Not ignorant, she told herself, and not weak.
She strode out, sailed straight by Mallick as he sat near the fire with his glass of wine. She didn’t slam the door on her way out for wood, but shut it with a solid snap.
As dusk fell, a soft gray sliding through the trees, the air carried a sharper chill. And the smell of the smoke, of the galloping fall.
The firewood would be welcome, she thought, but she wanted a walk first, wanted to stretch muscles tight after the hours in the saddle.
She checked on the horses first, found them already dozing. Still, she rested her cheek against Grace’s for the comfort of home. And when Mallick’s horse looked at her with kind, wise eyes, Fallon stroked him—and thought he deserved a nicer rider.
She let them go back to dozing and walked along the edge of the winding creek.
Glancing up, she saw the deer stand built on the thick oak, and found it amusing to watch five deer graze their way down the sloping land through the trees.
What would it be like, she wondered, to just keep walking? Like the deer. Just walk and live in the woods. To wander as long and far as she liked, with no thought but to her own needs.
No one to tell her what to do, she imagined, or when and how to do it. No one to expect so much of her when she just wanted to be.
She leaned on the tree, pressed her cheek to its rough bark. Felt its heartbeat. Closing her eyes, she felt the heartbeat of the deer across the little creek and the pulse of the water, the earth.
All the things that lived and thrived around her, and were not man, she felt their life inside her. In her mind’s eye she saw the bird winging overhead, its heartbeat small and quick, small and quick. And the owl deeper in the woods, slumbering until night fell and hunting began.
She squeezed her eyes tighter because she understood she didn’t just want to walk away, to live forever in the woods. She wanted to feel her mother’s heartbeat, her father’s, her brothers’. And they were too far away.
“It’s just the first day,” she admonished herself. “I can get through one day. I can change my mind, anytime I want. I can go home tomorrow if I want.”
Comforted by that, she opened her eyes again, and turned to walk back to the cabin.
The sun burned through the trees to the west, flamed over the hills with a light that she felt, like the heartbeats, inside her.
Watching that fire of the day’s end, she walked back, and brought in a load of firewood.
A teenager, even one descended from gods, knew how to sulk. Fallon ate the food Mallick set out, but she ate in silence. She took a small slice of her birthday cake because she wanted to feel her family close. But it only made her sad, only made her accept that they weren’t close, and wouldn’t be for two long years.
If Mallick had made any attempt to cheer her, that sadness would have lashed out as bright fury. Maybe he knew, as he offered no conversation or small talk through the simple meal.
When he told her to see to the dishes, she didn’t argue. She repacked the food, washed the plates, ordered the kitchen, while he sat by the fire reading.
Despite her innate curiosity, she didn’t ask about the book, but actually locked herself in the bedroom and added a charm to the lock, simply out of pique.
Though it invariably brought her comfort, she refused to take the candle out of her pack and light it simply because it had come from him. In her mind, in that moment, Mallick and Mallick alone held responsibility for her misery.
Instead, she huddled under the blankets with The Wizard King, illuminating pages as she read. But the familiar words only added more sadness.
She set the book aside, lay in the dark wishing she’d taken the time to hunt through the cabin for something else to read. Old magazines and newspapers never failed to fascinate her. She didn’t expect to sleep, fully anticipated brooding through the night. Even looked forward to it.
And dropped off before she felt sleep sliding over her, not waking even when the moonlight shifted through the windows or the faeries came to dance outside the glass.
She woke at the trembling edge of dawn. Her first reaction was embarrassment that she’d slept so long and so well. Then she remembered what her mother called heart-sleep. That sleep a wounded heart needed to help it heal.
She rubbed the ring and medal between her fingers. As she lay quiet, just a few more minutes, she imagined her dad getting up for the day, going down to make the coffee from the beans harvested from the tropics. And her mom coming down to start breakfast.
Everybody up, stock to feed, eggs to gather.
Chores to do, lessons to take, the smell of fresh bread baking. Maybe a trip to the village or the neighboring farms to barter. Free time to read or ride or play.
Where would she be as her family went through the day?
But she, a child of the farm, rose, put on her boots. She added wood to the fire gone to embers and went out to tend to the horses.
She watched the sun rise, as she’d watched it fall.
When she went back in, Mallick had two mugs of strong tea on the counter and fried eggs with bacon in a skillet over the fire, camp-style.
“Good morning,” he said. “We’ll leave after our breakfast.”
“All right.” She took the tea—stronger than she liked and more than a little bitter without the honey she preferred.
She wished she’d thought to bring some honey. But she sat with it, and when Mallick put a plate in front of her and sat with her, she ate.
Some of her resentment for him had faded with sleep, but over and above that, she’d grown bored with silence.
“You have no woman or children.”
“I don’t.”
“Is it because you prefer men?”
“No.” He continued to eat as he spoke. “My duty, my purpose has been my mate.”
“Why would I care, or the gods care, or whatever care if you had a woman, or a man, by your side or in your bed?”
His gaze shifted to hers, held. “What was asked of me, what I vowed, was unswerving loyalty to The One. A mate, a lover, should also have loyalty. And those loyalties might come to odds.”
She dismissed that reasoning. “My parents are loyal to each other, and still are loyal to their children. All of us.”
“That is love, even more than duty or a vow taken. And love is more powerful.”
“You’ve never loved anybody?”
“There was a girl once, with lively eyes and hair like fire. I can’t say if I felt love, but I felt longing. My heart would pound if I caught sight of her, and if she should smile at me? I was the wealthiest boy in the land. I knew if I ever felt the touch of her hand on my cheek, even just that, I would die happy and fulfilled.”
Fallon snorted out a laugh. “Nobody dies from love.”
“Oh, but they do, from where love may lead them or what it may ask of them. And so I never felt her hand on my cheek. I made my choice.”
“Maybe you did love her because you were a boy, and now you’re old, but you remember her.” She ate the last of her eggs. “How old are you?”
Mallick sat back, looked her directly in the eyes. “I was born on the third day of the third month in the year six hundred and seventy-one.”
“Come on.” Out of habit, she started to reach for his plate to clear it. “If you don’t want to tell me, just—”
He clamped a hand on her arm. “I was born to a witch, sired by a solider whose own mother had elfin blood. I have little memory of him, as he died in battle when I was barely weaned. I was her only son and, like your mother, she wept when I was called. I had ten years when I left her. And ten more while I trained and studied and traveled. Ten more to practice, to live in solitude.
“Then I slept as the years passed and the world changed, and magicks hid or died as those who held them were persecuted or reviled, or ignored. Until the night I awoke to the sound of a single drop of blood striking the first shield, of the shudder of it cracking beneath the sacrifice. And my time began again as yours would come.”