When he woke up, she was not beside him.
Yeza sat up, confused and only half conscious. The moon was not full yet, but it was about to be, and its light calmly drifted through the shadows of the room. He stared at the side of bed where Veth was laying just few hours ago, the sheets still rumpled and the pillow still flattened. Empty space with her shape.
He stood up, groggily, grabbing a shirt that was thrown to the floor the night before and putting it on to ward off the night's chill. She was nowhere in the room, so he headed to the door.
He found her by the kitchen table, playing with buttons and colorful glass balls she liked to collect. Ever since the two of them got close, they slowly started to accumulate in his home, little trinkets he liked having around because they reminded him of her. Sticks and ribbons. Forks and small stones. Buttons.
She played with them now, and her whole demeanor screamed of nervousness, of fear she always tried to keep bottled up but was never quite able to. He stopped at the doorway, confused.
"What are you doing here?" he asked as softly as he could, but even that was enough to make her jump in surprise, balls and buttons scattering all over the table. She shot him a glance not unlike a rabbit suddenly cornered in the underbrush, desperately looking for a way out. He saw that look on her before, when village thugs were loud and brass, when village elders were void of patience and full of scathing remarks. Yes, it was a look she wore often, though it was bizarre that he was able to provoke it, him, who was the least imposing person he could ever imagine.
Veth hugged herself, hunching down as if trying to take less space in the room, in the world.
"I wasn't sure, if you-" she tripped over her words, bit her lip, started again.
"Wasn't sure if you wanted me here. To stay, I mean. So I thought I would leave. But then I wasn't sure if you wanted me to leave. So I just…" and she motioned to the kitchen, to buttons and glass balls, a helpless kind of gesture with which she wanted to explain what the words couldn't. And she did, in a way.
And it stung, just the tiniest bit. It stung that she thought he would want her gone after their night together, as if he was one of those men who were nice and kind until they got what they wanted from a girl, and then discarded her afterwards. It stung, but he thought of the village thugs and merciless elders, and he knew it was not her fault for thinking this.
Trust took time. Then again, he could wait.
He went to the table and put his arms around her.
"I would like you to come back to bed" He was a scientist not a poet, he didn't know his way around words at all. But then again, neither did Veth, and yet they always found a way to understand each other somehow. "I would like to eat breakfast with you in the morning, and then go to the market together, to find those vials we need for the experiment. And then, maybe go and have and picnic. And I want other things, too. I would like to hunt for flies and see if we're right that they react differently to different sounds, I would like to paint the walls in the living room in purple dots just like you wanted, I would like to eat those peppermint cookies you are the best at making. I would like you to stay with me. If you want."
He didn't know when she started crying, only that by the time he finished talking there was a distinct wetness on his chest where her face was pressed. And when the sobs started, he held them through them, too.
When he woke up, she was not beside him.
For a few blessed, precious seconds, he didn't remember what happened. He stared at the empty space on the bed with confusion and a vague sense of wrongness that he couldn't quite define.
And then he did.
He would have scars left by goblin weapons for the rest of his life. Those nightmares that made Luke wake up screaming would always lurk deep in his mind, even years into the future.
They would never see Veth again.
He stared at the space where his wife should be and his vision became blurry with tears. He let them flow freely down his cheeks, too numb to move, too numb to think. He didn't sob, didn't make a sound, he just stared, silently, as the tears fell and fell, as he tried to make sense of the world in which his kind, brave wife was no longer alive.
And then, when the first rays of sunshine peaked over the horizon, he wiped his eyes and got up from bed. He was not ready to face this new, bizarre and cruel world, but he might never be and it didn't matter. Because Veth might be gone, but their son wasn't.
And if there was one thing he could do to honor his wife, it was to keep Luke safe. And, as he steeled his resolve and walked into the gray hours of the morning, he knew there was not a single thing he wouldn't do to protect him.
When he woke up, she was not beside him.
But it wasn't the first thing he noticed. He switched from deep sleep to a full consciousness in a snap, adrenaline and fear already pumping through his veins, ready for hands to grab him, to shove him, to gag and blindfold him.
But none of it came.
The first thing he really noticed was that he was not in the cold prison cell anymore. The next thing he noticed was that he was laying in the soft bed instead. Tucked in lovingly, in a way he hasn't been tucked in since his wife…
Since his wife died.
It was the third thing he noticed, that she was not beside him. And it was strange, noticing it, because it's been many months since he escaped with Luke from a goblin village. Time dulled the pain, and his work kept him in his laboratory so he didn't sleep in his bed that much anyway. But now he woke up, and she was gone, and it was not how it should be.
Because she didn't die after all, did she? She was taken away, and as hard as it was to wrap his head around, she survived. Scarred and traumatized and changed, but survived. She was a mercenary now, she travelled with a group of people so strange and fascinating they seemed to come straight from a children's adventure book.
They called her Nott.
And in the light of all other revelations, this one wasn't even the hardest to get used to. To say that his wife was different from what he remembered would be a comical understatement. But he would be foolish to believe that he wasn't different as well. They went through so much, both of them, and they had so many long talks ahead of them, so much discovering each other anew. It would be scary, yes, but he wanted to believe it would be exciting as well. Theirs was a miracle not many received, and he was determined not to let it slip through his fingers.
But now he woke up and she was not beside him.
He looked around. He could make out a vaguely Veth-shaped bundle on the floor, snoring softly. He walked up to her, his footsteps soft and careful, and put a hand on her shoulder. She twitched, surprised. But it was not a surprise of a cornered rabbit that he was used to. Now her muscles tensed, ready to lash out, to fight. Her hand moved underneath the pillow and with a shock he realized that she had a dagger hidden there.
"Shh, it's okay, it's just me" he swallowed down sudden taste of fear. Right. Discovering anew. A second passed and she relaxed, understanding that there was no threat. That Yeza was no threat.
"Why are you on the floor?" he asked, because everything else – his fears, her daggers – could wait until morning. This couldn't.
"It weirdly feels better" her voice was small and there was undercurrent of something beneath it, something hopeful but fragile "But I also wanted to give you your space"
And Yeza couldn't help but think about that night so many years ago, of buttons scattering on the kitchen table. She wasn't tripping over her words like she did back then, when she didn't know what it was that she wanted to say herself. No, now she was speaking clearly, and yet she hid whole different meanings in the shadow of her words. She was straightforward, and yet so many things were almost said but not quite. And to Yeza all of it seemed pointless somehow, since he could easily understand all that she was not saying anyway.
"It's okay. I'll join you" he pulled blankets and pillows from the bed, throwing them on the floor. He curled beside her without another word, his sore limbs grateful for whatever place where he could rest. Veth tensed, and then relaxed, and that was when Yeza let his eyes fall close and the sleep to claim him, satisfied.
There were too many mornings when he woke up without her beside him and he'd be damned if he'd let it be another one.
-wasn't beside him.
Yeza only sighed, deeply. Their reunion was short lived, forced to end by the world that stubbornly refused to stop to let them catch their breaths. But there was a war going on, and there were plans and intrigues that made Yeza's head spin, there were games with stakes so high he couldn't even begin to grasp them. And there was his wife, right in the middle of it all.
It was both impressive and frightening. She was brave and strong and dazzling, and million other things he could only look at in wonder. And she could be in mortal danger this very moment, for all that he knew. Because he didn't know much about their new job, but he knew what sort of cases the hotheaded adventurers got hired for. The dirty ones. The helpless ones. Groups of mercenaries passed through their village sometimes, and they always told the scariest stories, had the strangest scars.
But they needed that job, and he trusted Veth – or Nott, or whatever else she wished to be called because it didn't matter to him at all – he trusted his wife to come back to him. He trusted and he hoped and he prayed, prayed so hard his heart almost burst.
He would wait. He would wait as long as it took, and then she would come back, and there would be another job, and he would wait again if that was how it had to be.
Their future was uncertain and filled with many more lonely mornings. But now there was hope for a happy ending at the end of it all, and his wife was one of those capable of achieving this ending not only for them, but for many other small people involved in a big war against their will. She was fighting for it, even now. And his job, for now, was to wait.
And as long as there was hope, he could wait.