“Don’t say it.” Luka glared up at Grem, catching his eye just before flopping unceremoniously onto the narrow bed. “Don’t even think it.” Grem was hanging upside down, clawed toes wrapped around one of the exposed rafters that ran the length of the ceiling while he watched her with a frown. “I can hear you thinking it,” she grumbled, bringing one knee up to reach the laces on her boot.

“It’s been a season—“

“I know.” Luka tugged at the heel of her boot. It was mostly tied but she’d managed to loosen the laces enough that she might just—

“If Zevran and the others were coming back—“

The boot slipped from her foot just in time for Luka to hurl it up at the bat dangling overhead. “I said don’t!” Grem shifted, flapping his wings just in time to evade the boot flying tongue-over-sole across the room. It collided with the wall instead, knocking Luka’s broad brimmed hat from its hook and landing unceremoniously right-side up under her patchwork coat.

“Luk—”

“Just don’t.” Throwing her shoulder toward the wall with a huff, Luka buried her face in the pillow and did her best to pry the other boot from her foot with her toes. She didn’t want to hear it, not even from Grem. Her bruises had bruises and she was tired of training, tired of talking, tired of thinking and doubting and wondering and—

Her name filled the room, dancing under the door with a singsong lilt that made her teeth hurt and her toes itch. Luka buried her face deeper in the pillow and stifled a groan.

The door opened to a flutter of wings and Grem darting from the rafters to the corner of a narrow wardrobe. Luka could feel his panic, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Not because anything had happened, but because nothing had happened.

Nothing. At. All.

There was no sign of Zevran or Kezia. No apparent weaknesses in the Eldouir defenses to report, no time to search for any weaknesses of the not-apparent variety, and no end to all this learning. Learning to fight, to read, to write, to be Eldouir. To not be her.

The chair beside her bed creaked, and Luka decided they’d all be better off if Grem lit her on fire and put her out of her misery now. He disagreed. She cursed him. He fidgeted on the wardrobe, and Luka finally rolled over just in time to hear Adeline offer her tea. She blinked.

“No…” Luka sat up, curls falling in a coppery mess around her shoulders. “No, I—I’m not sick.” She still didn’t know what to do with them—any of them. The ones that ignored her were the easiest. The ones that went out of their way to pick at her or insult her weren’t far behind. Adeline was…

Adeline.

And Luka still didn’t know what to make of that.

“Sorry.” She shifted again, bringing her feet around—one boot on, and one boot off—to sit upright. “I was arguing with Grem.” On the wardrobe, Grem bristled, but Luka ignored him, forcing herself to look from Adeline and the sheen of her bright red hair to the books in her lap.

Uncertain, grey-green eyes darted between Adeline’s under a scrunched-up brow. Her mouth opened and her hands twisted in her lap, and still she had no idea what to say. She didn’t need anyone’s help. Never had, never would. Grem, for once, agreed. Watching from his perch on the wardrobe, his wings fluttered irritably, trying and failing to fold into place.

Meanwhile, Luka wanted to be anywhere else. Doing anything else. Anything other than talking. Reading, writing, punching—any of it would’ve been better than this…this…

She didn’t know what this was.

Her mouth opened again, and this time a few words fell out, dropping awkwardly between them like lead from her tongue. “Nothing important.” Her gaze had shifted, darting to the wall and then to her hat on the floor and then back again. She miss her brim, the feel of its shadow on her face. The way it separated her from everything else. It wasn’t a lot, but it had always been enough. Now…

Luka shifted on the bed. “Grem is just…” She was angry. It hit her all at once. A sudden, fiery wave of indignation that made her nose wrinkle and her jaw clench. “It doesn’t matter,” she decided, closing the door on whatever it was with a decisive slam. “You’re not here to talk about Grem.” It felt good to say, to throw something back instead of constantly responding.

With a sucked in breath and a rock forward, Luka launched herself from the bed to charge across the room toward the boot that wasn’t still half-on her left foot. “You said we were supposed to be reading?” She half-hobbled, half-marched, talking over her shoulder and feeling better and better about not caring. Because she didn’t.

She didn’t care. No matter what Grem said.