Valen definitely got more than he was bargaining for after Deekin told him that I wanted to talk to him. Despite his carefully blank expression, I could tell he most definitely did not expect to be sitting across from me on the opposite bed, listening to me try and explain another thing I'd failed to tell him. As I had to apologise for yet another secret between us.
The last secret.
I could see the hurt and disappointment — try as he did to hide it. I could see it in the hard set of his mouth, how white his knuckles were. But he didn't interrupt me, he didn't judge me. Instead, he tried his best to school his face into one of patient understanding.
I think that's why I told him everything.
Everything; right down to my recent deal with Shaundukel. Kill Mephistopheles, and I'll send you home, he'd said. My ring finger still smarted with the burn of whatever magic had sealed the deal in place.
Valen's eyes were intent as I explained myself. His arms crossed attop his thighs, and his whole body leaning towards me. He perched on the side of his bed, his position a perfect mirror to my own. I only needed to shift slightly, and our knees would be touching.
I don't know when I had become so aware of his every movement…
He interrupted only once, carefully questioning my confidence that the man he'd glimpsed was actually Shaundukel. His eyes dropped to my cursed ring in uncertainty. I don't know if recounting Drogan's words of certainty did much to assuage his fears, but he let me continue. He didn't reprimand me for bargaining with the god, despite the look in his eye that told me he didn't agree with it.
Once I'd said all I needed to, he simply considered me calmly.
I worried my hands as I watched his carefully schooled features.
He shifted slightly, pulling his knees further from my own as he sat up to his full height, and — eventually — he spoke.
"So," he started slowly. "You still intend to leave." You still intend to leave me, was what we both knew he meant. It wasn't a question.
I swallowed as my reply died on my tongue.
I'd always been so sure, so determined that returning home was the only way I would be happy. My single-minded focus had always been on what I'd lost, on what I'd been forced to leave behind in my world. What I had wanted — above all else — had been to get back.
I'd never really stopped to consider what I stood to lose if I left this world.
When I left this world, I corrected myself.
He stared back at me, mask cracking at my uncertainty, before finally allowing his true feelings to shine through. His eyes were soft, his expression understanding. I saw his throat bob as he swallowed nervously.
I realised then — as the last remnants of my anger for him using my Name faded away — that he would support me no matter my choice.
I took a steadying breath.
"Nothing's changed." I eventually whispered my reply.
Neither of us believed that.
Because everything had changed.
It had changed when we had thrown caution to the wind, reaching for each other with hands shaking. When we had allowed that hungry, angry kiss to become something more. Allowed it to chase away hurt and pain, hands roaming across too-warm skin. Hearts beating in time.
No — if I was being honest with myself — it had changed much earlier.
I had felt things shifting in that dark cavern beneath the temple, my heart thudding in my chest as I'd rushed to Valen's side, knees slick with blood as I'd held his hand. As I died for him. As he had died for us.
And then it had changed again — shifting beneath my feet before I could even find purchase. It had changed the moment he'd used my True Name.
Even if I wanted to stay — and I swallowed again with the realisation that maybe maybe I did — how could I know it wasn't whatever change Valen's well-meaning command had wrought?
I had to leave.
I ignored the flash of Enserric as he pointed out my growing uncertainty, like a spotlight in my mind. He wouldn't even allow me the privacy of attempting to lie to myself.
'We've been through too much for that,' Enserric mused inside of my mind.
I unbuckled the sword and tossed him and the belt on my bed with a distasteful sneer. Valen's eyebrow twitched up slightly, his eyes calculating as they darted between me and Enserric.
I shook my head at the tiefling; don't ask.
Valen sighed. "There is nothing I can say to change your mind?"
His eyes never wavered from my own, intent and alight like clear blue fire. I knew immediately how loaded his question really was. What he was really asking. My heart — my honest clenching heart — thudded in my ears at the thought of what he might say to sway me.
I'm ashamed by how long it took me to reply, as I felt myself at that crossroad.
How easy it would have been to let him convince me.
"No," I whispered, to me and to him. I shook my head once. Louder, I said it again. "No."
His eyes set and the mask fell carefully back into place.
"Very well," he dipped his head.
I sighed out a breath. "Thank you," I managed.
Disappointment clenched in my gut. Not at Valen for respecting my wishes, but at myself. For letting it get this far. For letting myself… care — and I wouldn't let myself analyse the word I'd almost used instead.
And I wasn't just angry at myself for caring for him, I was angry because I had let my carefully constructed walls crumble all around me, despite knowing it wouldn't last. Despite knowing what kind of man Valen was — Just how damn good he was. And the danger that lay in that.
Not to mention those damn eyes of his…
I could at least be thankful that I hadn't let it get any further than it already had; that would have made this harder again. My mind flashed back to that recent night in the room, the feel of him above me, his hands everywhere.
…and that look that had been in his eyes. I knew that look. I'd ignored it for as long as I could. But I couldn't lie any longer.
I was done lying.
It was love that I had seen in his eyes — that he had let me see. Love, and hope.
I swallowed thickly, forcing my eyes back to his own. They'd dropped to his lips at some point during my trip down memory lane.
I stretched my shoulders, taking a deep steadying breath and hoping that he hadn't noticed my momentary lapse.
"Who knows," I started, letting a wry smile tug at my lips.
He tilted his head slightly, allowing me this attempt at normalcy. He let an answering smile curve his lips. I tried not to notice how it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Mephistopheles will probably kill us tomorrow, and then this will have all been for nothing." I said with an all-too-casual shrug.
Valen lifted his eyebrow in challenge, and some of the sadness disappeared from the blue depths of his eyes. Eventually, a smirk pulled at his face. The attempt at hiding his hurt was almost believable, but for his hands — which clasped desperately at the edge of the bed, giving him away. He took a deep breath, relaxing his fingers, and the clenching in my stomach lessened slightly.
He raised one of his hands to his chest in mock outrage, attempting to match my teasing tone as he said; "And to think," he drawled. "We wasted our last night alive with talking."
He let his eyes roam down to my lips and back, alight with something I hadn't seen in them before — playfulness. The unfamiliar twinkle burning alongside something that I'd seen increasingly more lately — desire. His smirk turned into an all out grin at my surprised pause.
I licked my lips. My mouth was dry, skin warming with the beginnings of a blush.
And I realised that — just because he meant to respect my wishes, to support me — it didn't necessarily mean he was going to make it easy.
Nothing is kept by those who do not fight for it, he had told me out in the wastes of Cania. It had felt like a promise then. I should have known he didn't say such things lightly.
Fearing that my voice would break, and not quite knowing what to say, I forced myself to roll my eyes. Stretching again, just for something to do with my hands — and ignoring the way his eyes followed my every movement — I offered him a lackluster gesture that told him exactly what I thought of his teasing.
His answering laugh followed me out of the room as I sought out Deekin. Valen was only a few minutes behind me.
We spent the rest of the evening together. And, as far as nights in hell went, it was a good one — once the initial awkwardness of Deekin's very open analysis of the tiefling and I was over. We talked about everything but the looming battle that we might not survive, and the fact that it may very well be our last fight together if we did. Even Aribeth's name — and the uncertainty we all felt about her — didn't cross any of our lips that night. It was just me, and Valen, and Deekin, our long forgotten laughter cutting through the angry growls and muttering of the other residents; alien in this place of death and hate and fear. Alien to our own ears.
It was by my third or forth yawn that we finally admitted defeat, finishing the last of our drinks.
We made our way to our room, and I quickly began preparing for a trip to the communal washroom. The thought of finally finally being clean brought a smile to my face that Valen didn't miss, answering gently in kind.
He had insisted on guarding the door for me once more, and I'd not bothered arguing; thankful that I would have uninterrupted privacy. I wouldn't have to rush this time.
I bathed the grime from Cania from my body, removing the now-unnecessary bandage from my neck, and running my fingers through the mess of tangles from my hair with small hisses of pain. As I washed the last of the soap from my body, glancing — not for the first time — at what I could see of Valen's shadow beneath the door. I felt my cheeks warm at the memory of his parting words to me, after checking the room was empty.
"Just call out if you need help," he'd all but rumbled, a wry smirk on his lips. He'd lent against the doorframe, eyes daring me to say something, despite the warmth that reddened his pale cheeks.
I'd practically fallen through the door in my haste to hide my answering blush.
I'd let myself become so overwhelmed that it wasn't until I was stripped down that I realised I hadn't locked the door. By then — I told myself — it was too late to lock it.
I glanced again at the door, wondering if he'd noticed.
I was scowling when I eventually left the washroom, angry at the realisation that it was disappointment that I was feeling — disappointment that he hadn't taken advantage of the unlocked door. I was angry at myself. And, after a quick glance at his face — flushed, but smirking — I was angry at him too.
He'd noticed the door was unlocked. It was written all over his face.
Prick.
"I didn't mean to leave it unlocked," I blurted with a hiss.
I clamped my mouth shut, immediately regretting my words. I felt my cheeks burn even hotter as his grin widened, delighted surprise that I'd voiced my thoughts on the matter clear in his eyes. I hunched my shoulders against the sound of his light chuckle, before stomping down the hall to our room. He didn't follow, disappearing into the bathing room and — very pointedly — not locking the door, either.
I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling when I heard Valen's returning steps much much later. Had he been waiting for me? My scowl deepened when I realised I had been listening for his return. At the foot of my bed, Deekin was sharpening his short sword by the room's candlelight. If he'd detected my frustration, he hadn't commented on it.
I turned away from the door, pulling my blankets higher and scrunched my eyes shut at Enserric's flash of exasperation. I didn't move when Valen unlocked and opened our door, the sound of the timber door scraping on stone loud enough to wake the dead.
As if he'd simply been waiting for his little tribe to be all together again, Deekin immediately started packing away his belongings, before curling up at my feet with a content sigh.
"Night," Deekin said simply.
I heard Valen's gentle hum of reply.
I pretended to be asleep, not daring to even breathe too loudly as Valen moved about the room.
It didn't fool him.
"Good night, Jane," Valen said once he was settled, amusement in his voice.
It was like none of today had happened. Like I hadn't told him — in no uncertain terms — that I was leaving, potentially as early as tomorrow if Shaundukel came through on his end of the deal.
I swallowed at the rush of emotions that followed that thought. I was going home.
"Good night," I eventually replied to Valen, all of the anger and frustration gone.
I took far too long to fall asleep, the realisation that the fear in the pit of my stomach wasn't because of the enemy we were about to face — but at idea of leaving tomorrow. It just seemed too damn soon, too sudden.
Just one more day, I found myself hoping, as I finally drifted off.
One day to celebrate.
Just one more day.
With a small lazy smile, I realised it was the first time I'd truly believed that we would win against Mephistopheles.