the hardest of hearts IV
just wanted to say thanks so much for all reviews so far - and rowan rawr, your review has really made this worth writing! much appreciated praise, especially from as good a writer as you are. thanks again :) to readers, hope the chapter is enjoyable. bry
She wasn't outside the next evening. Mika had risen long before midnight, unable to sleep from thinking of her, and had waited until the sunset was nearly over to sit at her usual spot and wait. He supposed perhaps she had second guessed him; but if she had known he would be waiting for her, it surprised him more than anything that she would go out of her way to avoid him. Though Arra's temper was legendary, arguments with her were short-lived – she faced everything head-on with her typical stubbornness, never gave her opponent the satisfaction of seeing her run from an issue. He began to become impatient when the last rays of the sunset ceased and looked elsewhere for her, but she was not training, she was not in her cell or his, she was not eating, she had not been seen. It wasn't enough to worry him; it was very early and only a few vampires, insomniacs like him mainly, who were awake at this hour. However, Arra's nerves over the Trials had kept her up for weeks now, and yet, nobody had seen her.
Lastly, he wandered to the medical wing. He felt a little sick at the idea that she might have spent the night there – he hoped with all his heart that her injury hadn't been bad enough to warrant the overnight stay – but when he enquired after her, one of the elderly healers nodded and led him along to one of the cells.
"Why did she not return to her own cell?" Mika asked the old vampire, his voice hitching up a notch with panic. "She has a Trial tonight; will she be able to face it?"
The elderly man, who was so old that his back had begun to hunch unattractively, turned to smile gently at the General. "Is she your assistant?" he asked, his eyes kind. Mika, however, frowned instinctively. He knew it was childish, but he disliked the assumption that there was no possibility that she could have been anything else. She was his assistant, but would people continue to judge that she was too young to be anything else if they were ever to become mates? He supposed that was becoming frighteningly far-fetched, but that hardly improved his mood.
"That wasn't the answer to my question," Mika growled. "Will she be able to face her Trial?"
The old man didn't take offence at the tone the younger man was taking with him. The healers were an odd bunch – usually vampires who had become too old to continue their service to the clan in any way other than attempting to save the lives of the younger generation after battles (and, occasionally, Trials). They were all oddly distant from the rest of the clan, mostly kept to themselves and had a different lifestyle to the others, and Mika didn't feel that pointing out his superior position in the clan would get him anywhere with the teasing elderly medic. Though they understood the vampire hierarchy, the medical staff did not feel a part of it, and other than the Princes, they treated all of the vampires the same. Mika supposed that must have been a consequence of treating vampires on the battlefield. They all looked and behaved exactly the same on the brink of death.
The medic took a few moments to answer him, and stared up at him a little oddly. "I imagine she will be capable of it, yes," he said slowly. "It was only a cut in her arm after all. She will be very lucky not to face worse, don't you agree?"
Mika let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. The problem with giving her some space after her Trial had been that he had not been able to glean the nature of her injuries. He hadn't been able to look at her at all during the Trial – he had kept his eyes glued to his lap, his hands, the floor, anything other than the figure of his former assistant putting her life on the line in front of him – and he had judged everything by the cry of pain she had let out, and the gasps and murmurs of those around him. It had been unbearable, but watching the shirt she wore blossom into red from the blood had been worse, and that had been as much as he could bear. The medic, of course, treated the injury as though it were absolutely insignificant. The amount of death the healers witnessed must have been enormous, and so it was no surprise that a sword ripping a muscle hadn't been much of a trauma for them all to deal with.
"Why did she stay in the medical wing?" Mika asked. "Did you need to watch her?"
The medic smiled again, and let out a wheezy little chuckle. "Of course not!" he said, still shuffling along the long corridor with Mika impatiently trotting along behind. "It was only a little cut in her arm you must understand. We stitched it up and bandaged it up and that was that." He made a sweeping gesture with his elderly branches of arms. "Good as new!"
Mika did not see the humour. He was not known for his patience, or for his sense of humour, nor for his kindness. He did not find it particularly easy to suffer this old fool, whether or not this same old fool had been the one to treat his beloved assistant's injuries.
"So," the black-haired vampire said slowly, the hint of a growl behind his thin veneer of tolerance. He placed one of his mammoth hands on the shoulder of the medic, half a gesture of friendship and half a hinted threat. Mika wasn't a gentle man, and he wasn't the type of man to suffer idiots. "Could you tell me finally why she stayed the night in the medical wing, if she was good as new, as you say?"
The medic was not threatened in the least. "Well, sir," the healer began in a typical, long-winded manner. "You see, we stitched her up and we bandaged her up and we made sure she wasn't in too much pain, and then we left her alone. You know, to get her bearings. We said she could show herself out whenever she liked. But, poor sweet girl, she must have been so exhausted, she fell asleep after an hour or so and we didn't see it fit to wake her."
Again, Mika let out a sigh of relief. The medic came to an abrupt halt outside one of the thin muslin curtains, waving his arm at it to indicate that this was the one Mika was looking for. After saying a curt thank you to the man who had been so desperately unhelpful, Mika took another deep breath, thought briefly about how he might phrase an apology, and then pulled back the curtain to step inside. "Arra," he began hesitantly, and then came to an abrupt halt when he realized she was still asleep – and with Crepsley in tow.
Mika thought perhaps he'd never seen anything worse. He read every possible problem into the way they'd slept – part of his mind instantly rationalized that she had been injured and probably shaken up by the Trial, and that perhaps this ginger nightmare had just been there for moral support – but the other, dominant parts of his entire self just wanted to break creepy Crepsley's arms. It was the way her head was nuzzled in under his chin, the way one of his weedy little hands rested on her back far too close to the hip, how comfortable they looked, the way their legs had intertwined in the hammock – the whole scene was just wrong, and though his instinct was to leave, Mika forced himself to stride over and gently shake her shoulder, coughing loudly and pointedly.
Larten's eyes creaked open first, and the brief moment of silence when the two men locked icy stares was only broken when Arra shifted, opened her eyes against Larten's collar and then shifted to see her mentor frowning down at her. The moment of confusion completely overwhelmed her, and she stuttered over a greeting before attempting to pull herself into a sitting position, forgetting about her injured arm entirely until the pain hit her sharply as the torn muscle spasmed. Larten stopped her, putting a hand over her arm to remind her of her injury. The brief moment that Mika could have imagined where their eyes met, and Crepsley had the nerve to smirk at her, nearly set his temper alight completely.
"It's getting really late," Mika said, struggling to keep his voice even when he could so easily have slipped into vicious shouting. "You should have been awake a long time ago." That was another stab in his heart, that for weeks she hadn't been sleeping and now Larten Crepsley on his white horse had given her some peace. The whole situation really grated on his nerves, and his imagination had run away with him completely – everything they did now looked like a cover up for whatever they had done when he hadn't been around to watch them, the eye contact, the way he touched her arm, the way he helped her sit up, the disgusting look in his eyes all suggested things Mika rationally knew hadn't really been possible in a medical hammock.
Arra had noticed the tension as soon as her head had cleared from sleep and pain. She swung her legs over the edge of the hammock, careful not to put any unnecessary pressure on her aching arm, and dragged herself to her feet in front of her furious mentor – so furious that it practically radiated from him in waves – and then ran a hand over her eyes.
"You are probably right," she said to Mika, though she kept her eyes averted, unable to look right at him knowing how angry he was with her. She mumbled something about eating before the Trial and needing to change clothes, and then eyes kept firmly away from the two of them, hurried out into the corridor. Mika realized he had been wrong about her facing problems head-on, these days at least.
Larten was in no similar rush to leave. He had the audacity to lie back down, hands behind his head, and stare up at Mika. "Arra is very worried," the orange-haired man said calmly, a complete juxtaposition to Mika's clenched fists and angry scowl. "I had not realized how worried. You," the younger man said, and raised a hand to point in Mika's direction. "Have hopefully begun work on an apology?"
It was too much. The combination of his earlier impatience with the elderly medic, his anger at Arra for reasons he had trouble exactly identifying and his desire to cause Larten Crepsley as much pain as possible for various reasons he could identify with ease, led to the broad General reaching into the hammock and pulling the lankier vampire up unceremoniously by the collar of his tunic. The insolent look in his eyes just spurred him on – and he knew this slimy boy wouldn't fight him back, to preserve his moral high ground – and it was all far too easy, in that moment, for Mika to slam one of the fists he'd held clenched since the moment he'd arrived at the medical wing straight into Larten's jaw.
Though Crepsley clicked his tongue and spat out one of his teeth and sniffed, he said nothing. He made no move to attack, he made no move to get away. He simply sat there, nearly choked by Mika's grip on his collar, and stared up at the General with eyes that asked is it going to make you feel any better?
Mika released him. "Not going to fight back, Larten?" he asked, though as he turned away and rubbed his knuckles, he knew that even by posing the question he had set himself up for a speech on morality.
"There is no point," Crepsley replied, although he stumbled over a couple of the syllables in his current inability to move his jaw as usual. "You do not really want to fight with me and I have no desire to fight with you. Even if I felt I could manage to defeat you, why should I want to do so?"
"Stop speaking in riddles," Mika growled. "I think it's quite clear I'd like to fight with you."
Larten laughed humourlessly. Mika could not see his face, but he could picture the look in his eyes, mocking and superior. "But only because you feel guilty," he pointed out. For a long moment neither of them said anything, and then Mika heard rather than saw Larten climb down from the hammock and straighten up his tunic. "As much as I have enjoyed speaking with you, Mika," Larten said sarcastically. "I would not want to run late for the Trial. You may have made a habit of not attending them, but I rather like to be present when someone I care for takes their life in their hands"
With that, and with the black-haired General's back still turned on him, Larten let out a half-impatient, haf-saddened sigh, and, clutching his sore jaw, slipped out into the corridor, leaving Mika to consider the issues he faced.
Arra joined Arrow outside the Hall of Princes a few moments before the Trial would be called. Arrow rounded on her instantly. "You are not usually so late," he said archly, but she looked back at him in a way that suggested she had never cared less about anything as she did about her punctuality, and he instantly softened. Then he shifted awkwardly. "Have you seen Mika?"
"Yes." she answered with some finality, unwilling to be drawn into conversation about her mentor with his one confidant. She liked Arrow, in a distant, respectful sense, but she didn't trust him when it came to Mika. He would not have been her choice of person to discuss the situation she found herself in with, certainly, when she knew that anything she said to Arrow would be relayed back to Mika in a matter of hours. The relationship between the men both pleased and confused her; she had never quite gotten to the bottom of when and why they had become so remarkably close, but Mika had hinted at being practically brought up together and being more like brothers than friends. They were outwardly similar, but inwardly, Arra thought, very different. Arrow had the same sense of pride she sometimes recognized in herself, and she considered him blindly noble, with a grasp of morals she half-envied and half-pitied. He, like Mika, saw some things in a very black and white way – such as their joint hatred towards the Vampaneze and their joint unwavering loyalty to the clan – but then she also thought Mika was far more complex. Arrow wasn't stupid, of course, but he followed things through doggedly and imposed moral restrictions on himself that he would never have expected others to conform to. Mika, though he was noble and brave, was also cunning, and had the capacity to be downright sneaky when it came down to it. If Mika needed to get something done, for what he perceived to be "the greater good", he wouldn't consider it too outrageous to break his own moral code to do it.
Arrow, without his friend's sense of cunning, just sighed.
"Arra," he said, hands open in a gesture of complete honesty that Mika never would have performed. Out of the two, Mika was far more guarded, far less inclined to allow those around him to make their own, uninfluenced decisions than Arrow was. Some would have said he was cleverer, but at this moment in time, Arra, in her current state of disenchantment with her mentor, was simply inclined to call him sneakier. "You must know how much Mika is worried about you. He couldn't even stay to watch the Trial yesterday; it pained him so much to see you in danger. Do you understand that this kind of behaviour is not like him?"
Arra couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "I've known him many years Arrow," she said, careful not to let her temper take over (however tempting). "I'm aware he's not given to being overly emotional."
"It worries him as much, if not more, how far apart he feels the two of you have grown," Arrow continued. "He told me he hardly sees you unless he goes to watch you training, which he often can't. Do you know that it's not like Mika at all to worry about something like that?"
Arra couldn't get past the feeling that she was being patronised – something she felt more often than not in conversation with Arrow. "Yes," she said again, sharply. "But I can't help that I've been training and he's been working. Mika thinks I'm going to die and so he feels bad for not seeing me enough."
Arrow sighed. "Perhaps it is partly that," he conceded, but he looked worried. He was a tall man, and though Arra had always been a ridiculous height for a woman, her legs too long for the rest of her, the way Arrow stared down at her was contributing to how looked down upon she felt. "But Mika knows how angry you are with him, Arra, and I've rarely ever seen him so concerned."
"It was just an argument," she said impatiently. "I'm angry with him now but I will forgive him if I'm still here to forgive him in a couple of weeks. He is my mentor. He knows that there's very little he could do to make me angry with him forever – Mika saved my life when I was a human and I won't forget that in a hurry. If he's really that worried, I have to say I think he's being a little bit over-sensitive."
Arrow looked like he hadn't gotten his point across. "But, Arra," he said. "Over-sensitive has never described Mika. Why else do you think he might be so concerned about your welfare, your opinion of him, whether you are drifting apart?"
Arra frowned. She shrugged half-heartedly. "Arrow, is there something you mean to tell me?" she asked eventually when he said nothing to clarify his meaning. "If you are trying to get across that Mika cares about me –"
"But, Arra," he interrupted her. "How much does Mika care about you? I just think you should think about it."
Before she had much chance to think about it, though, the guard at the door called them in. Arra felt briefly bad that she hadn't seen Larten or Mika again before the Trial, feeling it probably necessary to apologize to one or possibly both of them, but Larten's words from the night before rang in her mind, and she considered that it was a possibility that she might make it through this Trial anyway. She could speak to them when she was finished. Even if other people didn't believe in her, Larten, who had trained her honestly and knew exactly how hard she had worked, had decided to. For the first time, heading into the Hall of Princes, Arra realized that, whether she would go on to survive the Trials aside, she deserved to survive them. She could only hope that fate also recognized the extent to which she deserved it.
"Number twenty-three," the guard announced, and Arra's stomach dropped. "The Path of Needles."
The uneasy silence in the crowd of assembled vampires after the Trial had been called made her feel sick. Her arm was already aching at the thought of it, and she almost smiled as she remembered Larten's question over whether she would be able to face The Path of Needles. She would have to punish him at some point for tempting fate. She had never struggled much with her balance, which would assist her, but her hands still stung from her perilous climb in her first Trial, and her right arm was nowhere near strong enough to haul her along the stalagmites, or to catch the falling stalactites. She supposed there was no limit to time, and her legs were in reasonably good shape, but it was hardly to be considered the best news. It was one of the worst Trials for her to pull with one arm out of use, certainly, but there was no point in dwelling on it.
There was a moment of brief and unnecessary awkwardness as Arrow escorted her to the mouth of the deadly tunnel, and struggled to find an appropriate way to ask her what she was planning on wearing for the duration of the Trial. She allowed him to struggle for several moments, wondering if he would ever be able to spit the words out, before rolling her eyes at his poor attempt and unbuttoning her shirt. She so often preached that she should not be treated any differently to the other male vampires, and she supposed, modesty aside, it would have been hypocritical of her in her struggle to obtain equality to ask for any sort of special consideration. She ignored the reaction of the crowd who had gathered to watch her third attempt – Seba Nile, she would later find out, had thought it horrifically inappropriate, and had caused a fuss at the back of the room that she hadn't noticed, and that Vancha March had tactically quietened, the young Prince typically delighted. Arra remembered training for the Trial, and the way the leather had clung to her uncomfortably and made the entire journey more troublesome, and didn't feel the same discomfort necessary simply to avoid a lecherous crowd.
Leaving her clothes piled next to Arrow's feet – he shifted uncomfortably in a way that almost would have made her laugh, had the situation not been so dire – she stood at the entrance to the Trial as Paris Skyle, reassuringly unaffected and unsurprised by the scene, wished her luck and declared that the Trial had begun.
Once inside the treacherous tunnel, she forgot about the proceedings outside entirely. She was thankful that she was not a larger vampire for one of the first times. She was catlike in her movements in a way she couldn't imagine someone a little more like Gavner would ever be able to be. Years of her own homemade gymnastics training – she had practised for hours on end every day for years under her false pretence that she could one day join a circus and escape her father when she was older, though the dream never came true – came flooding back to her, and she was as graceful and as fluid as she could manage to be, relying mainly on her left arm and pressing her right into her side to stop it from becoming an inconvenience, not making a sound as she manoeuvred through the first wave of needles. She could feel her legs being ripped to shreds as she attempted to climb through the stalagmites, but she was thankful again for her size. She noticed herself threading through gaps that larger vampires would never have been able to without ever grazing a stalagmite, leaving her legs unscathed and the silence preserved, and she made a note to herself to remember that being smaller and female still had its advantages.
As she felt herself growing perhaps a little overconfident about the Trial – she had noticed the end already, the light streaming through towards her, and she congratulated herself early on a job magnificently done – she reached a patch where the stalagmites and the stalagtites grew further and further apart, but became larger. She had done excellently crawling through the small gaps, as graceful as could be, but the longer she had to stretch the more difficult her job became. She made the attempt to stand on the edge of a blunt stalagmite, hoping to stretch her back from all the crouching she had done. She got to her feet carefully, absently stretched and thanked her left arm for all its hard work so far, and rotated her shoulders to work out some of the stiffness before continuing. Bending to the side to test her back, she prepared to crouch again and continue her journey – and, while she prepared to kneel, her right foot slipped on the surface of the stalagmite, crashing painfully and loudly into the sharp crystals behind it. She was forced to fling out both arms to steady herself, her right bursting into pain instantly at the unexpected rush of movement, and, having had no time to check either of the sharp peaks in front of her for stability, both let out a sickeningly loud crack when she forced her weight upon them.
The variety of cracks and the breaking of the few stalagmites behind her, she knew, was too much noise for the delicate cavern. She manoeuvred herself around instantly to face the treacherous ceiling, unwilling to face the ultimate humiliation of being stabbed in the back, and artfully dodged a few falling stakes that flew down towards her legs. Using her left arm to support herself on top of the stalagmites, she had only her right arm – she could see the blood leaking through the dressing already, and dreaded the thought of having destroyed the stitches – to defend herself against the stalactite that plummeted from the roof towards her chest. Unable to catch it with one hand, and unwilling to try when she alkready knew the stalagmites in this area of the tunnel to be fragile, Arra took a deep breath, and did exactly what Vanez Blane had advised her never to do – swept her right arm across her chest frantically, sending the lethal spike flying off towards one of the walls, and landing there with a pronounced crash.
The stalactites fell all around her after her mistake, and she had to consciously overcome the very real temptation to shut her eyes and accept her fate. A few smaller stalactites pierced into her calves, thighs and, one, into her shoulder, which caused Arra nearly to let out a whimpering cry of pain, but she knew the danger of movement was that she could bring the entire roof down, and so she bore the shower of smaller needles with gritted teeth, dodging the few larger ones. Her left hand, which had supported her all this time, had gone completely numb from the effort of holding onto the sharp stalagmite, and she worried more than anything about that – she knew that she had probably cut so deep on top of her existing injuries from the first Trial that she had cut the nerves, and she began to worry about her fingers and injury to the tendons. When the shower stopped, she made the decision she had hoped not to have to make. Pushing forwards with her legs, feeling that one of them was dripping with blood from her initial slip across the dangerously sharp floor, Arra reached out her right hand to grasp the next stalagmite, and, retracting her deeply injured left hand, fought to place all of her weight on her right arm. The pressure on the muscle was very nearly unbearable – if she focused on it, she swore she could feel the blood pump out of the wound the longer she attempted to hold her grip. A couple of tears of pure agony escaped her as she fought to reach the end of the tunnel, wiping her left hand on her leg to remove some of the blood and wincing at the way the remaining skin on her palm flared at the contact.
Luckily, the Vampire Gods had apparently finally decided to take a liking to her. Overcome with the pain in her arm and hand, as well as the various injuries from the smaller stalactites, Arra focused on moving quicker and quicker towards the end of the tunnel, knowing that her right arm would be unable to bear her weight any longer in a matter of minutes. It was the sort of risk that she knew, even at the time, was likely to cost her life, and she could hear Vanez's voice in her mind telling her to slow down and test the stalagmites, but nothing mattered as much to her anymore as being able to leave the deadly cavern. As she crawled towards the end, transferring her weight back onto her left arm despite how much it pained her, she was forced to swipe at another large stalactite as it fell from the roof. The crash was thunderous, and Arra remembered Vanez's advice with startling clarity – you cannot hope to rush The Path of Needles and make it out alive – but it simply no longer seemed to apply to her. So close to the end, she forced herself into a crouching position and ran at full pelt out onto ordinary ground, hearing the loud splintering smashes as the entire roof collapsed in her wake.
Mika raced forward to help her to her feet, but when he attempted to pull her up by her right forearm, she let out an animal cry of pain – more recognizable as a howl than as anything remotely human – and pressed her weight down on her left forearm instead, brushing her mentor away and climbing to her feet. He attempted to embrace her, but, unable to get her point across in words, she pushed him back, unable to communicate to him that she couldn't bear the wounds to be touched. Hurt, Mika stepped back and allowed Larten to place a cloak around her shoulders. Even the rustle of that light fabric made her hiss, but she was thankful for it, and wrapped it closer around her.
"Can you walk?" Larten asked, ignoring the cheers of the vampires around her. Arra had not smiled once, too injured to appreciate her success. Gavner raced towards them in delight, but Larten waved the excitable young man away out of concern for her. Arra attempted to press her right foot to the floor, but then, with a burning explosion of pain, remembered her foolish slip in the tunnel. She looked down to see her right leg invisible beneath the blood that covered it. She shuddered at that – she hadn't felt the pain fully until now, but now that it was present it was inescapable agony. She looked up hazily to see Larten's face drained of all colour, except for a curious blossom of purple and black at his jaw that she had never noticed before, but before she could say anything to put across her uncertainty of getting to the medical wing unassisted, she saw his face swim across her vision, and then lost consciousness entirely.
Some hours later, Arra creaked open an eye to see the familiar ceiling of the medical cell she had occupied the night before. Instantly, as she realized the disabling pain she was in, she let out a groan of pain, and she felt someone brush her hair back from her forehead. Of course, it was Larten – the most loyal of them all – and she chuckled despite her pain.
"I'm starting to think this is my cell now," she remarked, and he laughed. He looked altogether far too cheerful for her liking, and she frowned up at him. "Try and look a little more concerned, perhaps," she suggested sarcastically, smiling to show him she wasn't really serious. "I'm in pain you know, Larten, and you grinning at me isn't helping much."
He continued smiling infuriatingly, and then pulled up his chair to sit beside her.
"I am smiling because I have news that you will appreciate," he told her. "I fought off everyone else to be the one to tell you."
She smiled again at the childishness of that. She couldn't think of any news that would have made her happy or lessened her discomfort to any extent, so she just waited patiently, staring blankly up at him.
"Bode Heiss and his assistant have arrived."
She chuckled. "That's fantastic," she said sarcastically. "I can't say I was particularly charmed by Bode or his grimy assistant at last Council, but thanks for the information."
"Arra," Larten pushed, still smiling. "Consider what it means. Bode and Serge have been delayed by the weather conditions you faced a couple of nights ago. They are the last two to arrive."
Arra was still blank over the significance of that for another couple of moments, and then, with a wave of relief, let out a laugh. "It's the Festival of the Undead?" she asked hopefully, and, delighted with the news, Larten leaned down to cup her face in his hands and kiss her. Though she would not have admitted it, Arra was grateful for that. She had wondered briefly over her bat broth whether their relationship would descend into an uncomfortable, distant one, or whether the night before had merely been spur of the moment. Clearly, charmingly, Larten had never once entertained such concerns.
He stopped smiling a minute later, though, and hooked a hand around her waist to pull her into a sitting position. She remembered then, noticing the way he avoided her arms and hands, how much pain she had been in. "Did I pull the stitches out of my arm?" she asked, wincing at the thought and unable to remember when or how she might have done it, only vividly remembering the concern she'd had while conscious about it.
"It is not important," Larten told her. "They have stitched it up again."
"Do my hands work?" she asked, flexing her fingers to make sure they still existed and were still functional.
"Clearly, the answer to that is yes," Larten answered patiently.
Satisfied that she hadn't actually lost any limbs, Arra made to lay back down to ease the already growing pains, but then she reached out a hand towards Larten's face. Her eyes were clearing a little, no longer blinded by pain or sleep, and she wondered why she hadn't seen it before.
"How did you get that?" she asked, gently touching the purplish bruise across his jawline, brow creased in concern.
Larten opened his mouth, and then promptly shut it again. He considered telling her the truth; he'd often found, after a number of years lying to women and failing to get away with it that honesty really was the best policy, but then what purpose did that serve? He remembered Mika's fury after she had left the room, half-angry, half-desperate. Larten couldn't hate Mika for the few things he'd slipped up on. Without Mika, Larten could never have known his assistant, and life without said assistant was suddenly starting to seem more and more embarrassingly far-fetched for someone who, only a few years ago, would have labelled himself a womanizer. Mika had tried his best to help Arra in any way possible, and though it had all been transparently a long-term method of forcing her feelings towards him, Larten couldn't help but respect him for it. From what little he had heard of Arra's human life, Mika had been the one saving grace for her entire lifetime, and it was difficult to force himself to despise Mika, whether or not he had let her down in the end, simply for having feelings for her. Larten imagined it all in the reverse – devoting his life to this wonderful, beautiful, special girl, holding back his feelings for years and then turning around one day to unexpectedly find her attention drawn elsewhere. He disliked Mika Ver Leth, certainly, for the unacceptable way he had behaved over the years the two had known each other and the way he had almost cost his assistant's life with his overwhelming paternalistic attitude towards her, but Larten also understood him. Suddenly the last thing he wanted to do was to ruin their relationship entirely, when he knew how Mika must have tormented himself over her, and how much Arra worried over her strained relationship with her mentor. Even if it meant he lost her to Mika in the end, which he supposed was a distinct possibility, how could be live with himself if he destroyed a relationship that meant so much to both of them?
"Ah," he said, and shook his head as though it was nothing. "I was sparring earlier with Gavner. Trust him to get in one good hit when I was least expecting it."
Accepting that explanation, Arra lay back again to sleep, and Larten, leaning over to kiss her on her forehead, pulled up a chair to sit beside her and make sure someone was there when she woke up, wondering if Mika would ever know the favour his supposed arch-enemy had done for him.