Chapter 86. The Ribbon Was a Promise, and I Had to Keep It Until Morning

Chapter 86: 86. The Ribbon Was a Promise, and I Had to Keep It Until Morning

She’d sat there for two hours without shifting once. Her arm had gone numb.

She told me about it later with a very straight face, as if it were a minor administrative detail.

"I was not going to wake you," she’d said.

It was past three in the morning when I finally came to myself.

The candle had burned down to a stub. The room was dim, and the window had gone from black to a deep, quiet blue.

I lifted my head, slowly, and found that I was sitting on the floor with a blanket around my shoulders and that a woman was sitting on the bed beside me with her knees drawn up and her chin resting on them.

She’d taken off her boots... She still let her hair down.

And she was watching me with those clear, steady golden eyes.

"You are fully awake," she said.

"Yeah."

"Are you feeling any better?"

I thought about it. I was still shaking, but not as badly.

But I can tell that my head was clearer. The terrible gray fog had thinned, and I could see through it, just a little.

I could see the room, the candle, and the woman who’d stayed.

"A little," I said.

"Good."

She reached up and slid the white ribbon out of her hair.

It was the one that her mother had worn on the morning she died. The one she’d tied back every morning for twenty years.

She held it for a moment in both hands, looking at it, and I saw her swallow. Her hair fell in a silver and black curtain over her shoulders.

She took my wrist. Gently, carefully, she wound the ribbon around it, twice, and tied it in a neat little bow.

"Return it to me in the morning," she said.

I stared at it. It was soft and warm from her hair.

"Velora..."

"I mean it." She let go.

She looked suddenly embarrassed, and a bright flush crept up from her collar. "It is... a promise."

"That you will be there in the morning." She winced. "Nrgh... That sounded much less foolish in my head."

I started to laugh.

It was a real laugh. It came from somewhere deep in my chest, and it shook me from head to foot.

I laughed until my ribs ached.

I laughed until tears ran down my face, and I didn’t know whether I was laughing or crying, and it didn’t seem to matter.

It was the first time I’d laughed since Bonette, and it felt like breaking a long fever.

Velora stared at me. Then, slowly, with a kind of baffled astonishment, she began to laugh too.

It was a small, rusty sound. It cracked in the middle.

She put the back of her hand against her mouth as if to hold it in, and her shoulders shook. It was the first time I’d ever heard her laugh out loud, and I thought it was the most beautiful sound in the world.

I’ll tell you something about the next part... It didn’t happen right away.

We sat there for a long time after we’d stopped laughing. We talked about small things.

I told her about the world I’d come from, with its glass towers and its roaring carriages, and she listened with a grave, interested face, and asked what a "truck" was.

I told her about the truck full of teddy bears, and she covered her face with her hands and made a noise like a teakettle.

At some point, I realized that the sky outside the window had begun to pale.

She was still sitting there, with her knees drawn up and a blanket over them, listening. She’d been there for five hours, and she hadn’t once said she was tired.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

[Target Velora Nightclaw: Requirement available.]

[Voluntary status: Pending.]

The words hung in the corner of my eye like a stain. I looked at them, and my stomach turned.

I felt sick... I really did.

I’d just spent the worst week of my life, and I’d finally had a moment of peace, and the thing in my head had picked this exact moment to remind me that it still wanted to be fed.

It made everything feel cheap. And it made her kindness feel like an item on a list.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Velora was looking at me.

"There is something," she said slowly. "Is there not?"

"It’s nothing."

"You have a look... You have had it since the pine wood."

"You go very still, and your eyes move to the side, as if you are reading." She tilted her head. "Something speaks to you?"

I didn’t answer.

"I do not know what it is... and so I will not ask." She spoke quietly. "I know that your hands have been shaking for five days."

"I know that you hide it... I know that you do not eat and that you stand up too fast, and that it is not only grief." She took a breath. "I am not blind, Leon."

I stared at her. "Velora..."

"Let me say this, and then I will be quiet." Her voice was perfectly steady. "I do not know what your gift demands of you... I have no wish to."

"But I know you are hiding something that is killing you by inches, and I know that you would rather die than ask any of us to bear a share of it."

I couldn’t speak.

"I will not make you tell me... But I want you to know that whatever it is, you may not use me for it."

"And I do not want to be used." She straightened. "I... want to choose."

I shook my head.

"I won’t," I said.

My voice was hoarse. "I can’t... I’m not going to turn you into... into a... a remedy."

"Not now... Not after Bonette and Millie..." I stopped. "I don’t want to be that person..."

"I’d rather fall over and die in a ditch."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know that you do." She smiled, very slightly. "That is why I am here."

I stared at her.

Wait... what...?

"I told you once not to mistake necessity for affection," Velora said. "I meant it... and I still do."

"But this is not a necessity." She drew a long breath, and her ears flushed a deeper pink, and she held my eyes without flinching. "This is mine... I have thought about it for days, and right now... I am choosing."

I opened my mouth. She raised a hand.

"You may refuse," she said. "I want to be very clear."

"You may say no, now, or in an hour, or in the middle of the act, if it comes to that, and I will not be angry..."

"I will not be hurt as well... I will sit in that chair until morning, and I will bring you more soup, and nothing between us will change."

I looked at her for a long time.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"Yes."

"Are you really sure?"

"Leon."

"Are you sure it’s not just because I’m falling apart, and you feel sorry for me, and..."

"I am a Nightclaw," she said, "and I do not do things out of pity."

I laughed again, a short, cracked sound. I couldn’t help it.

Then I looked at her face, at the soft, serious gold of her eyes and the faint, helpless flush on her cheeks, and I understood that she meant every word.

I asked her a third time anyway, in different words, softer. She answered the same way.

When I finally ran out of questions, I lifted my right hand, the one with the white ribbon tied around the wrist, and held it out between us.

The palm was turned up... and I didn’t reach for her. I only waited.

Velora looked at it.

Then she took it.