Nyx (Mate's Mark Book 3), page 8
Today was amazing.
An air of accomplishment lifts the mood of the whole village. Glass jars cool in the shade, and there are enough of them to fill a small room. Yellow squash and crimson-red tomatoes, pickled green cucumbers and potent purple onions. An entire rainbow of fresh produce that will help us get through the colder months.
Winters of the past, where people bundled in thick jackets and the ground froze solid, are distant memories. We read about them in books and hear tales of what they used to be. White, flaky snow pouring from the sky like shooting stars and coating the ground with its blanket.
The reality of this new world isn’t so picturesque.
The colder months aren’t romantic or serene, they’re an annoyance that disrupts everyday life. Temperatures drop low enough that you need a constant fire or a few layers of blankets to keep warm at night. Outdoor gardens hibernate until the heat returns, and the animals go into hiding. Food is our most precious resource, and it becomes even scarcer in the winter.
Some things grow in the cold. Variations of lettuce and greens, and members of the cabbage family like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and, well… cabbage. But the weather is unpredictable, and the dry earth is selfish with what little nutrients it has left. My old camp had a few greenhouses, though after the attack, I no longer had need of them. The sheer amount of food stores would’ve lasted me a decade or more.
I was only one man, after all.
The memory of those long years brings with it a suffocating loneliness. Despite the heat and the sweat that eases its way along my shoulder blades, a shiver works my spine.
Solitary confinement has always been the harshest form of punishment. The prospect of being utterly and completely alone, of losing yourself in the silence, is enough to keep even the worst criminals in line. But when you’re both the prisoner and the jailer, there’s no one there to deem your sentence served.
It’s just you and your thoughts.
Your memories and your shame.
Voices chatter in the distance, and I pull myself out of my head. I’m here now, and that’s what matters. It’s what I have to remember. A flash of green and gold steals my attention, and I zero in on Nyx’s head bobbing as he checks the plants one final time. The giant floppy hat shades his eyes as he makes sure there are no more vegetables to harvest.
I’m here now. Here with him.
Footsteps approach from behind me, and I force myself to swallow the last remnants of my memories before I turn. Taryn approaches with a cautious, mild smile on her face. “Ronan wanted me to tell everyone dinner will be in half an hour.”
My nose twitches as I take a deep inhale. The smoky scent of the fire mixes with something mouthwatering. “What’s he making?”
“He’s sautéing up a giant batch of stir-fry,” she answers, and my stomach rumbles in a loud growl that makes her chuckle. “Rice and an absolutely massive bowl of chopped veggies.”
“Let me guess,” I say with a wry grin. “They’re the ones he deemed too ‘imperfect’ to be canned.”
She leans against the fence, her amusement pursing her lips as she glances towards the delicious aroma of dinner. “He was just looking for a way to bust Xeni’s balls.”
“Yeah, he’s good at that,” I mutter under my breath. We both laugh, and Nyx’s head pops up at the sound. His eyes find mine, and my gaze roams across his frame. He’s filthy, just like me. Dirt covers almost every inch of his body, turning his knees and feet the same dark brown as the soil. Leaves stick out from his hair, and a slight reddish tint colors his cheeks from the heat and exertion. He looks tired, but peaceful.
“Why don’t you cool off before it’s time to eat? You’ve earned a break.” There’s a teasing tone to Taryn’s words, and when I glance over my shoulder at her, a small smirk plays on her face. She nods in Nyx’s direction. “Both of you. Together.”
My cheeks and neck already sport a sun-ripened flush, but somehow, my skin heats further under her unnervingly green eyes. “That’s not… we aren’t… um…”
“Reyes, sweetie,” she chuffs as she grips my upper arm and jostles me. Taryn is several inches taller than I am, and the strength in her grip surprises me. “You know you aren’t fooling anyone, right?”
“I, I, uh,” I stutter, my gaze darting to Nyx’s curious eyes, and I stammer myself into a long silence that’s followed by a resigned sigh. “Yeah, I suppose I’m not.”
Another quiet huff of laughter leaves her nose before her demeanor turns somber. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Handle what?” My defenses rise as I stare at Nyx. He kneels beside one of the cucumber plants with the tips of his hair brushing the ground, searching for any ripe fruit that might’ve been left behind.
“Him,” she says, and the quiet word hits like a slap as my jaw tightens and I whirl to face her.
“He doesn’t need to be handled. He’s not some thing to be manipulated, or a fucking tool I have to learn to use.”
“Of course he isn’t,” she argues, her brow flexing upward. “That isn’t what I was trying to say. But you can’t possibly understand what he has gone through. None of us can.”
“I don’t need a play-by-play of his entire life to know—” I cut myself off with a growl, and my eyes dart away into the obscurity of the forest. There’s too much to see in them right now, and I’m too exposed.
She hums low in the back of her throat with a mix of amusement and worry. “That bad, huh?” My jaw tenses, but I refuse to answer. Eventually she sighs and says, “Alright, fair enough. After everything you’ve done today, I suppose you’ve earned your secrets.”
“Some secret,” I mutter, and she smirks as she pushes off the fence.
“Go clean up,” she yells over her shoulder as she walks away, and I pull a face at her retreating figure. When I turn around, Nyx stands beside the cucumber plant he was inspecting, hugging his arms to his chest and shuffling between his feet. His pointed ears are perked, paying close attention, but he waits for me to approach him.
Always waiting for me to be the one to initiate.
I’m not bitter about his hesitation. If anything, I cherish it. He doesn’t stiffen when I approach anymore, and he holds eye contact longer during our talks. They’re baby steps—half-strides with backward fumbles—but I celebrate each one.
The earth doesn’t have to move for a victory to be meaningful, and this is. This trust in his eyes as I walk towards him is significant, monumental, and I wear it like a badge of honor.
“Hey,” I say softly, whispering even though we’re alone.
“Hi,” he whispers back, and his fingers flex against his arm until they indent his skin.
“Ronan is cooking a big dinner with everything we harvested. Do you… want to eat with us tonight?”
“Us?” he asks, those pale sage eyes lifting to mine.
“Everyone, or just… just me and you?”
His cheeks flush again, and his head dips to the ground. “You do not have to…” He trails off, his bare toes flexing against the soil. They’re filthy, coated in rich brown dirt, and the sight makes me grin.
“Don’t have to what?”
“Leave the others. Miss time with them for… for me.”
I step closer, but he doesn’t look at me again. My urge to grip that delicate, pointed chin and lift his face to mine is so powerful, I have to clench my hand at my side. I’d never risk spooking him and breaking this fragile trust, so I keep my distance, despite my demanding brain.
“Spending time with you is not a sacrifice, Nyx. Never an imposition. I’m right where I want to be.”
He’s quiet for a long time, fingers digging into his skin and pinching the thin layer of flesh between them. When he finally speaks, it’s shaky. “I need to… try. Be with others.”
A ridiculous flare of jealousy punches me in the gut, and I brace myself against it. “That’s fair,” I manage. “They’re your friends, too.”
He tilts his head from side to side. “Some, yes. Elas and Cameron are friends.”
“Not Ronan?” I ask, and his defiant glare makes me want to laugh.
“Ronan is a friend, but wants to be a parent.” I snort, and when he looks back up at me, that tiny hint of a smile plays on his lips again.
“Yeah, he does that.”
“And you,” he says, as though he didn’t hear me.
“Me?”
“My friend?” He poses it like a question, and his uncertainty takes away some of the levity.
“Of course I’m your friend, Nyx.”
He bites his lip and nods. “What if you… tired of me?”
I don’t correct him on the word, because there are much bigger things at play here. My head shakes as I hold his eyes, silently begging him to trust the honesty in mine. “No, Nyx. I could never tire of you. Never in a thousand years.”
His lips separate as he sucks in a breath, then he worries the bottom one between his teeth. “I…” he starts, dropping his gaze to the ground and hiding behind the hat. “One day…” He falters again, a frustrated grunt forming in his throat as I wait for him to gather his thoughts.
One of his fists clenches at his side, and his jaw tenses. He jerks his eyes up to meet mine, like he’s made some grand decision and is forcing himself to stick to it. “I want you to have… more,” he says.
“More?”
“Of… me.” His eyes are wide and fearful, but he holds steady. “I want to… share. Talk. Tell you… my past.”
“Oh, gods, Nyx,” I mumble, and his determination falters into something far more vulnerable as I give him a smile that barely contains my tears. “Whatever you want to share with me, I’d be honored to have it.”
He attempts to smile again, but his face is unaccustomed to the motion and fights it. “Scared,” he admits, rubbing at his chest as he watches me with those guarded eyes.
I can see it then—what everyone has told him time and time and again since he’s been here. I recognize the weight it places on him.
You don’t have to be afraid.
There’s nothing to worry about here.
You’re safe.
Well-meaning, with a world of good intentions behind them, but heavy. They place the burden of acceptance on his narrow, beaten-down shoulders. The responsibility is his—to believe them, trust them, when he has no way to understand them.
He can’t understand them because they aren’t true.
He isn’t safe.
Not from his past, or the horrors that haunt his mind, or the uncertain future he couldn’t possibly imagine after a lifetime of confinement. They’re empty words with good intentions, and those sometimes cut the deepest.
“It’s alright to be scared,” I say instead of offering him a blanket reassurance, and he blinks up at me in surprise. “You’re allowed to feel whatever you’re feeling. It’s valid, and you never need to apologize for that.”
“Everyone else is so brave—”
“Everyone else is scared, too,” I interrupt, and his eyes widen further. “Some are better at hiding it than others, but we’re all terrified of what might happen in the future, because we can’t plan for it.”
“You are not scared,” he argues, wrinkling his nose in a way that makes my expression soften.
“Oh, I am. I always have been.” His eyes beg for more, so I answer the unasked question. “Every day I was alone in that camp, I believed it was my punishment for not fighting. That it was my penance—my burden to bear. Because maybe, just maybe, if I hadn’t been so scared, if I hadn’t been paralyzed… it could’ve made the difference.”
“Paralyzed?” he asks, sounding out the word.
“It means… frozen. Unable to move because you’re too afraid that something horrible will happen if you take a single step, so you just stand in place.”
A deep sense of understanding crosses his face as we look at each other, and the moment stretches but never becomes uncomfortable. “Paralyzed,” he whispers, and I nod as another of those urges to touch him makes my fingers squeeze against my clothes.
“Yes,” I answer on a breath, and he takes an inhale, steadier than before. Like my admission gave him the boost he needed.
Like we’re not that different.
“I am paralyzed,” he says, and my heart breaks further at the surety in his tone.
“Yeah,” I respond, my voice thick. “Me too.”
“But…” He trails off in that thoughtful way he does when he’s finding his words. “I want to share with you,” he says again, more decisively this time. “And… if you want… you could share with me, too.”
A strangled, breathy laugh chokes from my throat as I realize he’s offering me comfort. Nyx, a lifelong prisoner who carries a history none of us could ever understand… he comforts me.
I surrender, then.
Any fight left in my body, any resistance that warned me not to fall for him, is shattered in that moment. It’s ripped apart, obliterated into a million tiny pieces, and I’m left with no defenses.
“I would like that,” I manage to say through my closed throat. This time, his smile spreads further, like his mouth finally remembers what it’s supposed to do. It’s sunshine and radiance, and for the fleeting moment it’s there, every pound of pain vanishes from his face and leaves him bright and beautiful. It erases the history that turned him hard, and offers me a glimpse of who he was meant to be, before this world stole it.
“Me too,” he says, and that momentary smile fades, but its memory remains.
“Why don’t we eat alone together tonight… a little closer to the others?” I ask, and even though my question makes no sense to an outsider, he nods.
“I think… this is a good idea.”
“We’re both filthy,” I say, gesturing at our dirty clothes and skin as I compose myself. “Get cleaned up, and I’ll meet you here. We’ll go together and find somewhere to sit. Close enough for us to listen, but far enough away that we don’t have to talk if we don’t want to.”
He agrees with a subtle nod of his head, and as we part to wash for dinner, my feet move like they aren’t stuck in the mud for the first time in years.
Maybe I don’t have to be paralyzed, either.
Nyx
My fist clenches at my side as I stand before Reyes’s door. He has always come to me, and I have always waited. I’ve watched him pass my window while hoping he’ll stop, only to be disappointed those times when he doesn’t. I could go to him— want to go to him—but I haven’t had enough courage to take those steps. Today, though, I have something to share.
It’s quiet inside, but I sense he’s home. For the fourth time, I lift my hand, then let it drop at my side. I tell myself I can be brave. As scary as it is, he said he wanted to know me.
He said I am enough.
The thought makes me steel my spine, and I force myself to knock before I can turn and flee. It’s just a single tap of my knuckles, but Reyes answers in a rush. With my heart hammering in my chest, I draw a steadying breath as the door creaks open.
“Hi,” I whisper, then bite my lip and study the dirt on the ground. Everyone else always seems to know what words to use. Not me. Words are hard for me even at the best of times, and right now, I can’t think of anything interesting to say.
I sneak a glance up at Reyes to find he’s smiling, and it looks genuine. “Hey, you. This is a surprise. I’m really glad you came over.”
“You are?” I ask, and his smile spreads further.
“Of course I am, although I need to tell you right now that I have nothing here to eat. Don’t get your hopes up for a snack.”
I shake my head, releasing the hem of my shirt to gesture towards the forest. “There is something… in the trees. I found.”
His expression morphs into curiosity as he glances in the direction I pointed. “Something good or something bad?”
“Good. I think.” He laughs, and the sound brings with it those flutters in my stomach. “I can show you?”
“That sounds great. Give me just a second, okay?” He leaves his door open, and I peek inside at the living room. I’ve not been in his home, but from what I see from here, it’s the opposite of mine. Where my cottage is barren of anything except the barest necessities, his is full of color. Boxes with blankets on top of them and baskets filled with items I don’t recognize. He reappears at the door with his shoes on, and he notices when my gaze snags on them. “We’re going into the woods, and I’m not as good as you at avoiding the pointy things on the ground.” I glance at my own feet, but I don’t have time to be self-conscious. Reyes steps outside and closes the door, then gives me another easy smile as he waits for me to lead.
We head towards the trees, and I track his movement from the corner of my eye. There’s a knot of anxiety in my stomach that he might change his mind—decide he doesn’t want to be here and leave—but he’s steady and calm as he strolls beside me. “All the secrecy is making me really curious. Whatever you found was exciting enough for you to come get me, so it must be cool.”
I glance up at the bright afternoon as I try to make sense of his words. “Cool? It is hot.”
He laughs and grins at my confusion. “Cool means… neat. Something interesting.”
“Cool is not cold?”
“It is… it can mean both. It just depends on how it’s used.”
“No sense,” I mutter, and he snickers quietly as he casts me a sideways glance.
“Was Ronan busy?”
My brows knit as I turn to look at him. “Ronan?”
His eyes snap forward again, and he gestures absentmindedly with his hands. “I just figured… I thought you’d go to him if you had something important.” I shake my head, and he finally meets my eyes again. “You came to me first?” There’s an undertone of surprise in his words, but I nod, and he stands a little taller. When he throws his shoulders back, more of that lightness fills my chest and I find myself wanting to smile again. “That… that really means a lot to me, Nyx,” he says, quieter this time but still with that happiness. “Can you tell me what it is we’re going to see?”
