Ruquayyah ♡𝜗ৎ

“I was out of line in Gastony Valley.” Jame fiddled with her wet, pale, and purpling fingers; her nails rimmed black with dirt and probably dye. “To push you to go on for Daemus as your son was out there…is simply unforgiveable.”

“You turned my own words against me.” Josepher said, dropping his hands. Damp wisps of gray hair dangled in his eyes. “But you were right. I stick to my mission.”

She stopped her fiddling in a little surprise. She would never know a man more unpredictable. “Why are you being kind to me?”

“I — well, I don’t tell the truth to be kind.”

“I just feel — if I hadn’t been there, you would’ve gone after him immediately.” He didn’t answer. Her gaze ran over him again, this time with an inkling, “Or…would you have?”

He looked taken aback. “What?”

“Is that why you didn’t fight me on it? Because — well, maybe you think this will be a lesson for him. Maybe you were thinking this would make him a better commander.”

You want me to quit treating you like a kid. Well, this is me doing that. If I had any real sense, I would set straight back to Jakkier and collect a soldier in your place.

By the way his jaw tightened and his eyes soured, she knew she lost him.

“Do you know what would make my son a better commander, Doyeness?” He wasn’t saying her name, so the usual flustering intimacy in his addressing her was gone. Those sour eyes…and the weather made every line in his very lined face stand out graphically like slits in his skin.

Jame was silent. When it came to him, she was like an accelerant. No matter what she said to that, he’d only get angrier.

“Doyeness.”

Her trailing gaze jumped back to his.

His tone was sharp with an expression to match. “Do you know what would make Tristopher a better commander?”

Jame gulped. “Mr. Abrams…”

“Not being intimately involved with a POW.” Josepher pulled himself to his feet, patting at his coat pockets until he came by a ginger cane. “That’s what.”

Jame bit her lip to control her ill-temper. She’d started this. “I don’t need you to preach to me about Tristopher.”

“But don’t you?” He began flicking at the center of the cane. It must’ve been frozen. “I get on him about this dalliance. I tell him he fucked up — I tell him he’s compromised. Boy doesn’t care; he doesn’t listen.” His gaze lazily raked over her with bitterness. “You, at the very least, understand this. Irrational and afflicted, though he may be, you’re giving leave to that. You play the sane and confused one, but you’re allowing this to go on — ”

“Look.” Jame sighed. “I’ve remarked carelessly regarding your intentions with your kin. I will apologize. But this — ”

“Is that what you do, Doyeness?” At the swipe of his tongue, charged with his seemingly preternatural warmth, she guessed, the Zingiber butt lit up a weak blue. “Your vitric lovers weren’t enough, you had to latch onto my son too? Is that exciting for you?”

Had enough, and now offended, Jame pushed herself to her feet. “My vitric lovers?”

“Come on, Doyeness. The guard. Your husband. And — well, we all saw what happened with your Taet.”

“He is not my lover. I’ve told you. I never knew about those feelings…and I wasn’t going to deny him the kiss, the only one he’d ever be able to have from me. I am not the enemy here as much as you seem to want me to be.”

She felt smaller than usual beneath his gaze, beneath that teething-ginger mouth with that dreadful smoke oozing through his crooked off-white teeth.

“I’m just saying,” Josepher continued, “this’d be a lot easier if you’d just closed your legs to my son.”

The smack came sharp and unexpected, even to her, cracking split-second warmth into her palm. His jaw tightened and he carefully massaged his cheek. The venom in his eyes as he cut a hard look to her read as ‘If you weren’t a woman…’

“We haven’t even slept together. But that is none of your business. It never was.” His struck cheek was reddening as she spoke. “You only want him to be just like you, which is why you can’t stand that this is about feelings because you have none.”

He watched her walk far from him, as far as she could get.

On the other side of the barn, wedged into the frozen hay bales, Jame hugged arms around herself. Josepher was out of sight now, but his ginger smoke served as a dazing beacon. She hated him and his judgements. No one civil, or with even a modicum of due regard, would dare even imply what he’d said to one of the living Doyenesses.

We die, you know, she wanted to say, we are very very fleeting beings. You get only three of us every 30 years. Blink, and I’m gone.

Though the high winds were waning, she was trembling, her skin gone ice cold. The hugging herself did nothing much. Maybe sleep would make her forget the winter and maybe she’d die. Whatever stopped the bitter chill. She shut her eyes and rocked back and forth.

A sweet dream of flesh and warmth crept up, particularly an ebony man’s flesh… a thing ironic given what Josepher had just communicated. She lurched when something dug in her back. A million things it could’ve been in this day, this day of glass rain, diseased tempests, and undead hordes — but it was Josepher, standing above, looking through creased slits down pointed cheekbones at her.

Her expression went from horrified to rancorous, but she was too cold to say anything. She sat up on her knees.

“Winds are slowing but the cold’s settling in.” Josepher knelt to sit directly next to her.

“Here to blame me for it?” She could barely get the words out; they were shaky and breathy words.

He raised his brows. “To be fair…”

“Ugh.” The disgust in her tone was raw. Her gaze shifted away.

“Come here.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I think we’ve established my production of body heat as inordinate, Toddrey.” He looked upon her in a way he often did; contumely, but in an innocent way. “You’re shivering. You can hardly spiel your angry little words.”

She looked him down sourly. “If you honestly believe I would allow you, ill-mannered and brusque, in this moment — ”

“Are you going to tell me you’re not freezing, quivers?” He thought he was funny. “You’re frostbitten, it’s disgusting. And you’re losing your color. If you think I happened into you, the magic bullet — my magic bullet, just to risk you glaciating by yourself on account of an undying personal mislike, well… you’ve been mortally mistaken. Either you come over here, or I will sit right next to you. Move and I will most certainly follow after you.” He held open his considerable jacket for her.

An undying mislike. Well, Josepher didn’t seem too partial on the idea either. He wasn’t. If he could be objective on saving her life, she supposed she could be the same. Though it itched her to give in so fast, she was too cold to draw this out much longer.

She was reminded of her Bazyrian Safeguard who, when the winters were so harsh that mere linens could not contend, were forced to make room in their safeguarding duties for cuddling. Jame scooted his way slowly. If only he hadn’t started with her, she wouldn’t be so put off now. His energy was coming off in waves; the Clayrider again. Unpredictable. Mean. A killer.

Jame budged into his jacket flap and his side, and when Josepher reclined, she followed, her cheek to his chest.

“Goodness. You’re like a slab of ice.”

She lay there, bundled by his coat, breathing in his heat and earthy ginger scent. “Most people have more respect for a Doyeness.”

A sigh. “I cannot be blamed because you find animus in the truth.”

“You called me a whore.”

“I specifically did not call you a whore.”

“My vitric lovers?” She glared up at him.

His chin bulged thoroughly from this angle. “Gonna hang onto that one, aren’t you?”

His heat was thawing her. “Just because I’m not as moralist as any other Glaesien, it doesn’t make me a loose woman.” She sighed. “I don’t particularly like that you see what Tristopher and I have as a…detriment to our shared goal, I honestly don’t.”

“Fuck’s sake, Toddrey, this isn’t perceptual. I’m not fucking bitter.” Josepher was blinking his considerable, even beautiful, lashes up at the vaulted wood ceiling. “You make yourself more important than the mission to him, bat your eyes, fuck him,— ” that earned a hard gaze from her. “ — at the end of this joy ride, just what do you think will be his chief interest? Completing the mission, or holding onto you?”

Eyes down, she hated when he made sense. Then again, it was seldom that he did not. “You’d think a transient being such as myself would be allowed some latitude.” She blinked back to his face. “It’s real — I want him. Trust, I didn’t want to. I’ve only ever had one lover and I was hanging onto him even with the impossibility of seeing him again. I don’t know how Tristopher changed that, but he did and I want him. He is among a small company with the ability to make me smile in my despair.”

“I was never naming you a whore.” Josepher’s hazel eyes were dark brown in the shadows, “and nothing you say will make me believe that this relationship with my son is appropriate.”

A scowl crinkled her browline. “Nothing you say will make me abandon Tristopher. Perhaps if we all mind our business, there won’t be much to sorrow for.”

His bitterness emanated off of him as she set her head back into the pounding of his heart and rise and fall of his chest. Pure mislike. He could be bitter if that was how he preferred to remain, Jame thought, a heavy tire weighing down on her, for it was providing great warmth.