Through the Never

by J. A. Culican

  He waited until the woman finally stopped squirming beneath him. I thought his uncommon patience was due to the way his eyes feasted across her body. He didn’t try to hide it. It seemed rather the opposite, and I wondered at what I was witnessing.

  Dolpheus respected women. It was part of the reason they loved him the way they did. Or at least, that was my theory, one of my many attempts to understand why women threw themselves in offering at the man so similar to me.

  Ordinarily, Dolpheus wouldn’t drag his eyes across a woman like this. He’d be discrete, reverent, even if only in appearances. But his gaze appeared ready to devour this mowab rider. Could it be a peculiar manifestation of his rage?

  When Dolpheus leaned his chest close to hers, I realized neither one of them noticed me anymore. I wasn’t part of this thing between them, whatever it was. I couldn’t decide whether they were going to kill each other or fuck, like animals, right there on the sand in front of me.

  “We didn’t kill your parents,” Dolpheus said, muscles taught in his arms, but his tone calmer than it had been before.

  Her nostrils flared. “How do you know that? You’ve probably killed so many people you can’t even remember their faces anymore. Meanwhile, I can’t forget their faces or their pained expressions.”

  The anger was back. “I remember the face of every single living thing I’ve been forced to kill,” Dolpheus snapped. “And I’ve never killed someone who didn’t pose a threat to me or someone I was defending.”

  These were loose terms. I understood, better than I wanted, the reasons behind Dolpheus’ specific choice of words. We’d had to kill many people who might’ve easily been innocents if they hadn’t posed a threat to the King and his drive to control every living thing upon the entire planet of Origins.

  “You did kill them,” the woman said as if Dolpheus hadn’t claimed innocence.

  “I didn’t. And neither did Tanus.”

  “How can you be so sure you didn’t kill them? You were mad enough from the death of your horse to kill me.”

  “But I haven’t killed you, have I? At least not yet.”

  She licked her lips and arched her chest subtly toward Dolpheus. Her movements were slight, and I didn’t think she or Dolpheus noticed consciously. But I noticed the actions that went contrary to her words, and I wondered what her true intentions were, if she even knew them anymore.

  Dolpheus inched his chest closer to her. “What makes you believe we killed your parents?”

  She pulled her back against the sand again, away from Dolpheus. “Because I watched you and this murderer leave their dwelling, blood dripping from your swords just as it is now. There was no time for anyone else to go in there before I did. You killed them.”

  “No we didn’t,” I said from the side. But she ignored my conviction.

  Dolpheus looked away from her for a moment, searching his memories, I imagined. She thrashed against what she assumed would be a weakness in his hold. But I didn’t even move to back up my friend. Even if his gaze was distracted, his instincts weren’t. He’d been a warrior far too long to weaken his grip on a wild-eyed woman who still clutched her sword against the sand beneath his hold.

  Finally, he turned back to her. He looked into her eyes, and I noticed how similar they were in color to the gilded black sand that surrounded us everywhere. She was an unusual-looking woman, with her dark red hair, dark eyes, and skin darkened by the heat of the Wilds.

  Dolpheus spoke with a deep calm. “We didn’t kill your parents, and I don’t want to kill you either.”

  “But you did,” she said, and now there was something new in her voice, a desperation, an anguish, a lost feeling that I could understand.

  “But we didn’t. We’re not like that.”

  “Then who...?”

  Dolpheus moved his right arm along with hers, his sword still gripped in his hand. He set it down near his waist, pointed toward her, on the sand. Then he moved their arms back over her head. With his other hand, he raised hers and banged it, hard, against the ground. She released the hold on her sword and it bounced free.

  He lowered his chest until her breasts pressed against him, until his face hovered above hers. “I don’t know who killed your parents. But we didn’t.”

  “Someone did,” she whimpered.

  I felt as if I was witnessing a private moment not intended for me, something ludicrous considering this woman had commanded an army of mowabs to decimate us. But the strength of the woman was vanishing beneath Dolpheus’ attentions, truths, or both.

  “If you’re sure you saw Tanus and me leaving your parents’ home with blood on our swords, then it must’ve been during one of the King’s many campaigns to bring the rebels within his rule. We followed orders to subdue your people several times before Tanus and I left the army.” He lowered his face until he was whispering nearly against her lips. “We left because we didn’t agree with his methods and we couldn’t do it any longer.”

  My friend was whispering treason, words punishable by death if the King were ever to find out. He was speaking of death and loss and still the fiercest of all rebels, the one person capable of taming and riding a mowab, was softening beneath him.

  Dolpheus continued. “If we were coming out of your parents’ home when we were with other soldiers, it’s more likely that we discovered what others did to your parents than that we killed them. Tanus and I’ve never killed anyone that was unarmed and not a threat.”

  There’d been too much blood, too much death in the Wilds when we’d come through here with the King’s army. The rebels fought ferociously to defend their freedom and their homes—something I believed they had every right to do, no matter what propaganda the King spewed. Dolpheus and I’d been forced to kill many of them in the name of the King and Greed.

  I hoped Dolpheus spoke truth and that we weren’t the ones to have killed this woman’s parents, leaving her younger sister, who’d warned us, and her orphans. But it was possible, even if what Dolpheus said was mostly true. We did our best not to kill innocents. We tried never to hurt anyone who didn’t mean to hurt us.

  But we were only men, and we weren’t great ones. On good days, we were decent men.

  If the mowab rider’s parents had come at us with a weapon, any tool they could put to use in their defense, it’s possible that we killed them. There’d been interminable days filled with killing in the Wilds. It’d made our stomachs sick—until it didn’t. Until we were barely capable of feeling at all. Until we realized we couldn’t be the soldiers we’d trained all our lives to be. We had to disentangle ourselves from the King.

  I watched my friend fully earn his reputation as a ladies’ man all over again.

  He flattened his body fully against the woman, who no longer squirmed or resisted in any way. He moved his right hand farther away from a quick, easy grab for his sword and rested it on her hair. The crimson strands were too tangled, so he ran his hand across them.

  Against her lips, he said, “I’m sorry you lost your parents to this senseless and devastating bloodshed that plagues O.”

  A sheen of wetness coated her eyes in this parched desert.

  “I hate it. Killing takes a piece of me each time I’m forced to do it.”

  Dolpheus had never said words like these to me, though I wasn’t surprised. I experienced the same thing. Every time I killed, I thought it might be the end of me too. But each time, I found the way to keep on.

  Dolpheus straightened his legs out behind him and she spread her legs, making space for him between her thighs. His knives, still sheathed, pushed against her pants.

  But they didn’t look like the fierce warriors they were anymore. They looked like a man and woman, like the tender pieces that we all were beneath the shells we wore for others.

  When she opened her lips to his kiss, I walked away.

  My friend didn’t need me anymore. He was more skilled in the tactics of women than I. I was still missing the only woman who’d ever convinced m
e that love was worth the risk.

  I moved over to the horses, giving the mowabs, still as boulders on the endless landscape, a wide berth.

  I swallowed my grief at the body of Dolpheus’ horse, Daybreak, who’d been a friend to me too. I slumped to the ground against Seafarer, who hadn’t gotten up, mourning our mutual loss.

  Was I nuts to think Ilara was alive? Was I just too broken to accept yet another death, another loss, when it was looking me in the face?

  I closed my eyes, letting the Auxle Sun color the world behind my eyelids a dark orange.

  The sounds of kisses and building passion spread across sand and blood and empty bodies, whispering that perhaps there was always reason for hope. From the ashes rose miracles. Or at least, that’s what the Devoteds said. Maybe they weren’t crazy for believing after all.

  Because in this moment it’s all I could do. I had to believe. I had to believe Ilara, my woman, was still out there somewhere. She was the only one for me.

  I’d observed Dolpheus with many women. It was unavoidable given how much time he spent with women and how much time he and I spent together.

  But never had I witnessed him behaving the way he was with the mowab rider. I thought it was perhaps that most other women surrendered to him immediately; they were all want no matter what particular version of the hard-to-get game they attempted to play, if they could keep their panties on long enough to play it at all. Because I knew it couldn’t be the stirrings of love. Dolpheus didn’t believe in love. It was traitorous, he said, just as most women were.

  I didn’t argue with this. I hadn’t believed in love before I gave myself to Ilara either. And I wouldn’t disagree with him now, when love was responsible for the shattered pieces I was trying to keep together within my chest cavity, which felt cavernous and empty in a way it never had before. Even before Ilara, I’d never felt this. She’d ruined me, not only to all other women, but to anything less than what she and I shared together, what we understood was possible, the unicorn in the meadow.

  When Dolpheus and the mowab rider, leaving her ride aside, finally joined me, I studied them warily—not because they’d made me wait during an already long day. Dolpheus and I had an understanding. Life was perilous and unreliable, and sticky and terrible. We’d make the most of it, whatever we had left to us, however long or short that was. We had each other’s backs, even in this.

  I wanted my friend to be cautious mostly because he had a dreamy glint to his smoldering, brown eyes that he rarely, if ever, had. This was the look of a ladies’ man who’d finally found someone who challenged him.

  “Tanus, this is Duleene,” Dolpheus said with a hand to the small of her back, his sword sheathed, the spake he’d retrieved still hanging from his free hand.

  “Duleene,” I said cautiously. “The mowab rider who tried to kill us.” I rose to my feet. Even if Dolpheus trusted this woman already, I didn’t. A kiss or ten wouldn’t convince me this woman didn’t mean us harm.

  “I tried to kill you because I believed you killed my parents,” Duleene snapped.

  “And you no longer believe that?”

  Her eyes flared in a swirl of emotion. “Maybe. Or maybe you are the assholes everyone says you are and you’re lying to me.” She switched her wild eyes over to Dolpheus. “Maybe the infamous lady lover is playing me.” She moved to step away from Dolpheus’ reach.

  He shot a hand out to grab her by the wrist. She froze, eyes ablaze.

  “Hey,” he cooed. “Let’s not go there again. Tanus and I are warriors. It’s what we do. But we didn’t kill your parents, and I’m not playing you.”

  Her body softened. He pulled her closer. “I trust you,” he said.

  I hope you don’t, I mind spoke with urgency. Keep that spake in hand, Olph. This woman just tried to make us mowab food. She could be playing us. A rebel warrior like her wouldn’t have any problem using her body to lure you.

  It was clear though that it wasn’t Duleene’s body that was trapping my friend. Dolpheus had all the access to the female body he could ever want. It was what Duleene had that women of the royal city didn’t that caused my friend to lean into her and whisper something I couldn’t hear.

  She laughed, a throaty, seductive sound, in response to whatever he said.

  I knew Dolpheus heard my warning, even if he didn’t respond. He chose not to heed it. So I’d watch them carefully. I’d maintain the distance and objectivity necessary to anticipate any change in Duleene’s demeanor. If she was willing to organize a mowab army against us, who knew what she might be capable of doing? She might have only called off the mowabs because Dolpheus and I were getting the better of them. A mowab army wasn’t a threat if it was dead.

  “Besides, Duleene,” Dolpheus said, pulling away from her to include me in the conversation, “I’m pretty sure that if you heard rumors about us, no one called us assholes. We’re many things, but assholes isn’t one of them.”

  On good days, I’d agree with him. But we had our bad days, just like everyone else.

  “Well, perhaps that’s true,” Duleene said. “I’m not sure anyone calls you assholes. Though they do call you dangerous, fierce, and unforgiving badasses. Men not to mess with. Men that will kill you if you give them reason, that can take out forces far greater in number than them.”

  “That reputation serves us well,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, pensive. “I suppose it would.”

  Dolpheus and I worked hard to maintain our reputation as badasses who were better avoided. It spared us a lot of unnecessary conflict. As warriors, appearing weak was the greatest risk of all.

  The woman looked off into the distance, seeming not to see the fallen beasts dotting the sand. Her blood-red hair trailed behind her on a stout gust of wind. In that moment, with her hand in Dolpheus,’ she looked younger and gentler than a mowab rider should be. She seemed frightened and wounded, gathering courage that would allow her to protect her siblings—perhaps even her people—and right a few of the many injustices they were subjected to for defying the Crown’s rule.

  Seeing her like this made me want to trust her. She reminded me a bit of the woman I longed for— strong, courageous, intense, and wild out of necessity. My woman navigated the dangers of the Court of O, this woman navigated the dangers of the Wilds. Both places concealed vipers.

  I wanted to trust Duleene because I sympathized with her perceived plight—but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t just yet. I owed my friend more caution than that, since he seemed to be tossing his into the fickle whims of the wind.

  I wondered if a great part of Dolpheus’ admiration for the woman was that it allowed him to avoid Daybreak’s death. A man like him, so much like me, would experience the death of his horse deeply. Dolpheus didn’t like feelings he couldn’t control. Which was why he avoided love like the oft-poisoned nectar of the Court; he understood both were laden with hidden perils that could crush a man.

  When I grew tired of waiting on the warriors that already behaved as lovers even though they’d just met, I spoke. “So what now? Dolpheus and I have an important mission to carry out. We’re searching for someone who needs our help. We can’t delay.”

  “But we could delay a day, couldn’t we?” Dolpheus said while squeezing Duleene’s hand.

  My answer would have been an immediate no if the one asking hadn’t been the only true friend I had in the world. How could I deny him this if he wanted it? When our continued search for the princess might be fruitless? When even her father, the King, said she was dead?

  “If it means that much to you, we can,” I conceded. My reputation for being fierce and uncompromising didn’t apply to him.

  “Duleene,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “What do you think? Would you like to spend the day with me before we have to continue on?”

  I’d never heard Dolpheus so sincere with a woman before. He was always respectful, always offering the woman of the moment the adoration she craved. But this sounded like the Dolp
heus I knew, not the one he usually offered to others.

  Duleene considered him then me. “I would like to spend the day with you,” she finally said.

  Dolpheus’ smile was brilliant. “That’s great. So where do we go?”

  This was her territory, and fresh reminders of this fact surrounded us, dead and injured.

  Duleene studied us some more with the astute, intelligent eyes of a survivor. She had to be protective of her clan. “We’ll go to my dwelling.”

  “All right. Then let’s go,” Dolpheus said. He blatantly continued to ignore the heap of unmoving flesh that was Daybreak. I knew my friend well enough to understand he was desperately trying to avoid the pain of this loss.

  Perhaps a day in bed with a wild woman was the medicine he needed.

  But I couldn’t let us abandon Daybreak’s body. Dolpheus would regret it later, when he finally did face the death of his trusted companion.

  I guided Seafarer to rise from the sand, where he continued his observance of Daybreak. I moved to the saddle and hooked my spake back in its holder. I left my sword in my hand since I was certain Duleene would retrieve hers from the sand before we left.

  “We have to do something to honor Daybreak first,” I said.

  “Daybreak?” Duleene asked.

  “Dolpheus’ slain horse,” I said in a harsh voice, saving my friend from having to do it. Dolpheus fixed his stare anywhere but on the caramel-colored form of his horse.

  “There’s no way to bury him out here,” Duleene said. “The dirt’s hard.”

  This Dolpheus and I knew. We hadn’t buried the King’s soldiers who died during battle in the Wilds, we’d burned them, occluding the sun with the dark smoke.

  “Well we’re not leaving until we do something to honor him,” I insisted.

  “Yes, I should do something for the fallen mowabs too,” Duleene said.

  Her sympathetic tone made me snap. “I don’t give a fuck about your mowabs. You’re the one that led them in attack to be slaughtered.”

  “I didn’t know they’d be slaughtered.”