Yu struggled not to pass out from the last void breath. The cold pressed in on every side. The orb light at the corner of his vision was fraying black. His gut twisted in quiet, tightening circles as one thought refused to leave him:
Why did he still want to trust Imbiad so badly?
Even now, when everything, every crack in the story, every gap in his answers, screamed that nothing about this wizard should feel safe. Imbiad had not given him one solid reason to trust him. He was here to support Fallem, and Yu hated Fallem.
So how could these wizards feel so different?
Yu wiped his eyes. He rubbed hard at his earholes.
There. There it was, hidden inside the asking. Like a sound so high-pitched that you needed to know it was there to hear it. But the moment you did, it hurt sharp as a thorn.
Imbiad and Fallem were different. They must come from different places, not just geographically but also figuratively. Yu remembered just how often they had argued; the small, needling disagreements over their use of magic. It had always been subtle and civilised, which was why it had seemed so harmless at the time. And that were just the conversations Yu had noticed. Considering how many more private disputes he must have missed, it showed just how unfamiliar the two wizards were with each other.
There was the thorn question;
Just how long, and how well, did these people actually know each other?
When they had travelled together, Yu had assumed, stupidly, that they were all … well, friends. That shared laughter meant shared history. That inside jokes meant a lifetime of personal stories. But when he reached back in his mind, trying to reassemble those moments, there were holes everywhere. He was not so sure if he had ever really paid attention to how they behaved toward one another. Who had walked or sat or slept beside whom? Who had slowed when someone fell behind, and who had made it a point not to let it happen in the first place? Who had actually listened when another spoke, and who had only waited for their own turn? Yes, Fallem and Imbiad had argued about magic, that much he remembered. But other than that …
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