More Than Imagined

Chapter 29

A few days after they finally returned from the mission—missing a member, a hand, and the trust they had built with Jazara—Eli wasn't shocked to find Rhoawyn here.

She was perched up against a tree near the outer training halls, with flutters swarming in an illuminated mass around her. Her knees were pulled tightly to her chest, eyes caught in a dazing emptiness as she gazed up at the night sky.

When he caught sight of the drying tear tracks scaring her cheeks, he made himself known. Rhoawyn glanced up at him, with a face unable to process the concept of emotion—as if she didn't recognize him. But when she hastily wiped her cheeks, and the brim of her eyes soon after, he moved to sit right by her side.

"I just want to be alone, Eli," Rhoawyn said, voice smaller than he'd ever heard before.

Emptied of will. Emptied of hope. He hadn't expected her to take Jazara's underhanded actions to heart because he had never considered them to be anything beyond acquaintance. Eli had always thought of them like oil and water—two substances that filled the same space but would never truly mix.

"Sometimes our minds trick us into thinking we want to be alone at the worst possible times."

"I've been alone for as long as I can remember. Alone in my choices, in my view of the world. Abandoned by one parent, betrayed by the other. And now that that life... that betrayal has seeped into this one, I'm thinking alone is the best thing to be."

Eli ignored the pang in his chest as she laid her thoughts on his shoulders. It was selfish to think of himself and how her words were a revelation to just how little of a comfort he'd been to her in their time of knowing each other. He fought the urge to speak, taking the tired sigh she breathed as a sign she had more to get off her chest.

"I don't want to do this anymore. This whole Imaginary thing," she whispered, ducking her head into the cage of her arms she had stacked up on her knees.

The words hung in the air between them, the message noosing around his neck and into his ears—into his brain.

His first instinct was to make a joke. He wanted to say something about finding a Mare to make that wish a reality. He wanted to help Rhoawyn find laughter in the lousy hand she'd been given—the hand they had all been dealt one way or another. He wanted to tell her that's how he processed Flinch's death after the initial heartbreak. It was how he processed Cienna's and the rest of his former squad's deaths.

It wouldn't go over well, not right now. Not like this. But he'd never been good at comforting people—always been more of an agitator than a mediator. He knew she'd been through a lot these past few days—they all had. But where the rest of the group had only suffered one loss, Rhoawyn had suffered twice as much. So Eli wanted to be different. Wanted to be someone she could lean on in all things—someone understanding. So he chose his words carefully.

"Well, why don't you?"

"I'm just tired."

She slid a hand into her pocket and pulled out the test tube that held their lives in its hands.

It was the one they were rewarded with even after coming back to the IOB empty-handed. Even though they hadn't delivered the dreamcatcher, the Techromancers were happy to know about the Mare infiltration.

"This is the last of it, you know. The last of my dust from the mission," she said, staring Eli straight in the eyes, but somehow still looking past him.

"Yeah? Well, you should take some before you start to feel sick."

"I was thinking maybe I shouldn't... that I should just finally let death take its course like I wanted it to when I Departed. I think maybe it's my time," Rhoawyn said, voice too even—too decided—for Eli's liking. "Have you ever thought about not taking the dust?"