of the fight escape him. Events blur together in a clash of metal, the clatter of arrows on a magical forcefield. The roar of fire and the howl of lightning and hurled spells. The sweeping arcs of Khai’s axe. Sechen fighting with an arrow in her thigh. Dayir with an arrow in his chest, one arm barely functional, but fighting anyways. Winning anyways.

Until…

Until a blade went through him. A blade coming out of his back. One of the images ingrained in Ambaghai’s mind.

Not fatal, he’d thought. And in different circumstances it might not have been, but a person’s body only carries so much blood. And in that moment Ambaghai saw how much blood his husband had already lost. He felt his blood run cold.

That’s where the memory changes. The blow that had sealed their attackers’ fate.

Ambaghai watched as the blade retracted, as Dayir dropped to his knees, a hand over the wound, trying to keep the blood in. He watched as he keeled forward, doubled over in pain, his other arm hanging limp at his side.

And he felt something change. The world came into sharp focus. Cold panic and anger let something loose, like a river freed of a dam.

He knew it was dangerous, but he didn’t care. He reached out for it.

He watched the attacker raise his blade, preparing for a finishing blow, and he watched as the attacker’s head rolled abruptly back, as his body distorted under some unseen force. As it twisted with a sickening crack before dropping harmlessly to the ground.

He’d barely even had to think to cast the spell.

The rest of the fight remained in his memory clear as day. He remembered unleashing a stream of white-hot flame into a woman’s face, her airways, leaving her to her death throes as she was unable even to cry out in pain.

He remembered dashing three people against the cliff face, one of their ribcages smashed inward by the force of the spell he’d struck them with. Leaving the other two for Khai to deal with.

He remembered shooting a mote of lighting not just at, but into an archer on the cliff. Letting the spell fully release its power only after it had entered their chest.

He remembered the feeling of hot metal around his fingers as the rings started to heat from the sheer amount of aether he’d been channeling through them. Same as the metal hidden beneath leather wrappings on his arms. They weren’t meant for this level of casting. But he didn’t care.

He remembered, then, the call of retreat sounding from out of sight, from those who remained.

He saw Dayir, now lying on his back, Sechen leaning over him, hands pressed over his wound. But he charged instead in a different direction even as his heart screamed at him to go to them. To go to his husband, to help him. But he wasn’t listening to his heart then. It was as though he’d been gripped by something. Something deeper, more primal. Something made of rage and ice.

There are still enemies about, it said. It was cold, and it was angry, and it wanted blood.

So he chased after them. Tore around the side of the cliff and ran until he reached the crest of a hill where the cliff met the rest of the land. And he saw them. Horses. Three of them bearing their riders away.

He’d raised his hands before him, and watched as the horses’ legs collided with nothing. As they’d crumpled to the ground, taking their riders with them, pinning them beneath them.

But it wasn’t enough for him. These people weren’t allowed to get away. To escape. To live. He needed to make sure.

Raising one arm, palm up into the air, he began casting a spell he’d been told never to cast without a proper focus. Without the amulet he so rarely kept on him. The one he didn’t have on him now.

It was dangerous.

And he didn’t fucking care.

A ball of flame gathered over the site of the carnage. It started small, built over the course of seconds. Grew larger, more intense. A bright white flame that hung ominously above the scene. He saw one of the bodies stir slightly as the ball dropped and enveloped them. Its flames exploded outward, flaring brightly for a moment before abruptly clearing, leaving nothing but scorched earth and bodies in their wake.

But Ambaghai was already gone, running back to the others as despair washed over him, and the memory fades back into something else. Something heavy, painful, too much to feel all at once and all to real.

He’d been alive when he’d returned, Sechen still pressing her hands against his wound. Khai was gone – to get help, Sechen had told him.

As he dropped to his knees at his side, Dayir looked up at him.

And he’d been struck by the blood. Dark in the night and darker still in contrast to his skin, to his hair. Even his horns and his scales. Pale. Some oddity of blood that set whispers amongst some of the tribe that Nhaama had rejected him. And now beneath Her light his blood might have been black as the ink of Her night. Another image that engraved itself on his mind. The contrast made all the more sharp in his memory by the passage of time.

A person’s body can only hold so much blood.

Dayir knew it, too. He could see it in his eyes as he reached a bloodied hand toward him – the sorrow there, mingled with the pain there that surged with every ragged breath. Tears traced tracks through the blood on his face and Ambaghai felt some fall down his own as he grasped that hand.

He remembers then saying that he had him, that it would be alright. Repeating it again and again as though that could make it true, trying to convince himself – convince them all – that he would live. But Dayir knew. And he was not in the habit of lying. Not to others, not to himself. A gentle hand on his face brought a halt to Ambaghai’s useless utterances. Looking down on his husband he saw the truth once more and helplessness washed over him.

Suffocating helplessness that gripped him at his core.

Nothing he could do. For all that he’d been taught to heal. For all that he had magic. He had no healing magic. The sick irony that twisted the knife in his gut.

But he could not simply sit there and do nothing. Watch his husband die. He couldn’t. He bowed his head down, pressed his own forehead against Dayir’s.

Maybe if he could just slow the flow of blood. If he could slow it just enough.

Iloh was not so far off. Khai had gone to get help. If he could just make it until then…

He didn’t know how, but he had to try.

It was only then that he realized how much aether he’d used. How little he had left. But it didn’t matter. He would give it all, everything he had – because Dayir already had that – all he had left, for just a chance.

So he poured his aether into him, he tried. And he felt it work, felt something change as the Dayir’s pulse slowed. As the blood stopped coming quite so much, quite so fast. It was uncontrolled, inefficient. Not sustainable. But that didn’t matter, it only had to last long enough. Just long enough for someone to arrive. To help.

He doesn’t know how long it lasted. How long he stayed like that, forehead pressed against his husband and willing his aether to do something it had never been taught how to do. Trying to ration it, to keep it from running out before help reached them.

He remembered some words, weak, carried on a breath. Words that could barely make it out.

“Amba. Please. It hurts.”

He remembered the desperate “Please”  that forced itself from his own mouth and ended in a sob. The feeling of a shaking hand resting over his own where he had it pressed to the arrow wound, the remainder of a shaft sticking out between his fingers.

“It’s okay.” The voice barely had any substance.

“No.”

“You’ll be okay.”

The last words he’d ever heard him speak.

Ambaghai remembered pleading, then. Desperately begging as though it could change anything. Clawing against the helplessness that filled him as he realized Dayir’s life was slipping from him like water from a woven bag.

Shallow breaths. Still there. Barely.

He remembered pouring his aether into him in greater force, as though doing so could reverse the flow of blood. Reverse what had happened. He was ready to give all of it, everything. He wanted to. He’d always intended to.

And for a time, the rest of the world disappeared. All he was aware of was his forehead, pressed against his husband’s, and the desperate wish trying its best to combat the helplessness in his chest.

And then a voice, begging him, pleading him to stop. Sobbing as it told him:

“He’s gone.”

And it couldn’t be true. But he knew it was true.

Straightening up, staring at those glassy eyes pointed ever so slightly in his direction as they reflected Nhaama’s light. 

No light of their own, no life.

And with that realization came an unsettling quiet to his soul. Absence – for a breath – of anything. And then pain. Pain that gripped his throat to strangle him. Gripped his chest and tried to force the air from his lungs.

Exhaustion. He wouldn’t be awake much longer. But he didn’t want to be.

A few sobbed breaths that caught in his chest, forcing air into his lungs against the crushing weight upon them before he realized that he didn’t want to fight it. A long breath out as he fell slowly onto his side, a sound escaping with it. Not a shout, nor a cry, nor a moan, but it carried his pain upon it.

He felt the exhaustion within his bones and in his soul and he knew why it was there. He’d pushed too hard. Too far.

But he didn’t care.

He let his eyes close. His breaths no longer controlled. They came small; shallow and sharp and sobbing. He felt a hand close on his forearm, squeezing, shaking as someone called his name, but he didn’t focus on that.

He focused instead on where his hand rested. On the chest of someone whose heart no longer beat. He felt pain lance through him at the dissonance - the utter wrongness he felt on the realization that his own still did.

The wrong heart beating.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

When the darkness rose to take him he didn’t fight it. He didn’t even try.

…

You’ll be okay.

The final words of a dying man whispered moments before he slipped away.

You’ll be okay.

In his dying breaths, he’d tried to comfort, to console, reassure. While all Ambaghai had be able to do was to plead. To beg.

To prolong his suffering.

Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

You’ll be okay.

…

It would be some time before he would be conscious enough to be aware of his own heartbeat again. He hadn’t expected to be. He’d expected to die that night aside his husband, expended of all his aether. But eventually, he did wake. Eventually, he did remember that his heart still beat.

The wrong heart beating. That dissonance never went away. The guilt, the regret. And the echo…

You’ll be okay.