Three days passed.
Eve sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the wall.
Not at anything on it. Not at the window or the volcanic glow outside or the Salamanders book on the shelf or the Sentinel beside it. Just the wall. The dark stone had nothing useful to say about where Lilith was or when she was coming back.
She ate when food was brought and she answered questions when Ha'ken or Tu'Shan asked them and she attended the sessions because Ha'ken had asked her to. She did what she decided was useful.
But between those things she sat on the edge of her bed and waited.
Lysander tried.
On the first day he brought the Salamanders book and put it open on the bed beside her, turned to the page with the best illustration. "It's a good page to look at when things feel bad," he said. Eve looked at the illustration and then back at the wall. Lysander looked at the illustration too for a moment and then quietly closed the book and sat beside her and didn't say anything else.
On the second day he produced, from somewhere that would have prompted questions from Lilith, a small figure carved from dark stone. Rough and lopsided and palm-sized, shaped by hands still learning to carve. He put it on Eve's knee without explanation.
Eve picked it up and examined it.
"I made it," Lysander said. "In the serf workshop. Dekkan showed me." A pause. "It's supposed to be Lilith."
The figure was lopsided and one arm was slightly longer than the other.
"It looks like her," Eve said.
Lysander studied it. "It doesn't really," he said honestly. "But I tried."
Eve closed her hand around it and held it and turned back to the wall.
On the third day Lysander brought a piece of Nocturne rock with a vein of orange mineral that caught the light. He put it beside the stone figure on her shelf without a word.
None of it fixed anything and he knew that and he kept trying anyway.
After his session on the third day Lysander didn't go back to the quarters.
He sat on a low stone ledge in a corridor off the courtyard and stared at his palms. They were scraped and calloused now in a way they hadn't been on Armageddon. He'd gotten faster and he'd gotten better at the obstacle course and Dekkan had told him this morning that he was keeping pace with the older children.
He'd felt good about that for ten minutes before the good feeling ran into the thing at the back of his thoughts and dissolved.
He'd promised to protect Lilith.
He was sitting in a corridor while Lilith was somewhere no one could find and Eve stared at a wall back in the quarters and there was nothing he could do about any of it.
I'm not strong like Eve, he thought. And I'm not smart like Lilith. So what can I do?
The question sat there with no answer and the corridor was quiet.
"You're thinking about her."
He turned.
Ha'ken stood behind him in the corridor, arms at his sides, eyes on Lysander.
Lysander turned back to his palms. "Yes," he said.
Ha'ken came and stood near the ledge. "So am I," he said.
Lysander nodded.
Silence settled between them.
"I'm sorry, Lysander," Ha'ken said. Quiet and direct. "She was in my care and what happened to her shouldn't have happened."
Lysander glanced up at him. "It's not your fault," he said. And then, honestly: "But it's also not okay."
"No," Ha'ken said. "It isn't."
The silence came back and Lysander let it sit for a moment before the question pushed its way out.
"What can I do?" he said. "To be strong like you. Like Eve." He stared at his palms. "I can't do anything. I'm small and I don't have powers and I can't fight properly yet and when something happens to the people I care about I just—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "I can't do anything."
Ha'ken was quiet.
Then: "Do you want to become one of us?"
Normally those words would have lit something in Lysander immediately. He'd wanted this since before he could put words to wanting it. But the bright immediate response didn't come.
He sat with the question and turned it over and it took longer than it should have because underneath it was a bigger one he'd been carrying since he came back from wherever he'd been, and that question was whether any of it would be enough.
Ha'ken sat down beside him.
Not stood. Sat. He lowered himself onto the ledge and adjusted for the difference in their sizes and faced the corridor ahead.
"We are helpless sometimes too," he said.
Lysander looked at him.
"Space Marines," Ha'ken said. "We are helpless sometimes. Things happen that we can't prevent and people we're responsible for are taken and there's nothing we can do." He held Lysander's gaze. "But we do whatever we can regardless. Even if it costs everything. Even if we don't know if it's enough." A pause. "What matters is that we tried. That we gave everything we had and didn't stop. That's all anyone can do."
Lysander looked back at his palms.
He thought about coming back. About the beach and the gold cup and the deal he'd made and the certainty behind his yes. He thought about Lilith's arms around him on the library floor. He thought about his parents.
"I'll go that far," he said. His voice came out smaller than he intended and he let it stay small because it was honest. "I don't want anyone I love to die again." He shook his head once, quick and deliberate, pushing the image of Lilith's face in the library away before it could settle. "Lilith is okay," he said firmly. "She's the smartest person I know and she'll figure it out." He looked up at Ha'ken and dropped his chin toward his chest, hands pressed together on his knees. "Please help me get stronger. So that next time I can actually do something."
Ha'ken held his gaze for a long moment.
"Yes," he said.
Lysander lifted his head.
He took a breath and the weight in his chest settled and he nodded once and got off the ledge and straightened up.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
He turned and walked back toward the quarters and his steps picked up as he went.
By the time he reached the door he was moving fast and his face carried something new in it.
Eve was on the edge of her bed.
Still facing the wall. The stone figure on the shelf beside the orange-veined rock. The locket around her neck. Hands folded in her lap.
"Eve," Lysander said.
She turned and faced him.
He crossed the room and stopped in front of her and met her red-rimmed eyes directly.
"We need to get stronger," he said. "Both of us. So that when Lilith comes back we can actually protect her properly." He held her gaze. "And she's coming back. She's the smartest person we know and she'll figure out wherever she is and she'll come back and when she does we need to be ready."
Eve looked at him.
Her eyes were still red and her face was still tired and she hadn't slept properly in three days and all of that sat plainly on her face.
She opened her arms.
Lysander stepped in without hesitation, his arms going around her and squeezing hard, and Eve's arms came around him and she held on and pressed her face against the top of his head and closed her eyes.
They stayed like that.
Outside, Nocturne breathed its volcanic breath and the fortress went on around them, and the connection between Eve and Lilith held thin and warm.
Then Eve felt it.
A pulse. Faint and brief, traveling down the thread between her and Lilith from the other end.
Her eyes opened.