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It had been nearly thirty years since Liliana was home.
She could hardly believe it. All that time, and it fell away when she took in the aging wallpaper and the scuffed wooden floors and Relvin’s mother’s candlesticks settled down on a dining room table that was too big for the number of occupants in the house. Idly, she swiped dust off stem of one. If she had to guess, she’d say it hadn’t been used in weeks. Maybe months.
There was a stillness to their family home now that had never been there while she was. The silence ached. Liliana sat at that dining room table, closed her eyes, and listened, as if she might hear the sounds of toddling feet and Relvin’s rich, deep voice cautioning a brave young child in her adventures.
Instead, she heard the door. The creak of it made her wince, and she pushed to her feet with a sudden terror. This was a terrible idea. What was she doing here, why had she even come? Relvin would be right to want nothing to do with her. Not to mention how much she’d startle him, appearing back in this house like a ghost that was haunting it. But she didn’t want to be seen by the town, had snuck in as quickly as she could, a cloak thrown over her hair to buy her precious anonymity. She could only imagine what people would say if they knew she’d returned. Nothing good, nothing kind. And she was afraid she’d deserve it this time.
The door slammed shut and a familiar sigh rippled through the still air of the house. It was deep and gruff and tired, and so familiar Liliana wanted to weep.
At a loss for what to do, she stepped forward, intentionally pressing on a creaky board in the floor, hoping he’d hear her presence before he saw her.
There was a pause, then a rustle of fabric. She could see it in her mind’s eye, him stripping off his work jacket and toeing off his boots. He’d want to wash before dinner, and then do any of the cooking she didn’t like while she bounced their baby girl in her arms, quietly humming, swaying to a song only she could hear.
“Hello?” Relvin called, and sighed. “I didn’t ask for any deliveries. Who is it and what are you doing here?”
Heart in her throat, Liliana took another step forward, hands clutching the edges of her hood as if it could hide her just a little longer. But that was stupid, cowardly. She needed to do this. She owned him this much, at least.
With great effort, she released her hold on the hood and shook it off her head. She tangled her fingers in the fabric of her coat instead, stepping fully into the front hall.
He was leaned over, pulling off a boot when she came out. He stopped dead and stared at her. She stared at him. Neither of them spoke.
The moment lasted so long, she began to wonder if he even recognized her. Her hair wasn’t the same as it used to be, after all. Liliana’s eyes darted quickly to the side and then back to him. “Relvin,” she said roughly, like she hadn’t spoken in weeks. Not anything real, at least. “It’s…it’s me—”
He straightened, the boot still on his foot landing on the wood floor with a loud stomp. “I know it’s you,” he said. His voice was hard. “I’d always know that. What are you doing here?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “I, um, wanted to see you,” she said, and it sounded shallow and stupid to her own ears. But what could she say? How do you make it up to someone that you left for nearly three decades? And not just him, but their daughter, too. She couldn’t very well say, Howdy there, Relvin, how have you been?, now could she?
“Now’s the time you decide that?” Relvin asked. “Because I’ve been here. Waiting. Twenty-six years, Lily. That’s a long time of not wanting to see me.”
She winced. “It’s not that I didn’t want to,” she said. “It’s—I don’t know how to explain. I—”
“Explain?” Relvin asked, taking a step closer. “Is this something you think you can explain? Because I’d love to hear what you think could make this make sense.”
“It’s a long story,” she said.
“It’s been damn near thirty years,” Relvin said, his jaw tight. “’Course it’s long.”
She tightened her grip on her coat, like it could give her strength. “I left for Imogen,” she said. “So she wouldn’t have to go through what I did. I didn’t want her to live like this.”
“Well, she did, though, didn’t she? She went through it. She lived like that. You have no idea how well I know it,” he said. His voice was getting quieter, but harder, rasping like he was making an effort not to yell. Or cry; she couldn’t tell. It had been too long for her to be able to tell.
He was older. She knew he would be, so why was she surprised? But she hadn’t expected it like this. The lines of his face and the streaks of gray in his hair, and the way his shoulders seemed bowed with exhaustion and grief. Well maybe that last one was just for her and her rude interruption of the life she’d left him to. Maybe coming to talk to him was the worst thing she could have done for him.
But, gods, she was selfish. She was selfish and she’d wanted to see him at least one more time, even if it was the last time.
“I don’t know what I should have done,” she said.
“You should have stayed!” He shouted, and then took a step back, like the outburst had caught him off guard as much as her. He pressed a hand over his mouth, not looking at her, and when he spoke again, there was a warble to his words. “You should have stayed, Liliana,” he said. “I don’t care about me. At this point, I doubt you do either. But you should have stayed for our little girl. She went through something terrible that I did not understand and she suffered for it. If you’d been here, you could have helped her. Instead, you left and the next I hear it, she’s helping you. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, Liliana, and you know it.”
“She spoke to you?” Liliana asked, choking the words out through the lump in her throat she was trying to ignore. “What did she say? What did she tell you?”
“Just that you were in something real bad,” he said. “And she was going to try to pull you back. Did she? Or are you still in whatever it was that took you away in the first place?”
“It’s…” Liliana trailed off, unsure what to say. Was she free? Had she wanted to be? She didn’t know what to think, what to feel about the way things had ended. Ludinus was a cruel man who had been cruel to her and many others, but had she really stopped believing in him? Some noble deeds required cruel methods. She knew that.
Though it was a moot point now, wasn’t it? The gods had been dealt with, Predathos gone into the cosmos. The noble deed she’d sought had been accomplished, without the cruelty and bloodshed she’d assumed was necessary. Ludinus vanished, Imogen on her own path. And the powers she’d resented for so long, that had driven her from her home to begin with? Well, they remained. There was no fixing that, she supposed, and didn’t know how she felt about it.
“It’s over,” she said at last. “It’s all over. Finally.”
Relvin pushed his hair back with visible frustration. “I don’t know what the hell that means, Liliana. And unless you’re actually going to tell me, why don’t you just go? You must have a whole life of your own to get back to. Don’t waste any more of your time on me.”
Liliana blinked, taken aback. She shouldn’t be. Of course that’s what he thought. Thought she’d found something better than him out there in the world, better than this life they’d shared. She hadn’t. Gods help her, but she hadn’t, much as she knew her daydreams of coming home and tending the horses were nothing more than idle fantasy. Gelvaan was too small to fit all of her now, or maybe she was too broken to fit into it.
But that didn’t mean Relvin didn’t matter. He’d become harder in her absence, but thirty years on and he was still the man she’d fallen in love with. He always would be.
“I can explain it to you,” she said quietly. “Or, at least tell you what happened. I owe you that, Relvin. It’s the least of what I do. It might just take me a while.”
“Fine, then,” he said, and finally finished taking off his boot. Gingerly, he skirted around her, keeping a conspicuous distance between them as he headed toward the kitchen. “You figure out how to say whatever it is you need to say. I’m gonna…I’m gonna make coffee.” He clenched his fists in an attempt to hide it, but Liliana saw the shake in his hands.
“Okay,” she said, watching him go.
He slipped into the kitchen without another word and barely a look back at her. Numbly, Liliana slipped the cloak off her shoulder, and then her worn, dust-beaten coat and draped them over the back of a living room chair. She didn’t sit, uncomfortable with the idea of settling in. She figured she was seconds from getting kicked out anyway.
Relvin was gone for longer than it took to brew a pot of coffee. She waited patiently, glad for the extra time to think of what to say. No matter how she spun it to herself, the story didn’t sound good. How many years had she wandered aimlessly in search of help? Time that could have been spent with her family, long before she’d fallen in with the Vanguard? Too many. She’d never even sent a letter, as if even one point of contact would be enough to tear her away from her quest. She couldn’t let that happen, so she hadn’t. And, she supposed, there was no justifying that. There was only telling him what had happened, where she’d gone, why she’d stayed away, and letting him feel how he was going to feel about it.
She sighed. There was no justifying what she’d done. That was something she was still learning how to accept.
Relvin returned with two mugs a while later. He drank his black, and put hers down on the coffee table, lightened with cream and probably sugar, too. A small, sad smile tipped up her lips. She drank it black now, had for years, but he didn’t know that.
“I’m not going to stay,” she said as he sat. “I just need you to know that, first. I don’t want to derail whatever life you’ve made for yourself and I…I need to find my own way, I think. Just so you know.”
“I never thought you would stay,” he said heavily.
“Right,” she said. “I deserve that.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “But it ain’t all unkindness, Lily. You were never meant for here, were you? Or for me, I suppose.”
“Don’t say that,” she said. “I was. I wanted it; I still do. Everything just got so complicated, but I…I always loved you, Relvin.”
She glanced over at him, holding her tongue. Do you still love me? She wanted to ask. She couldn’t imagine he did. She’d hate her, if she were him.
There was a long pause. “Sure,” he finally said, expressionless, giving nothing away. He’d always been good at that, shutting down the things that hurt him, not letting any of it show.
Briefly, horribly, she wanted to let her mental walls down. To dig into him and find the answers. It would be so, so easy, something she’d done with incredible casualness every day for years. No one kept secrets from her. She was Liliana Temult, general of the Ruby Vanguard, Ludinus Da’leth’s right hand. If she wanted something, she took it. Regretfully sometimes, if her methods were coarse, but she always got what she needed in the end.
She crushed the urge. Stomped it beneath her mental boot. What was the point of her freedom, of a future dictated by herself and no one else, if she was going to live her life by the lessons the Vanguard had taught her?
Instead, she took a seat across from him, not touching the coffee that had been prepared for a woman she no longer was. She took a deep, steadying breath.
“I'll start at the beginning.”