The Bridge, One Last Time

The exile procession was small.

No fanfare or a crowd. Just a single cart at the north gate and a boy in traveling clothes who sat inside it with his hands bound. The official story was already circulating, carefully shaped, deliberately vague: a tragic accident in the lower quarter. A minor noble's daughter was injured, the perpetrator spared execution by the crown's mercy but banished from Lumina for life. No names or details. A careful story that would hold because no one important enough to question it knew enough to try.

Maya had argued against coming. The physicians told her to rest and recover. Velena ignored all of them with the stubbornness of a girl who had already lost her sight and was not about to lose her last chance to say goodbye on top of it.

She stood at the edge of the bridge with a borrowed cloak. Hood pulled low to hide the bandages. Maya's hand steady on her elbow.

"Tell me where he is," she said quietly. "I can't...I need to be facing the right direction."

"Two o'clock. About fifteen paces. The boy is inside the cart."

"Okay." She took a breath. Her heart shuddered in her chest. "Got it."

And then, louder:

"Orev!"

She heard him stop moving and the small, sharp intake of breath that meant he'd turned toward her voice. His own voice cracked wide open when he answered.

"Velena?" It came out strangled. Disbelief, relief, and horror all tangled together in a single word. "You're- you're alive. You're... they wouldn't tell me anything…They wouldn't tell me if you were alive or dead or- I asked the guards every hour and they just looked at me and said nothing and I thought- I thought you might be- I thought I'd killed you. T-they weren't telling me anything because they were going to execute me and it would be what I deserved-"

"I'm alive." Her voice was steadier than she felt. She gripped the stone railing harder. "I'm blind, but I'm alive."

The silence that followed was the worst thing she'd ever heard.

Worse than the detonation or waking up in the dark. It was the silence of a boy who had just had his worst fear confirmed and the silence of a girl who couldn't see his face when it happened.

"...blind," Orev repeated. The word came out hollow. "You're blind…blind ‘cause of- ‘cause my stupid Key Tone just had to be so loud, it's always been so loud! Da always said it would get someone hurt and he was right- he was right and I didn't listen-"

"Orev-"

"It was my fault." His voice cracked on the word. "It was my fault, Velena. The cane. My Key Tone. I did this to you. I took the light from your eyes and I can't give it back and I don't- I don't know how to fix any of this. I don't know how to make it right…"

"You didn't mean to."

"That doesn't matter!" The words tore out of him, sharp and ragged, the voice of a child who'd been holding everything inside a cell with no one to talk to. "That doesn't matter. You're blind! You're blind and I'm standing here with my hands tied and they're sending me away and I'll never- I'll never get to-"

He stopped. She heard him choke on the next word. Heard his breathing go ragged and uneven, the way someone breathes when they're trying desperately not to cry.

"You'll…you’ll never get to what?" she said. Her own voice was starting to wobble. She couldn't stop it.

"I'll never get to make it up to you." He was crying now. She could hear it. The tears in his voice and the way the words came out broken. "I'll never get to show you I'm not just the boy who ruined your life. I wanted- we were supposed to get more pastries. That was the quest. Pastries were paramount. That's what you said. You're blind now, and I'm being exiled…we never even got the pastries…or finished the quest."

Something in her chest beat uncontrollably at that statement.

"We'll finish it," she said. "One day. We'll finish the quest."

"How? How are we going to finish anything? I'm being sent away forever. I don't even know where…I don't even know if there are bakeries there."

"Then you'll find one. You'll find the best bakery wherever they send you, you'll eat a burnt sugar twist, and you'll think of me. That's an order."

"You can't give me orders. You're not- you're not a general."

"I'm something better. I'm your friend."

The word landed between them as a stone dropped into the river below.

"Your friend…huh…" Orev repeated. "I blinded you, and you're still calling me your friend…"

"You're an idiot, and you blinded me, and you're still my friend! Those things can all be true at the same time. I've decided."

"That's not how friendship works!"

"I'm rewriting the rules. I'm allowed. That’s because I'm a-"

She stopped herself. The word princess right there on her tongue, crowding against her teeth, desperate to get out. She swallowed it. Swallowed the whole confession. The truth of who she was. The promise that she would fix this somehow, to use every ounce of royal power she had to bring him back.

Maya's warning echoed in her head.

“If you reveal yourself, you sign his death warrant.”

"I'm a person who knows what happened," she said instead. "Someone who knows the truth. That it was an accident, you're not a criminal. You're just a boy with a loud Key Tone and terrible timing and a good nose for pastries. It matters that someone knows. Even if that someone is just me."

"Velena..."

"Shut up and listen to me." The words came out fierce. Fiercer than she meant. She was gripping the stone railing so hard her knuckles ached. "Survive this. You're going to go to wherever they send you, and you're going to figure out how to control that ridiculous bell-tone of yours. You're going to make something of yourself. Become someone important, someone who matters! Not because of what happened here, but because of who you are. Do you understand me?!"

A long pause. She heard him trying to get his breathing under control. She heard the wet, shaky sound of someone wiping their face on their shoulder because their hands were bound.

"...How do you know I can do that?" His voice was very small now. "How do you know I'm not just going to... disappear? Become nothing? That's what everyone thinks. The guards. The council. They looked at me like I was already a ghost."

"Because I heard you." She turned her head toward the sound of his voice even though she couldn't see him, even though she'd never see him again. "On the bridge…before any of this happened. You sounded like a bell that doesn't stop ringing once you've struck it. As I said, most people aren't that loud even after years of training. That's not nothing, Orev. You've got something in you that most people spend their whole lives trying to find. Don't let anyone take that away. Promise me."

"I..."

"Promise me!"

"I promise." The words came out cracked but steady. A vow. The first real vow he'd ever made. "I promise I'll try. I don't know if I can do any of it, but I'll try…For you…'cause you're the only person who's ever looked at me like I could be more than just the forge boy who breaks things."

"You're not the boy who breaks things! You're the boy who invited himself on my quest. That takes nerve! Doing that takes something most people don't have. Keep that and hold onto it."

A sound. Almost a laugh. Broken and barely there. "You're the strangest person I've ever met..."

"I'm aware. It's one of my best qualities. Ask Maya."

"Maya says it's your only quality."

"Maya is standing right here and can hear you."

"Good." His voice cracked again, but differently this time. His voice sounded warmer. "She should know I'm right."

Maya nodded. “You definitely are.”

A pause. Then, quieter:

"Will I...will I ever see you again?"

The word landed like a second blow. He didn't mean it that way. She knew he didn't mean it that way. But it hit anyway, heavy and sharp, a reminder of everything she'd lost and everything she was losing.

"I don't know," she said. "But I'll be listening. Wherever you are… or whatever you become. I'll be listening for you. So don't do anything stupid."

"No promises."

"Haha…fair enough."

Her hand gripped the stone of the bridge railing even harder than before. The same stone she'd touched yesterday, when the world was still full of light and pastries and a quest that hadn't gone wrong yet. She rapped her knuckles against it.

Three quick taps. A pause. Two slow ones.

The silence stretched.

Then, from the direction of the cart, the sound came back. Three quick. Two slow. The rhythm slightly off, his hands still bound, but unmistakably the same.

"That's us," he said. "Nobody else does it like that."

"Nobody else ever will."

The cart creaked into motion. Hooves on stone. The sound of wheels turning. She heard him shift inside the cart, to turn his back toward her and to call out one last thing, his voice breaking, full of something she couldn't name.

"I'll find you! One day! I don't know how, but I'll find you! I'll pay you back for everything, and we'll finish the quest! I swear!"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her throat had closed up completely.

The cart rumbled northbound, toward the border and whatever lay beyond Lumina for a boy with nowhere to go, with no one to blame but himself. The sound of hooves grew thinner and thinner until there was no sound left but the river running beneath the bridge.

Velena stood there until the silence was absolute.

"Maya…" she said. Her voice came out in pieces. "I want to go home now."

She cried the whole way back to the palace anyway.