Ruby Ruins

She wouldn’t betray me like Foonauri, he thought.
You never imagined Foonauri could betray you, a dark voice said. His eyes drifted to his black gloves.
“She can do better than me,” Ōbhin said finally.
“Does she want to do better? Think about it. I would love to see your roses blossom. They would be beautiful.”
“And if the soil they grow in isn’t fertile? If it’s black and rocky?”
“Then it will be all the more beautiful for succeeding in such adverse conditions.” Deffona studied the lake. Scarlet dragonflies hovered for moments before darting right or left over the reeds. “It’s peaceful here.”
“Yeah,” he said, memories of Avena rippling through his mind. The way she smiled. Laughed. How she’d throw herself into a fight. How she’d convulsed in his arms. He’d gotten her hurt trying to figure out answers to questions that didn’t matter.
Carstin was dead. His soul passed on. Did it matter what Dje’awsa did to his body? Was it worth getting Avena killed?
“Don’t let your darkness keep you from finding something beautiful,” Deffona said. She turned to him, her face round and bright. “No soul is too tarnished that it can’t be polished bright.”
“Avena likes to say that.”
“Because it’s true. That’s Elohm’s promise to us. That we can always be a better person than we think we can. But only if we try.”
He gave an absent nod.
“Now, I am disappointed you haven’t asked me what sort of plant Avena and I are.” Deffona shook her head, her veil rustling about her shoulders. “A lack of curiosity is a terrible trait in a man.”
“What type of plant are you?”
“Why, a blackberry bush, of course!”
“Avena’s the thorns protecting your blossoms.”
“Plus I’m sweet like their fruit.”
Laughter bubbled out of Ōbhin’s throat. He felt mirth for the first time since Avena’s injury. The dark weight on his soul relaxed during that moment of shared joy with Deffona. A heron let out an angry caw and winged to the air away from the two chortling humans.
When they returned to the house, Charlis looked pleased. The tray of food was gone and the refractor was ready to leave. Deffona demanded promises from Ōbhin to be alerted as soon as Avena was out of danger.
Ōbhin agreed to deliver them.
He decided against searching for Creg after that. The man was either alive or dead, but he wasn’t important. Ōbhin sank down into the chair outside the lab and realized what he’d been doing. Running away. A coward scared of facing more pain.
He could fight a mob of angry rioters, stand against a horde of shambling dead, and face against a magic-created monster like Ust, but what really mattered terrified him. Avena dying. What he felt for her. It was easier not to face it. To throw himself into something else.
He stared down at his black gloves and thought long and hard about what he felt. Avena didn’t spark that instant blaze of heat that Foonauri had. He was a decade older now, twenty-two instead of a boy of ten. He’d loved and lost and suffered. His soul was streaked in grime and guarded against loss. The possibility of another woman betraying him terrified him.
Could Avena even do that? Could a woman that stubborn, that loving, that fierce, and that open be as duplicitous as Foonauri?
Was he worthy of finding out? What would happen to Avena the next time he took her into danger?
After that, when he wasn’t training guards or doing his share of duty at the gate, he sat before Dualayn’s lab and waited to find out her fate. He didn’t know what would happen when those doors opened and she emerged—if she emerged—but he wouldn’t run from his feelings. He would confront them.
Ōbhin vowed to stop being a coward.

Chapter Seven
Fiftieth Day of Forgiveness, 755 EU
She felt remote. Separated. A fleshless existence forced into a body. The weight of it surrounded her awareness. The sense of limbs. Of breathing. She experienced warmth. A weight on her eyelids. She struggled to open them. To move.
Fingers twitched. Toes curled.
The body felt more and more real. Less distant. She sank into it, merging with it. A heart beat. Blood pumped through veins. She smelled something familiar; the antiseptic sting of wood alcohol.
Her eyes opened as the alien sensation vanished. She wasn’t separated from her body. She was awake, staring up at a stone ceiling. She caught a glimpse of locked cabinets. The creak of a heavy metal door opening and closing.
Dualayn stepped out of his jewelchine vault and into her sight. She shuddered, wanting to sit up, but her body felt so weak. Drained. She blinked. She felt no injuries. No throb of a bruise on her head.
“Father?” she croaked. “What . . . happened?”
“Avena,” he said in relief as he hurried over to her and leaned over to study her. She realized she lay on the hard surface of his exam table. “Elohm’s Colours, I think it worked. It is you.”
“Who else would it be?” she asked. A fuzziness rolled across her body, prickling her senses. Her fingers spasmed. “What happened? I feel so weak.”
“You’ve been unconscious, child. Poor Ōbhin has worn through the soles of his boots in worry. The whole household has.”
“Ōbhin . . . We were . . . looking for someone.” Memories rushed back into Avena. Those felt sharper than her body. “For Creg, that sniveling runt who worked for Ust. We found him in a house and . . . and . . .” She struggled to remember what happened after they entered the house. She caught flashes. Boys with green faces. Bursts of purple energy. Ōbhin’s booted foot crashing through the ceiling. “I think there was a fight.”
“What month is it?” asked Dualayn.
“Forgiveness,” she answered. “The Forty-Third Day of Forgiveness, right?”
“It’s