They sat silently for a long moment, long enough that Gerald thought Omar was going to walk away again without ever saying anything.
“There are enough tents,” Omar said finally. “If you want your own. I don’t mind setting up two.”
“Should you have to?”
“What…what do you mean?”
Gerald turned his head to look at Omar. He was staring straight ahead, out into the rain. “I mean, is there a reason why I should want my own tent?”
He wanted Omar to tell the truth. But instead, he scowled and snapped, “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Gerald asked. “I don’t know what the situation is. You know I don’t like you like that. You know I have trouble telling when people like me. I told you that. And you said you would tell me if you started liking me like that. You said you would tell me, in plain Common. And you haven’t. You haven’t told me you like me, so, from my perspective, you don’t. I didn’t think anything of sharing a tent. I didn’t even think there was anything to think about. And I didn’t think you did either.”
He took a breath. Omar was still looking out into the rain. He wouldn’t meet Gerald’s eye. The dragon was silent behind them. Even its breathing was quiet, as if it were trying very hard not to disturb them. “We’re friends, aren’t we? No matter what else is happening. And, all right, maybe I’ve been oblivious, maybe it would have been obvious to anyone else, but I’m not a complete idiot. Or maybe I am, because if Dion hadn’t said anything, I never would have known. But he did say something and the way you reacted was obvious enough even for me to notice. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. You said you would tell me.”
He hated how childish that sounded, but he couldn’t stop it. He was hurt Omar hadn’t told the truth. Had let him talk about personal things and had kept his own silence. Had pulled away when the truth came out, had ignored him, and even now was refusing to simply come out and say it, or even deny it. Until it was acknowledged, one way or the other, Gerald didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know where they stood.
Didn’t know where he wanted them to stand.
“I’m sorry,” Omar said. “I didn’t want to say anything. I knew you hadn’t realized; I knew you weren’t going to realize. And I wasn’t planning to do anything, so I thought…well, I thought why did you need to know? I didn’t want to mess things up. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He shrugged helplessly.
“You don’t need to protect me,” Gerald said. “You’re my friend, not my, my nursemaid. You don’t get to decide what I need to know! You don’t get to decide what’s going to make me uncomfortable, and you don’t get to decide I can’t handle being told the truth!”
Omar flushed. “I don’t—I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I told myself it was for you, for your benefit. But really I didn’t want to take the risk. I told you I didn’t want to mess things up. I didn’t want to risk losing you. I was being selfish. I’m… I’m sorry.”
He sounded sincere, and contrite enough that Gerald didn’t want to drag it out any longer. “Thank you,” he said.
Omar exhaled loudly. “You shouldn’t have to thank me for apologizing. I shouldn’t have let it get to the point where I needed to apologize.”
Gerald nodded. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I really am sorry, though. I didn’t want to mess things up, and that’s exactly what I did. I made it even worse.”
“When Dion brought it up…” Gerald said. “You could’ve come clean. You could even have denied it—I obviously wasn’t going to figure it out on my own! But you didn’t do anything. You didn’t admit it, you didn’t deny it, and you wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Because I messed up!” Omar said. “Because I was afraid of how you would react. If I didn’t see your expression, if I didn’t hear what you had to say about it, I could pretend it hadn’t happened, that I hadn’t ruined things.”
“We’re still friends, I said. At least, I still want to be friends. But I don’t know what you want now.”
Omar shook his head in frustration. “It’s not now. I mean, you just learned about it. But my feelings aren’t new. They’ve been there.”
“For how long?”
“A while,” he admitted. “I don’t know exactly. But when you got hurt…when we had to leave you there to get help and I didn’t even know for sure you would be alive when we got back…that’s when I knew for sure you were…you are…important to me.”
Gerald leaned back against the comforting bulk of the dragon. “That’s why you didn’t want to leave by yourself when I was still healing. Why you fought with Nedi about it. Because you liked me.”
“Yeah.”
“You must think I’m an idiot for not noticing. Erick knew,” he realized. “He said some things… I didn’t understand it at the time. Everyone knew but me, didn’t they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know how well I hid it. But no, Gerald, I didn’t think you were an idiot. I was…all right, I was maybe a little surprised at first. I mean, I know what you told me, but part of me thought, you know, it can be hard to pick up on subtle cues, maybe all you’d ever gotten was subtle cues. But then I saw you really didn’t notice. And you know, it was kind of a relief. I mean, it’s not like I could flirt wrong if you didn’t even know I was flirting. And like I said, I wasn’t planning to do anything. So it was… I don’t know, it was safe. I could like you without being rejected, without being hurt.”
Gerald shook his head in confusion. “But… I mean, I was rejecting you, wasn’t I? Maybe not directly, not you specifically, but I’m rejecting, you know, romancing.”
“I don’t know,” Omar said again. He finally turned to look at Gerald and they made eye contact for the first time since Dion had made his comments. “I don’t know how relationships work for you. How you want them to work, I mean. It didn’t feel like rejection. It felt like… it felt safe. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“I don’t know how relationships work for me either,” Gerald said. “I don’t know how I want them to work. I don’t even know if I want them to work. I like… I like the idea of it, I think. Not of romance, not of bedding, but of a partnership. But I don’t know what that means in reality.”
“Well… If I haven’t ruined it…if I haven’t messed things up by not talking to you like I said I would…we could maybe try to figure it out? Together?”
He was all but vibrating with tension and nerves and his expression was painful for Gerald to see, it was such a mix of fear and hope. He wanted to say the right thing and he wasn’t sure what that was. “I know I like you as a friend,” Gerald said finally, haltingly. “I don’t like that you kept this secret, not when it involved me, not when other people knew about it. I’ve been on the wrong end of that before, you know? Being outside of things. I’m hurt, okay. I trusted you with all this stuff, with things about me that have made other people reject me. Things I don’t like to talk about. And you wouldn’t trust me with something that was about me.”
“I’m sorry,” Omar said earnestly. “I really am.”
“I believe you. And I…it’s not like I hate you for it. I don’t even know if I’m angry, really. But I just… I don’t know where to go from here. Can we start by going back to how it was? Being friends. Talking. Sharing a tent without it being strange or awkward. Can we get back to normal and then think about if there’s somewhere else to go from there?”
“I…yes. Yes. I can do that. We can do that. Friends?”
“Friends.”
They both let out a breath and then exchanged a smile, a smile of relief and then of simple happiness.
Behind them, the dragon rumbled with contentment. “I knew you were a sensible pair. We’ll make you honorary dragons in the end.”
IT WAS EASIER said than done to go back to acting normally. They were still awkward around each other and when they rejoined the others around the fir
e, Dion watched them with open curiosity and Natali smirked. “Did you kiss and make up?” she asked.
Omar made a rude gesture and she laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Padma swatted her shoulder and she subsided, but Gerald could still feel himself blushing. He couldn’t decide if he was more embarrassed by the idea of kissing Omar or by the fact that they all thought he had done it. He knew his blush would only confirm their suspicions. Why do I care if they think I kissed him? I didn’t, I know I didn’t, he knows I didn’t, and also—no one besides me thinks kissing is a big deal.
“You know, my leg is still bothering me,” Gerald said. “I think I’ll turn in early. The dragon will probably want to get moving as soon as the rain stops.”
It made for a convenient excuse, but it also happened to be true. When he was safely hidden away in the shadowy comforting darkness of the tent—the same single tent he and Omar had been sharing, which prompted another laughing comment from Natali that Gerald was relieved he hadn’t quite heard—he dug out the supplies Calin had sent along and started massaging the piedling’s creams and ointments into his aching muscles and swollen scars.
Omar pushed the tent flap aside and ducked inside with a mage light. Gerald flinched at the light more than anything, at the light that showed exactly how bad his leg looked with the scars puffy and purple and glistening under the ointments, but Omar stammered out an apology that made it clear he thought Gerald was flinching because of him.
“I can go back outside—”
“No, it’s okay. We’re going back to how it was, right? This is how it was. You’ve seen me do this before, I mean. If it were yesterday, you would’ve stayed. So…stay. But…you don’t have to look.”
Omar stayed. He set the light down and turned his back and got dressed for bed, exactly like he had done the previous night and the night before that, as if nothing had changed. But there was a new self-consciousness about his movements, and Gerald couldn’t help the knot of anxiety that was growing in the pit of his stomach.
Forget what I said about not knowing what this means for me. I don’t even know what this means for him. I told the truth when I said I didn’t think anything of sharing a tent. Even not wanting him to see my leg, not wanting help with my clothes when my back hurt so badly, I wasn’t thinking about any of it like that. But was he? He can’t find these scars attractive. But what does he think when he sees them? What did he think when he helped me take off my shirt?
Gerald shook his head, three rapid, jerky movements, as if he could shake the thoughts right out. He didn’t like the questions and was afraid he would like the answers even less. He didn’t want to think about it.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Omar asked hesitantly. He still had his back turned, but he glanced over his shoulder to look at Gerald as he asked.
“No,” Gerald admitted. “I’m not sure of anything. But…objectively…what reason is there for this not to be okay? I don’t want to kiss you or bed you or any of that. And whether or not you want to, you’re not going to, because I don’t want to and you’re not going to force me.”
“I would never—!”
“I know. I know. That’s what I mean. You’re not going to do anything, I know you’re not going to do anything, and so, objectively, there’s no reason for me to be uncomfortable.”
“But you are.”
Gerald shrugged and tried a smile. “I’m always uncomfortable about something. I’m used to it. I’ll get used to this.”
“I don’t want you to get used to being uncomfortable with me. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable at all! Look, I’ll put up another tent, it’s okay.” He moved toward the tent flap but stopped when Gerald shook his head.
“If you do that, it’ll make it worse. It’ll mean there was a reason for me to be uncomfortable. Just leave it, Omar. I’m tired and my leg hurts, and I don’t want to think about it or talk about it anymore tonight. Go to sleep. It’ll be better in the morning.”
Omar hesitated but gave in. “Well, all right. I’ll take your lead. Good night, then.”
He extinguished the mage light and Gerald lay back in the darkness and stared at the shadowed canvas walls. He stayed like that for a long time, his eyes open, until Omar’s breathing slowed and quieted into the sounds and rhythms of sleep. It was only then he closed his own eyes and waited for morning.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE RAIN HAD stopped sometime in the night. The sky was still gray and cloudy and the air was heavy with moisture, but it wasn’t actually raining. The sun hadn’t yet broken through to burn away the chill dampness and Gerald woke up in pain, his bad leg protesting the cold and the damp and the hard stone underneath the blankets.
“Oxa, oxa, oxa,” he cursed under his breath as he sat up and tried to massage the stiffness and aches out of his muscles and joints and scars. It didn’t do much and he bit back a louder curse of frustration. Omar was still asleep, and he didn’t want to wake him, especially not now. He dug himself out of his cocoon of blankets, found his canes, and crawled out of the tent. The fire had long since gone out, no one wanting to let it burn unattended and no one wanting to stay up to tend it, but the dragon was still there, and Gerald was drawn to it for its body heat as well as its overall comforting presence.
Its eyes were closed, but it wasn’t snoring, and he suspected it was only feigning sleep. “Dragon?” he said softly, and its eyes flicked open.
It took in his hunched posture, his white-knuckled grip on his canes, and his pale face. “You shouldn’t be walking around,” it scolded. “You look like you’re about to drop.”
Gerald grimaced. “We can’t stay here until I’m better. We don’t have that kind of time. I know healing isn’t your specialty, but can you do something? Just for the pain?”
The dragon frowned. “You had such a poor reaction to draconic healing spells before,” it reminded him. “I don’t want to take the risk you would react poorly to mine. Not when we’re so far from other help.”
Gerald nodded, resigned. “The more reason to go, then. It will hurt whether I sit here or sit on your back, and at least the pain will have a purpose that way: we’ll be traveling toward people who can help.”
The dragon crooked its foreleg to make a seat and Gerald took it, relieved to get his weight off his leg, relieved to feel the warmth of the dragon’s skin chasing some of the painful cold from his bones.
“What of the rest of it?” the dragon asked gently. “You spoke more with Omar.” It wasn’t a question.
Gerald closed his eyes. “I don’t know. It’s easy to say let’s go back to how it was. It’s harder to actually do it. I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what he wants, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
As if mentioning his name had summoned him, Omar stuck his head out of the tent and looked around. “Gerald?” he called softly.
“Over here.”
“Ah.” He held up a piece of parchment. “There’s a message from Erick. Or Nedi. I didn’t read it,” he said, rather unnecessarily since the new-message alert was still chiming audibly.
“You could’ve read it,” Gerald said. “It’s not like there’s anything personal in it.”
“That you know of. Anyway,” he added, “there’s no ink in the tent.”
He found some in the supplies and handed it to Gerald. He dripped it on the page and the gentle chiming faded away to be replaced by Erick’s message scrawling its way across the page.
How far away are you now? More and more Council members started showing up yesterday; we might have the full thousand camped outside by now. They spent most of the day circling around, mapping out the borders and looking for weak spots. The dragons have been doing their own circling, following the Council members around. The border spell makes it so they can’t see in, from their perspective the landscape just keeps going, but we can see out, so we know what they’re doing even though they don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t even know i
f they know what’s behind the borders. I can’t imagine they would be so calm and methodical about it if they knew there were dozens of dragons only a few feet away, watching them like hawks and leaking smoke from their nostrils.
Nothing has happened yet, but it feels like something is going to. It looks like they’re settling in for the long haul. Meanwhile, the dragons are up in arms. Some of them want to go out there and start breathing fire, strike first before the Council can do anything. That is obviously a terrifically bad idea, not least because it would guarantee the Council would attack. Right now they’re only observing. But it’s getting very tense. Nedi wants to parlay. She says for all the Council knows there’s a nefarious plot and all the questing royals have been kidnapped for ransom or something more sinister. She thinks if we explain it all they’ll have no choice but to go away and leave us to it.
She can make a forceful argument, but I’m not sure the Council would sit there and let her.
There’s also nothing to stop them from casting a spell on whoever crosses the border. There are enough of them out there that even the dragons are wary of facing them—the dragons who aren’t chomping at the bit to go start a war, at least.
Nedi’s drafting a message to send to them to invite a parlay. But all of this was your idea. You should be here to meet with them, assuming they agree. So how far away are you now?
GERALD SWALLOWED AND then read the letter again, out loud this time.
“We lost half a day to the rain,” the dragon said. “But we can make that up if we don’t stop for lunch and wait a little longer to make camp. We can still get there by late tomorrow if we push.”
Gerald rubbed at his leg and grimaced, knowing the kind of shape he would be in at the end of it, but all he said was, “We should get the others up, then.”
“It’s still not at a critical point,” Omar started, but Gerald interrupted him.
“It sounds like it’s getting there. I don’t want to responsible for a war, Omar. Erick’s right. It was my idea and it’s my fault it’s gotten to this point. I have to be there to face the fallout.”
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