Holly and Grove slept peacefully through the night. Even with the crater ripped straight out of my chest so deep you could see clean through to the wall behind me, I couldn’t wake them to tell them. I just couldn’t. It was a bigger problem than I’d ever known but it wasn’t their problem, and they deserved their rest. Didn’t deserve to be loaded with this weight. They looked so at ease in the dark of the room, sleeping so soundly. I didn’t dare let myself do the same: I feared too much what would come to visit me. So I sat upright, their pair of soft breaths barely audible, and I wondered if the two of them were dreaming. What would they dream about? Bright futures, I hoped. Futures full of happiness and success and all the people they loved. Futures they would live to see, even if it wasn’t what they’d planned. Futures that would still be good, if not perfect. Futures they would have.

  Holly would be an expert in her field of healing arcany, the field she’d had to instigate with her own hands. She’d be the lead ship afront a bow wave of ever expanding knowledge on the topic, helping anyone who came to her, resolving the maladies of any of her many loved ones with the merest sprinkle of magic. And Grove would be a preeminent arcane technician deep into their latest project, something far beyond the scope of the Ooh that took pride of place in our dormitory. Arcane power for the home, for the shop, for the business and for the tavern. Their study of glyphs unrivalled, their eye for creation unmatched.

  Futures they would have. Days they would know and times they would share. How fucking fortunate to have something so simple, something everyone deserved and yet not enough got. My whole body ached, folded into the deepest corner of my bed’s alcove, and I tried not to cry again. I really did. Bit onto the flesh of my finger and everything. Far too much to do this week and I needed to be strong. For Robin, for Grove, for Holly. For myself too, or whatever, I guess. So I tried not to cry. Tried so hard. Pulled back at the taste of blood to see it welling on my finger, and I wasn’t doing any good at keeping the tears in either.

  Somewhere distant, a lone bird sang its hopeful song long before the brightness rose, crooning out a capella into the night for a hundredtime or more. And rise eventually it did, as it would always do. Light warmed the room. The two sleepers woke and I couldn’t make myself say the words, nor any words, so they only painted their best concerned faces on. Probably thought I was having boy trouble again. Spirits how I wished it was only that.

  And as they left, I sat.

  Smeared my face on my sleeve.

  And I waited.

  I didn’t know what for, but I waited.

  For it all not to be true, I suppose.

  Because he’d come back from worse, hadn’t he?

  He was always so strong.

  He could survive anything, could Omen.

  Even death.

  He’d done it once already.

  He’d wake back up and he’d do it with that proud grin etched across the whole time, jump to his feet, just like the last time.

  He’d do it and they’d all call him a hero again.

  Again.

  His friends.

  His gals.

  His family.

  …

  He’d never reached his family.

  They didn’t know. They’d never know.

  They’d wait in hope to hear from him or see him when the battalions came back home for their visits and he wouldn’t be there. And who would tell him?

  Who even knew what happened to be able to tell it?

  Me. Only me.

  And I couldn’t bear all this on my own. I simply couldn’t.

  I needed this not to be true. I needed something more. Anything more.

  I needed him to come through that door right now and grin at me and ask what all the tears were for, and tell me in that gentle way to wipe them off, for there was no need for them anymore. There never was.

  And just as I’d hoped, the door to the dormitory clicked. My heart thumped into life. It opened slowly.

  *

  “I dropped everything when the nurses told me,” said Robin. Sitting carefully on the edge of my bed, hand half out as if he wasn’t sure whether to lay it on me or not. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it either. “Figuratively, of course. Literally, I wasn’t holding anything at the time. I’d only gone to quickly check on this week’s medicine delivery –” He grimaced as he realised what he’d said. “I’m so sorry for you. So unspeakably sorry. How… How awful…”

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  I had my legs pulled to my chest, arms wrapped around them, chin sunk into my knees. Felt like I was hugging Omen and he was still kinda warm. Mhm, people should be warm. Yet here I was, still frozen cold. So that made two of us. “What am I meant to do?”

  “I’m not sure. I wish I knew. How do you feel?”

  “Like someone’s individually hand-washed each of my organs in a bucket of acid and fitted them back into my body in whatever order they wanted.”

  “Oh.”

  “Huh. Guess you could say I got re-organ-ised.”

  His hand touched me so gently. “You don’t have to try that. I don’t think trying to force the happy face on it would help right now. You owe it to yourself to be genuine.” So gently, his fingertips against the hemline around my leg, and it felt alright. Only Robin. I wouldn’t have let anyone else in the entire world into the room. “You seemed very close.”

  I coughed into my knees and gulped down more oncoming tears. “How did you find me?”

  “Oh. It wasn’t hard. I said I had a message to deliver to a first-year Forester and everyone pointed me up to this dormitory area, and then to your room. Turns out there’s only one of you and everyone seems to know it.”

  “Spirits, aren’t I aware…”

  His hand on me felt like a lifeline. I hated everything. Everything except a very few specific things and the list seemed to shrink week by week. By the time this exam finally came around, I’d have nothing left at this rate. Nothing but him. “You’ll feel bad, but you won’t feel this bad forever,” he said.

  I sighed. Sat there in the quiet of the room. Just breathing. Just existing. Having nothing and feeling fortunate to even have that. Not all of us were so lucky. The cold winter light dappled the room, and I finally gave in. “Robin? Could you do me a favour?”

  “Anything.”

  “You see that cube? There’s a symbol on the side somewhere. Tap it twice.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  I smiled at him. “For me?”

  He nodded and went to the cube, and he tapped it just as I’d asked. It hummed into a soothing orange glow, a bright glow, a thriving glow. Heat emanated from it. “Ooh,” said Robin, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Yeah, it does that to everyone,” I said warmly.

  *

  I don’t know how long we sat. A hundred at least. I don’t remember what we talked about either but we talked, and that was the important part. We talked. He listened. Not to reply, not to answer, but genuinely to understand. I might have nothing, but right now I had Robin, and that felt like all I needed. “I have so much I have to do this week,” I said numbly. “I have to study everything. Three months of notes. They won’t tell us what’s on this blasted exam. I don’t think the professors even know. So I have to do everything.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “Yes, of course I –” Robin was still looking at me quizzically. “What?”

  “What are you expecting?”

  “Right now? Something fucking else to fall apart and it might as well be the crumbling remenants of whatever I tell myself I’ve made here, and all of it rests on this exam.”

  His fingers tapped my shin. “You’re expecting to fail, aren’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’re you. You never seem happy with anything you do, and you never give yourself a break, and that’s coming from me. I think for so many years, you’ve been told you’re not good enough by people you were supposed to be able to trust, and now they’re not around you to tell you that, you have to take their place.”

  “So what if I fail the exam? I’ll be conscripted into the war front cos I have nowhere else to go, and if Omen couldn’t survive it, I don’t have a chance in any of the hells.”

  He spoke so softly, I don’t know how he managed it. “I don’t think that’s true. There’s a whole world outside of that. You could go wherever you wanted. Do whatever you wanted. Be whoever you wanted.”

  “I had plans like that once. Take my brother and take Omen and escape Dreadfall and live free, the way we wanted. They’re both –” I grimaced, almost losing it again. “Both gone now, unless life wants to spring another wonderfully awful surprise on me. Leaving me all alone. And I can’t do this on my own.”

  “Who says?” He had a genuine concern in his eyes. “I guess people have told you that in the past, right? You wouldn’t make it on your own? That’s what they tell all the Foresters who buck the trend and trust me, Morgan, I know it too. How many times do you think I was told I’d never make it on my own, and look at me now… making it on my own. Mostly. Um. Well, I think you’ve got everything you need to make it as whatever you want.”

  “Okay, like what?” I huffed.

  “Oh, the two things that matter. The heart to do what’s right and good and fair, every single time. And the soul to stick out the tough stuff and break it down until it gets easier. People are lucky to have one. I don’t know many that have both. And I find most of them are really annoying.”

  I huffed again, and my fingers found his wrist and I brought his hand up to my face, almost to the spot on my forehead where Omen had kissed me, and then I let it come down to my cheek, and I leaned into the warmth of his palm. “I think you’re right,” I said. “I think I’m so scared of being alone. I have to mean something to someone to make all of this worthwhile.”

  “You don’t mean anything to yourself?”

  “Someone who matters then. Point still stands.”

  He squeezed my leg. “I disagree. On most of what you said,” he told me. “And even if you did have to, then… you do. I promise you do.”

  I stayed there for a while. A long while. Way too long and not long enough. I wanted to stay with him till the brightness went down and the moons rose in the skies and every day and night after that until the world warmed up again and the snows melted away and maybe then, after all that, I’d feel okay again. What do you call it when you can already feel a lifetime next to someone wouldn’t be long enough?

  “They said they could lay him to rest this afternoon,” Robin said. “I considered going so at least someone would be there, because no one else said they’d be able to go, but I thought you might want to, and I won’t go if you want to be alone for it, and –”

  The clock read two in the afternoon and I sprang from the bed, almost knocking Robin sprawling. “Seven spirits!” I hissed, [snatching/lunging] for my boots and turning off the Ooh and not having arms long enough to reach both at the same time. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  Robin didn’t look at all bothered. “Oh, why?”

  “Because I should’ve…” My words got lost in my throat and I gestured emphatically.

  “Morgan, only you could get in such a fluster over keeping a deceased person waiting.”

  I froze and I looked at him, and the inanity of it all hit me like a falling oak, and despite everything I laughed. At myself. For an instant it felt good before feeling like I’d committed some heinous betrayal. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. I hate the world, I hate it all, but… you’re right.” I pulled the boots on, pried the wardrobe open and eyed the robe Kaspar had bought me. Although he’d bought it, it was mine. Mine now, mine forever. And it was fucking freezing outside. And if Robin was right, I deserved to look after myself. I deserved to feel okay.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He extended a hand. “Want me to show you?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, and when I took his hand, it felt right. I swear I heard him squeak a little too.