Angel’s POV
We walked quietly through the cave. And after a while, I saw the moonlight that showed we were approaching the Cave’s end.
I carefully stepped out of the darkness into the light, and Terrell followed behind , still carrying Raul like he weighed nothing.
He set Raul down against the cave wall without care and then he straightened and looked out.
I ca to stand beside him.
"There," I said.
I pointed out - the wood, still where it had been, protruding from the crack in the rock face. Below it was fog and the ledge path I had travelled. Above it, more cliff.
Terrell looked at it.
He looked at it for a long ti, with the expression of a man reading the terrain.
But underneath the assessnt was sothing else.
He was looking at the wood, at where I had caught myself. Where I had hung, suspended over nothing, by the grip of two hands that had decided not to let go. He was tracing the route I had taken - from the wood, the ledge, and the sideways progress toward the cave.
The expression that moved through his face was one I had not seen before.
"You caught the wood," he said.
"Yes."
"On the way down."
"Yes."
He looked at the fog below the ledge. At the nothing of it. At the fact that dropping down there would an instant death.
He was quiet for a mont.
"How did you find the ledge?" he said.
"The fog cleared a little," I said. "I could see it from where I was hanging. I moved along the wood until I reached the wall and then I jumped."
He looked at the distance between the wood and the ledge.
He looked at it for long enough that I understood he was thinking about the jump. The width of it, the conditions, the fact that missing would have ant...
"Angel..."
"I made it," I said.
"I know you made it."
"So it’s fine."
He turned to look at , and the expression on his face had moved.
"You could have..." He stopped. Started again. "If the wood had..."
"It didn’t."
"If you had missed the ledge..."
"I didn’t."
He looked at .
I looked back.
"I’m aware," I said, as gently as I could manage given that we were on a cliff ledge in the fog with an unconscious man against the cave wall behind us, "that several things could have gone differently. But they didn’t. I’m here."
He looked at for a mont longer.
Then he turned back to the drop.
"You," I said, "allowed yourself to be captured."
He didn’t turn. "Yes."
"And brought before Raul." I looked at the side of his face - the bruising that had faded faster than anything I’d ever seen before. "I know what you are. I’ve seen what you can do. Those n - however many there were - they were not stronger than you."
A pause.
"No," he said.
"Then why? Why did you allow yourself go through all that torture? Why behave like a weakling?"
He was quiet long enough that I thought he might not answer. Then:
"I needed to find you first." He was still looking at the fog, at the cliff face, at the ledge and the route I had taken when no one was there to help take it. "Before anything else. Before the fight, before the escape, before any of it." He turned his head and looked at . "I needed to know where you were."
I held his gaze.
"So I let them take in," he said. "Because being taken in ant being brought to wherever the center of things was. And if you were here..." He looked back at the drop. "You would be at the center."
I stood with that for a mont.
Then he turned and looked at .
And the expression on his face... was heavy guilt. And underneath the guilt, sothing that was older and deeper and had been accumulating longer than tonight.
"I’m sorry," he said.
"Every ti, since the first mont you crossed into my life. I have been the source of... " He stopped. Started again. "Of pain. Repeatedly. In different forms. So of it deliberate." He held my eyes. "So of it not. All of it mine."
I said nothing.
"After this is over," he said. "When you’re safe. If you want to leave..." He stopped again, and I could see the cost of the sentence in the way his jaw moved - like he ant business this ti. "I’ll give you safe passage. Full access. Sowhere they can’t reach you." He looked at steadily. "It would be better. You being safe sowhere and not - not here, in the middle of whatever this is, being hunted down, being put on runaway horses and thrown off cliffs and..."
"Terrell..."
"You deserve to be sowhere safe," he said. "More than you deserve whatever I’ve been giving you."
He said it the way people said true things - without flinching from the accuracy of it, without softening the edges.
I looked at him.
First at the hands that had nails through them an hour ago. Then at the face that had laughed at Raul from a cross - not because he was unafraid, I understood now, but because laughing was the thing that kept Raul’s attention exactly where Terrell needed it.
I opened my mouth.
I had things to say. I knew what they were - had known, if I was being honest with myself, for longer than I had wanted to know. The connection that deepened every ti the distance between us closed. The safety of being near him that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with whatever the bond was doing in the place where it lived. The fact that safe sowhere else had never, not once, felt as true as safe right here. With him.
The words were there.
They did not co out.
Because saying them ant naming sothing that I had been carefully not naming since the garden, since the river, since every quiet mont that had added itself to all the other quiet monts and built sothing I didn’t have permission to call what it was yet.
LOVE.
I was saved - as I had been saved several tis - by him. And nothing could be safer than that.
Raul made a sound.
Like the grunt of a man returning to consciousness from sowhere he hadn’t chosen to go. He shifted against the cave wall. His head moved.
Terrell turned.
And the Terrell who turned was not the one who had been speaking to thirty seconds ago.
He crossed to Raul in two steps and crouched in front of him.
"How do we get out of here," he said.
Raul’s eyes opened. Focused. The process of a man arriving at consciousness and imdiately wishing he hadn’t. He looked at Terrell. Then at . Then back at Terrell.
Then he spat blood.
"There’s no way out," he said. "If there was..." He looked at the cliff, at the specific irony of his own territory. "Why would I still be here?"
Terrell punched him hard on his jaw. Then tightened his grip - the grip of soone who needed the next sentence to be honest.
"You’re lying," Terrell said.
"I’m not." Raul’s eyes were steady. "There is no way out. No route up. Nothing. You’re trapped here like everyone else." A beat. "Deal with that."
Terrell held the grip for a mont.
Then Raul’s eyes moved past him.
To .
He looked at with the attention of soone whose mind, even returning from unconsciousness, was still turning. He looked at and then he looked at Terrell and then back at , and sothing was happening in his expression - the piece-fitting look of a man who was putting together sothing he hadn’t expected.
"The woman," he said.
Terrell said nothing.
"What’s she doing here?" Raul asked. "You took her from my chambers and brought her here with you..." He looked at Terrell. Sothing moved through his face. "What is she to you?"
Terrell released his jaw and stood.
"I know your taste," Raul said, still looking. "I know the kind of won you’ve always preferred. She’s not..." He stopped. His eyes narrowed. "Unless she’s not here by taste. Unless she’s here because you have a connection to her."
"If you’re not going to tell anything useful," Terrell said, with the absolute flatness of a man closing a subject, "you’re better off unconscious. Your voice is an irritant and I’m not in the mood to kill you just yet."
Raul opened his mouth.
Terrell hit him hard.
The blow knocked him unconscious straight out, and Raul went back against the wall and stayed there motionless.
Terrell straightened.
He looked at his hand.
Then he looked at , and for just a mont the other thing was there again. The thing he had shown before Raul woke up.
Then it was gone.
"We need another way," he said.
"I know," I said.
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