Elliot drew in a long shuddering breath. He’d asked for it, as he had asked to be hit once when he thought she and Luke might be dead. “I understand.”
He was about to turn away, never mind that he was in his own cabin. He was sick of this whole world. He had flayed himself in front of her, and he didn’t have to suffer through this for a single moment longer. He was going to leave.
But something else occurred to him, with a hundred times the force that it had in the library, when it was a fear and not his reality. She said she loved him, and nobody had ever loved him before. He couldn’t lose that, even if she loved him so much less than he had hoped.
He didn’t have anyone else.
He swallowed: he tasted bitterness in his mouth and felt as though he were swallowing something broken, sharp splinters all the way down.
“Thank you for being honest,” he said finally. “That’s best, isn’t it?”
Serene nodded. “Yes.”
This was diplomacy, as he’d played it with the elves and the general. The first yes was the most important. It meant another yes would follow, each one more easy than the last.
“We’re friends, and that’s what is most important, right?”
“Right,” said Serene, and almost smiled.
“So you—made a mistake, and I got—carried away. Better to end it now, before anyone’s feelings are too hurt. I don’t want to mess up our friendship. I know you don’t either.”
“Of course I don’t,” said Serene. “Elliot. You’re absolutely right.”
Elliot wanted to smash things, wanted to shout things at her until she hurt as much as he did. But he couldn’t hurt her as much as she had hurt him. He didn’t have that kind of power over her, and that was not her fault: it was his.
He went and leaned against the knife-scarred wall, looked out of the window where night was falling on the Border camp.
He heard her approach him, walking softly. He looked down at her, and she was standing very close to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. He put his arm around her waist and thought: I will never hold her like this again.
“I’m so sorry,” Serene whispered. “But thank you for understanding.”
“What are friends for, am I right?” Elliot asked. He made himself smile: it felt like his face was a stiff piece of paper, and he had folded it sharply in half. “I’m sorry for going overboard. Let’s go back to how it was before.”
“Yes,” said Serene. “It will be just like it was before.”
It was nothing like it was before. He had never lied to her before, never acted a part to convince her. She was the only person who had ever liked him before he learned, however poorly, to be tactful and hide some portion of who he was. He felt as if he was losing that, as well as her, as he watched her walk out the door of his cabin.
The next day at lunch, Elliot decided to get the news out before Serene could. Serene was looking hesitant, opening and shutting her mouth like a coy goldfish, and Luke was still sulking over the horrific indignity of a unicorn seeing his bod. Elliot had no pity for either of them. There was an empty space where he might have felt sorry, or amused, or even fond: he just had to keep going despite the emptiness.
“Serene and I decided to call it quits while there were no hard feelings on either side,” Elliot said. “Pass the butter.”
Luke sat frozen, only his eyes moving. His gaze was flicking back and forth between them, as if there were an invisible racquet sending his pupils bouncing back and forth across the tennis court of his eyes. Eventually, Serene passed Elliot the butter. He accepted it.
“I know what you must be thinking, right?” Elliot asked. “You must be kicking yourself that you didn’t place any bets on how long it would last.”
“I wouldn’t make bets about my swordsister’s love life,” said Luke. He had been using the term “swordsister” since Serene’s mother had denied it to him.
Serene pushed her shoulder gratefully against Luke’s and, after an instant, they started talking casually about archery. Luke relaxed. He did not leave and go to practice anything: he stayed where he was all through lunchtime, and he looked pleased, glad to have a situation that Luke-Everything-Goes-Right-For-Me-Sunborn had disliked resolved, smug that his best friend had been restored to him and was now focused on him again. The world was back the way it should be, clearly, as far as Luke Sunborn was concerned.
Serene was sitting on Luke’s side of the table. From now on, Elliot supposed she always would be.
Luke and Serene continued to make Elliot exercise, which was the despair cherry on the sundae of misery that was his life, and he had to go along with it because he had promised Serene that everything would be like it was before.
Besides, what was the point of doing anything else? He would just make Serene unhappy, and he could not make her love him. Luke would only triumph and potentially find his unhappiness hilarious. He could freeze them both out and have no friends at all. That would be worse than this.
He didn’t know how to be blatantly miserable. He never had, through all the long years of childhood knowing that nobody cared what he was feeling. Even if he worked out how to show what he felt, he would only put people off. He knew, from long experience, that he was too much trouble as it was.
At least the late spring had turned cold, rather than mellowing into summer, so they used the indoor practice rooms and Elliot was spared the outdoors. That meant he took every possible opportunity to sit down and read. It wasn’t like that was unusual behavior for him: neither of them would think there was anything wrong with that.
“All I want you to do is watch this and try to replicate it,” Luke ordered.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Elliot said stubbornly, clinging to his book like a life raft in a sea of violence.
“It’s a defensive move,” Serene explained.
“Like so,” said Luke. “Watch.”
Serene grabbed both of Luke’s wrists, and Luke hooked a foot around her ankles and pushed forward, sending Serene stumbling backward while bracing his other foot to keep his balance. Since it was Luke, he was able to catch Serene before she fell. Since it was Serene, obviously she had let him accomplish the whole move, and obviously she had trusted him to catch her. She grinned up at him and Luke grinned down at her: both of them content, uncomplicated, secure, and first place with each other forever and ever.
“Were you watching, Elliot?” Luke asked.
Elliot raised his book to hide his face and said cheerfully: “I was not!”