28. The Chambers of His Heart

By the time Rahn stopped in Voyager's Rest, both he and his horse were practically foaming at the mouth. He led her to a trough to rehydrate and then settled her into the roomiest stall available in the stables, with as much feed as he could fill the bin with. He brushed her down, enjoying the gentle mindlessness of the act while thinking of his next move.

He had options. Wulfsgate. The Reliquary. There was an entire kingdom waiting for him to explore. He could even return to Duncarrow, for he'd left on congenial terms with Queen Adamina. His potential landing points were limitless.

But there was only one her.

Rahn strolled through the sleepy village, counting the candles in the windows. When he ran out of those, he counted the shingles and eaves, and before he knew it, he was standing in front of the inn where he'd found Valerian.

There were only a handful of patrons inside. The pubkeep was busying himself drying glasses.

Rahn neatly stacked his coin on the bar. "Room three for a night, and a bowl of whatever you're serving, please."

The old man tossed his rag with a nod and moved to the uneven hooks on the wall. He reached for the key to room two.

"No. I want that room," Rahn stated, pointing at the paddle painted with the number three.

"Aye? Still need to clean tha' one, if Tessa ever shows herself this week. Newlyweds, so cannae guess what we'll find." The pubkeep's hand hovered between two and three, waiting.

"I prefer it as it is," Rahn said and added another coin to his stack.

The pubkeep slid the key across the bar with a skeptical tilt, but his eyes were on the gold. "Aye, I remember ye now. Cauldron's on the back hearth, still some stew. Serve yourself, much as ye like."

"Thank you," Rahn said, but as he imagined himself scooping the stew—eating the stew—he realized he wasn't hungry at all. He headed upstairs instead.

The room was just as he'd left it. Bed unmade... old dishes gathering crust and dust on the table. Someone had collected Aesylt's and Valerian's belongings, but in the rush, things had been left behind. Woolen socks peeked from under the bed, and there was a nightgown hanging from the side of the privy curtain. He traced his hands over the familiar, soft fabric, misery splitting his chest.

Sleet hammered the frozen panes. Ice had already been forming on the trees when he'd crossed the village line, and it was getting worse. He cracked the window and grabbed the nearest chair and a blanket from the bed and dragged them over to watch the world frost over.

First, he counted the branches. Then the stars. One, two, a dozen, five hundred. His fingers ticked through the exercise, leaving room for nothing unwanted to creep in.

Adrahn, aren't you tired of running?

"Five hundred and six. Five hundred and seven..."

You've been running since you were eight. You're nearly thirty.

"Five hundred twelve..."

You know who you are now. This truth is yours. There's no putting it back.

Rahn rolled his hands along the sides of his seat. His mother's gentle admonishments continued, unaffected by his counting. But it wasn't his mother, and he wasn't the type to pretend. A man of science either believed in it wholly or not at all.

"I know it's mine. I know there's no putting it back," he said. His breath curled in the icy air.

His mother went silent, but his inner monologue returned. Always running from, never to.

Rahn closed the window and left the chair behind. He paced to the table and back, the table and back. He watched Aesylt's nightgown slide to the floor and dove for it, feeling properly foolish the moment he had it in hand. It was just fabric. Just a gown.

And she was just a girl.

"And I loved her." Rahn wrapped his fists in the thin gown, bringing it to his face. "I loved her imperfectly, but I loved her utterly."

Pack only what matters to you, Adrahn, his father had said the morning before they were set to leave on the massive ships in Mellendha Harbor. He'd never seen their like before or since, and the whispers among the adults had suggested there was magic involved in their swift construction. They were built on the instruction of the four Meduwyn sorcerers who knew all and could do anything. There will be a great fire, they'd told Carrow, and only those on the ships will survive to tell of it. Here, you are merely a duke. But there, you can be a king.

The following morning, snuggled between his parents, Rahn had watched his entire world burn from the deck, his baby sister sobbing her fear and confusion against his vest. Three nights later, they were all property of the ocean, and he was a murderer.

A murderer twice over. Now thrice over.

He regretted not the acts but the necessity of them—how smoothly he'd cut all three of them down without reluctance or remorse. It wasn't natural. Men were supposed to revere life, not destroy it. Not one of his kills had been an act of self-defense. Not one had been necessary beyond his desire to see their lives end for what they'd done. But who was he to decide their fate?

And who were they to decide the fates of your mother, your father, your sister? Aesylt?

Aesylt understood him better than he understood himself. She'd blocked her own violence from her mind, not from remorse but from the same guilt Rahn had only just seen in himself. Survivor's guilt. He was no more or less worthy of life than the ones who had lost theirs.

It was the night he'd arrived at Fanghelm that was the most vivid. She'd been cuddling Aleksy by the hearth while Drazhan and Imryll were warming their bedchamber. She and Rahn had exchanged a few awkward jests about it, but in her eyes, he'd seen the whisper of her own lust for life—her desires, unrealized, still forming. She was a puzzle, and he, a missing, orphaned piece that had clicked soundly into place, but only shehad seen it then. She'd known it that very night and waited, unwearyingly, for him to catch up and find her. The closer she came, the deeper he stuck his nose in the books that had kept his heart safe and dormant for so many years.

But no quantity of books or stars or classes or curiosities came close to lighting the flame within him as the warmth of her face in his neck or her arm bent over his chest as she cupped his cheek... the sound of her soft but deep voice whispering, And another with me, barely getting out the last word before she was in his arms, where everything, for once, felt like hope.

When they were together, he'd known fearlessness. He'd known what it meant to be alive. There was pain too, in the inevitable end of all things, but anything beautiful enough to mourn was worth whatever agony followed.

Rahn reached to scratch his temple and realized he was crying.

You cannot possibly want to see me with another man.

Well, I've already done that, haven't I?

The first inch of the blade pierced his flesh.

That was cruel. And unfair.

Life is cruel and unfair, Aesylt. You know it better than most.

You'retrying to wound me, so it will be easier to walk away?—

Stop. This is pointless.

Another inch.

If you're going to lie to me, then look at me when you do it. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't love me.

You're the one forcing my hand here?—

Look at me, Adrahn, and tell me you feel nothing for me!

I do love you, Aesylt, but not like that. I'm deeply sorry if I inadvertently contributed to your belief otherwise.

Kill shot.

If you love her, Adrahn, then love her. Perhaps learn to love yourself in the doing.

"I left her because I love her," he thundered, shooting to his feet. The chair slammed to the floor. "Do you not understand? Do you not see? A selfish man would stay and ruin her. I cannot fathom a love deeper than the one that gave me the courage to leave so she can live."

You know what's even more courageous, my sweet boy? Staying. Fighting for what you want. Letting go.

Rahn screamed into the crook of his elbow.

He was losing it.

Talking to himself.

Answering himself.

Whatever last vestige of control he'd left Witchwood Cross with had disintegrated, and there was nothing left except to surrender to the dark call of insanity that had always been within earshot.

He plopped onto the bed, only to pop back up when something dug into his hip. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the squirrel. Squish.

With a shaky breath, Rahn set it on the bedside table.

He should throw it in the bin. It was a token of what was, not what should be.

A twisted symbol of the happiest time in his entire life.

Rahn lay his head on the pillow, his eyes fixed on the statue. It was then he realized he was still holding Aesylt's nightgown.

He rolled it under his chin. His eyes glazed, from tears... from the loss of focus, but instead of counting to clear the pain, he let it wash over him like an icy wave on a stormy night, and the thoughts he'd spent a lifetime damming flooded in.

Imryll hadn't felt sohelpless since her days in Duncarrow.

Sometimes she read to Aesylt from a book of poems Rahn had purchased somewhere in the Easterlands, on his way to the Cross. She couldn't remember where. It only seemed important now that she couldn't ask him. The vacancy he'd left behind wasn't only Aesylt's to bear.

Aesylt seemed to listen, whether Imryll was reading or rambling. Aesylt had spent the day huddled by the fire, staring intensely into the flames as though she might discern the great mysteries of the universe. Her pain was readable in the tension pinching her shoulders back, in the soft murmur she made every time she changed position, and in the rare times she actually looked at Imryll and all she'd lost pooled in the depths of her glossy eyes.

The hopelessness Imryll had felt when Drazhan had been exiled from Duncarrow was fresh again, sitting in the flicker of Aesylt's subdued grief. Her sister-in-law was strong. She'd pull through and be stronger yet. But there was a certain tragedy to collecting strength through despair that chipped away at the light, and Imryll was filled with a terrible sadness as she envisioned Aesylt growing dimmer with each passing year.

"Tasmin has sent word, Aes. She'll be home by springtide," Imryll ventured aloud.

"Ah."

"Niklaus is taking his trials soon to become a formal member of the kyschun. Did he tell you? Drazhan said we would throw him a fete before he goes under the mountain, but he was hoping to consult with you on some ideas."

"Mm."

"Did I tell you the vedhma's have conferred and believe my second child will be another boy? He'll be here just in time for Tas's return."

Aesylt drew her knees tighter against her chest. "I know what you're doing, Imryll. I appreciate it. But why not say what you really mean?"

Imryll sank into the chair across from Aesylt. "What do I really mean?"

"That I should be ashamed for what I did... how I feel. My inability to just... move on."

"Aesylt, I am the last person who would ever..." Imryll laughed. "I married the man who trained for ten years to, among other things, destroy me. And if you mean the age difference, well, your brother and I have nearly the same amount between us as you and Rahn. There are young women all over this kingdom promised to men twice, three times their age. Age was never the barrier between you two."

"His position of authority then."

"What authority could anyone ever have over Aesylt Wynter?"

Aesylt's mouth twitched. "He wrote me a letter. You're right that it wasn't age or authority. He's a broken man who has no desire to be reassembled, and I need... I deserve someone who loves themselves enough to confront their demons and conquer them."

Imryll leaned in and squeezed Aesylt's foot. "You said it perfectly, my love. You deserve that and more. Rahn is one of my dearest friends, and it brings me great sadness to see him deny himself a chance at happiness. But we are not put on this realm to fix others, Aesylt. Everyone can only be responsible for their own completeness. If we're lucky, we find the person who is uniquely able to take the journey with us. But unfortunately we often meet the right person at the wrong time."

Aesylt smashed her lips together and turned her teary eyes upward. "What painfully perfect wisdom. In another life, another time..."

"I know." Imryll sighed and released her. "And none of that is your fault. But in your short life, you have been loved by two great men. Imagine what the rest of your years hold."

"I just don't understand some of it, Imryll. Why did he kill Marek? Why ride with me in the wagon? Why... Why any of it? I can't make sense of his behavior, and I feel like I'm going mad trying." Aesylt wiped her eyes with aggravated swats. "And mad with all the cursed fucking tears. I suppose my body is playing catch-up from all the dry years."

Because he's a great fool who loves you but cannot say the same for himself. "I haven't been able to find the right words to say this to you, so forgive me if they come out wrong." Imryll folded her hands, praying what she said wouldn't push Aesylt further into her self-torment. "If you two had come to me with your plan for the curricula, you would have received a predictable answer. I knew from the moment the Reliquary intervened in our project that it would one day be torn from our hands, and every day it wasn't was a day stolen. I might have told you exactly that, had you come to me. Saved you a world of heartache."

Aesylt looked up, her expression darkening.

"But damn if I don't respect you for doing it anyway. For storming ahead fearlessly. For convincing the most unflappable man I know, save your brother, to put the science ahead of feelings he most certainly had long before the two of you were ever intimate." Imryll's heart swelled for the girl who had become dearer to her than any sister she might have had. "You are the most incredible woman I've ever known, Aesylt, and I need you to know that you didn't kill our project. You gave it life for a little longer, and you proved to those craven men in their freshly built towers that there's nothing we wouldn't do for our passions."

Aesylt traced her hand down her throat. "Thank you, Imryll."

"And I wouldn't blame you nor think less of you if that passion took you to Riverchapel, to the Reliquary."

Aesylt burst into laughter. "After what they did to us? After what Pieter?—"

"If I remove my emotion from it, Pieter wasn't the problem. Nor was he wrong to offer you and Rahn a position there. You both belong in that world, if you still want it."

"You think it's where Rahn went?"

Imryll shook her head.

"Why not?"

"For the same reason you'll never go. It would remind him too much of what he lost."

Aesylt nodded and returned her gaze to the fire. "What will you do now?"

Imryll was hoping she'd ask. "We still have our academy in the village. Books of All Things has had an explosion in interest since the civil war ended, and in speaking with Lord Dereham, he's offered to become one of our principal patrons. He's also going to encourage the families of Wulfsgate to send their children to us to board and teach, like the universities of Oldcastle, except only a day's ride from home instead of a fortnight. Drazhan is already working to find us a suitable location for the boarding, and we'll need to expand our staff, of course, if we're to become more than a day school."

"Imryll that's... That's incredible," Aesylt said, smiling for the first time. "It may not seem like it now, but you'll make more of a difference here locally than anything we were doing for the compendium. You'll change lives for the better. So many lives."

"We will, because I need your help. I can't do this alone."

"Drazhan will have no shortage of people for you lining up to be a part of this."

"And I will review everyone who applies," Imryll said slowly. "But I need someone with experience to partner with me."

Aesylt nodded to herself. She picked at the blanket covering her knees with a small sigh. "Can I think about it?"

"Of course you can. We have time. Gods know none of this can happen tomorrow."

Aesylt's lips curled. "You know you slip into Duncarrow sometimes. I've noticed it when you're excited about something."

"What?"

"‘Gods.'"

"Ah." Imryll laughed. She'd never understood the gods of Ilynglass the way those who'd lived there had, but she'd been raised on the idea of them. The Ancestors felt more real but were also unreachable for a foreigner, no matter how warmly the Vjestik had embraced her. "Do you think you might join us for supper?"

"Not tonight."

"Take your time." Imryll rose from the chair. "It's going to be icy tonight. They're already closing down the mountain roads. Shops are shuttered. Drazhan said they may even close the taverns, if you can believe it."

"Nien," Aesylt said lightly. "It's been... five, six years since things were bad enough to close the taverns. Not even the Ancestors dare come between a man and his vices."

"Well, I don't need to tell a northerner it's best to stay indoors this evening."

"Before I forget, will you ask Niklaus to come see me before his trials? I don't want to blink and suddenly he's gone."

Imryll smiled. "I'd be happy to. Any message for Valerian?"

"Not yet. I owe him an apology, but he deserves the best of me when I give it."

"He knew what you were offering."

"It was wrong of me to offer at all. It would have been like... like Rahn dangling marriage in front of me when his heart wasn't in it. I would have lapped at that like a starving dog... Doesn't matter. Intention doesn't soften hurt." Aesylt's smile this time was forced. "You can tell my brother I'm fine. I will be fine."

"You will," Imryll affirmed, feeling, for the first time in days, that the words had weight. "You are so loved, Aesylt. I know you know this is true, but it is my dearest hope you feel it is true, because I know how quietly hears a broken heart and how even softer listens a broken spirit."

Undiluted impulse putRahn back on the treacherous road to Witchwood Cross in the dead of night, amid a powerful ice storm, headed toward his dreams instead of away from them.

He was alone on the Compass Road, his only companion the shrill peppering of ice striking the earth, the blinding fog, and the occasional abandoned wagon in a ditch. His heart was a racing, fitful mess he could not keep time with. Every push he made for speed, his horse resisted, balking and thrashing her head in protest.

Twice he stopped to calm and feed her from the apple bag he'd purchased from the stablemaster—and to allow his logical mind a moment of prominence. The road had been slick when he'd left Voyager's Rest, but there were entire patches of ice forming and spreading, their edges beginning to touch. There was no rational reason not to turn around and wait until morning. It would be safer. Fanghelm would be awake and ready for him. There was no rush. No reasonable person would push on.

Rahn gave the horse a soft kiss on the nose, thanked her for all he was about to ask of her, and swung back onto the saddle before that rational side of him pulled him astray.

For all the chaos of his heart, his mind was at rest. There were no difficult memories to falter him nor the soothing but damning voices of those he'd lost. Aesylt was there—she was everywhere, always—but her ubiquitous presence no longer set his nerves on edge and his conscience spinning. She was an essential part of him, guiding him through the freezing tempest toward either his end or his beginning. She was the fire burning through his veins, scorching the inexorable loneliness of his past. The symphonic conductor of his fearless future.

Aesylt had no reason to forgive his weakness, and he, no argument in his defense that came close to redeeming how he'd hurt her. But where he'd failed her with reason, he would offer vulnerability. All those times she'd mused he was the first person to really see her, and he'd failed to see the mutuality—the mirror she held, not with shame but love. Respect.

I see in you what lives in me.

There were a thousand reasons not to keep riding in the dead of night for a village where he wasn't welcome, in the middle of the worst storm he'd ever seen.

Rahn adjusted his horse's hood, thanked her once more, and made his final push for Witchwood Cross.

Drazhan tappedthe letter against his knee, watching Imryll dry herself after her bath. The sight of her soft curves, her belly arcing in the early days of pregnancy, sent butterflies rippling across his chest and down his arms.

To worry her or not, that was the debate. Or might have been, if he didn't know the truth: Imryll worried more when he kept things to himself. It was her judgment he feared, though even that would come sparingly. The lack of it would be more shameful.

He was not a man afraid to be wrong, only the catastrophe of the wrongness. But the damn letter. He couldn't help but feel he'd missed something fundamental.

Imryll would know what to say and do. She always did.

"Are you going to tell me what's on your mind, or shall I fuck it out of you?" Her towel dropped to the stones as she turned toward him wearing a cheeky look he was tempted to fuck out of her.

Drazhan grunted and thrust the letter out and away from him.

She took it with a little hmph, sat on the chair across from him, entirely naked, and read. "‘When you asked if I loved you, I have never told such a lie as that one.'" Her startled glance over the top of the page was expected. "Rahn wrote this? To Aesylt?"

Drazhan breathed deep through his nose and nodded.

"Wow." Imryll crossed her legs and continued. "‘And had I not worked so hard to hide it, to fight it at every step, you'd have seen the lie as clearly as if I'd claimed not to require breathing for survival. You'd have known that only the mind can deny what the heart has decided. I know all this now?—'"

"That's enough." Drazhan thumbed the space between his brows. "Please."

"Where did you get this?" She finished reading and set it on the table between them. "This isn't the letter he left with Aesylt?"

"No. Found it. Half-burnt in his hearth."

"She hasn't seen this?"

He shook his head.

"And the dilemma raging in your head, love?"

"It would be easier to have this conversation if you were not so..."

"Distracting?"

He pursed his mouth, restraining a grin.

Imryll rose and made a show of snatching her robe from the hook. She threw it on, tightened the belt, and flopped back down. "Better?"

"Decidedly so."

"I think I can guess," Imryll said, "but you might feel better if you say it."

Drazhan pitched forward, lowering his fists between his spread legs. "Was I wrong, Imryll?"

He appreciated how she didn't answer right away, though she'd surely had an opinion ready. "Whether you were or not, he still left, didn't he?" She lifted in a sigh. "It wasn't her brother who broke her heart, Draz."

"You're being generous."

"A little." She fingered the burnt corner of the letter.

"I can be... intimidating. But you want to know what really got my temper flaring?"

"What doesn't?" She grinned. "Go on."

"Yeah, well..." He smirked, but it faded fast. "Aesylt is... special. I've turned down every proposal not because I'm... not only because I'm difficult, but because I would cut down any man who didn't see her full worth. Who took advantage of it. The last thing my mother said to Hraz and me was ‘Look after our cub. She's our resilient one, but strength can be mighty lonely.' I left the Cross as much for her as father and Hraz. I couldn't be the brother she deserved. What does it say about a man who would have Aesylt's heart in his hands, only to choose to crush it?"

"Rahn didn't leave because he was afraid of you. He left for her. In his own way, he left for the same reasons you did ten years ago."

"And is that what she wanted?" He thrust an arm at the wall. "Is that what she asked for?"

"No, but he believes he's protecting her. That she can do better. Deserves better. You know how dear Rahn is to me, so it hurts me to say this, but if that's what he believes, then he's probably right. We live the words we speak."

"He said none of that to me. Not a word."

Imryll glanced away with a thoughtful expression. "He didn't try to change your mind or convince you to let him stay because he'd already made up his own mind on what needed to happen. Aesylt knows this. She knows the man she fell in love with. She knows he alone is responsible for the way things ended."

"I left you once too." Drazhan hated the way the words sounded. That had been the second worst day of his life. But he bore all the blame for what happened to Imryll on the stones of the prince's bedchamber, and when she'd asked him to leave, it had been the least he could do. It had been all he could do.

"But you came back." She folded a hand atop his. "I love you, Drazhan. And I think rather than wondering if you could have made different choices, perhaps it's time to let go of making them for her. Don't place yourself at the center of her heartache. There's only room for one."

Drazhan brought her hand to his mouth for a gentle kiss. "Thank you."

Imryll looked confused. "For?"

He had to wait before answering. "Everything."

"Steward." One of Drazhan's personal guards opened the door. "Stewardess."

"Not now, Elden." Drazhan lifted a hand without looking.

"Apologies, but Baron Castel insisted you'd want to know." He took a step inside. "We've received two separate reports by way of the storm ravens that a man has ridden through the village gates just under an hour ago and is claiming intent to climb the hill to the keep." He cleared his throat. "On foot."

Drazhan spun in annoyance. "Why the fuck would anyone do that?"

"We're being told it may be the duke, sir."

"Adrahn?" Drazhan gaped at Imryll, who wore a matching look. "No. That's a mistake."

Elden shifted in discomfort. "And if it's not, what would you like us to do?"

"Drazhan, do not—" Imryll puckered her mouth with a look of self-restraint.

"Get him off the road and inside, of course," Drazhan muttered. "It's fucking freezing out there."

"Sir." The door closed.

Imryll shook her head and clucked her tongue. "Should I wake Aesylt then?"

"Not yet." Drazhan stood. "I'll go see what this is about."

"What are you thinking?"

Drazhan was still getting acquainted with speaking his thoughts aloud, and if not for his wife's regular, gentle prompting, he might never. "I won't be what stands in Aesylt's way of happiness. But if it is Adrahn on his way to the keep, I'm not letting him anywhere near her until he's convinced me that none of what you said still holds true."

Rahn had been stoppedthe moment he passed through the gates. Most roads through the village were closed, and only one inn remained open. He'd explained he wasn't going to the inn, and to where he was headed, prompting the men to exchange nervous glances before informing him the hill to the keep was too icy for any horse or cart to traverse.

"Then I'll go on foot," he said, dismounting and handing the reins to one of the men. "Will you see she's stabled properly?" He dug into his cloak for gold, but the guard waved a hand.

"This is unnecessary, Duke Tindahl." They huddled at the edge of the meager tent, set up to protect them from the elements.

"I'm paying for the inconvenience I've placed on your shoulders, so it is necessary." He squinted in the general direction of the keep, concealed by a thick cloud of fog. A half tick of the moon it would have taken him to make the climb in good weather, but he had at least an hour ahead of him, if it was even possible.

Impracticable. Not impossible.

"I'll be back for her when the weather clears."

"Sir, even on foot?—"

Rahn squeezed the guard's arm with what he hoped was a polite smile. "Any accidents are my own fault, and I'll tell the steward you tried to stop me. Death couldn't keep me from the gates of Fanghelm tonight. Dobranok."

Their fearful chorus of "dobranoks" faded into the night, into the past. Shivering, Rahn tightened the stays on his hood, lowered his face to protect it from the punishing ice, and pushed on through the abandoned village. Storm shutters had been drawn on most of the shops, darkness swallowing the main road like an eclipse. He'd picked the worst night of the year to make his stand, but Aesylt had used challenging situations to test herself, to prove she was capable, and it gave him the burst of energy he needed to make it to the base of the winding mountain road that led to the great keep of Fanghelm.

Rahn peered upward once more, but the keep was still wrapped in fog.

The hill was deceptively steep. He'd walked it before, returning from the village when the weather had been fair enough, but he hadn't been contending with trails of black ice threading through the road. Every step was a gamble, every breath a burden on his lungs. Sometime along the ride, he'd lost feeling in two of his toes. He wondered if he'd miss them.

He conquered the first switchback, but on the climb to the next, his boots failed to gain traction, and he went sliding toward the perilous ravine, so deep he couldn't see the bottom. He grabbed hold of a dense bush, but the snap in his arm was the price he paid for avoiding a bigger crisis. Pain shot to his head like a bolt of lightning. His ankle screamed from the twist he'd put in it trying to right himself.

Rahn used his good arm and foot to slide himself back up onto the road. He stumbled forward, catching another bush, but after a wobble, he was back on his feet.

He'd given no consideration to what he would say if—when—he made it to the keep. Overthinking was the connective thread between his greatest failures. Nothing could drive him away except her.

The exhaustion he'd held off for hours crept through his bones and veins with a vengeance. He hobbled, transferring as much of his weight as he could to his uninjured foot, which was burning from overexertion. His arm begged for something to rest on, but if he removed his cloak—if he tried to find something to fashion into a sling—he'd open himself up to more problems.

Time blurred. Sleet changed to snow and back to sleet. He blinked and realized he didn't remember the past quarter mile at all and then it happened again, and he wondered if he was dying.

First it was a tingle, but then it was like fire, spreading through his good hand. He flexed, but the response was hardly a twitch. Of all the foolish things he'd done in his life, climbing a mountain road in the middle of an ice storm topped them all, but if she wasn't worth such a daunting risk, then why had he come? If he turned back now, turned away from the one perfect thing he'd ever known, then he was as good as dead anyway.

The world winked in.

Winked out.

He was there and then he was not.

When he came to, a dozen men were standing over him with blankets.

"Get him up," Drazhan commanded. "Quickly!"

"Aesylt," Rahn croaked.

"Not much use to her dead," Drazhan said as Rahn was swallowed in a suffocating swaddle of coverings.

When he next regained consciousness, he was startlingly warm. He turned his face, and it landed in a pile of soft fur. He moaned into a restricted stretch, but his arm was no longer broken. Sore, but un-fractured. He worked up the courage to wiggle his ankle, to the same result. Tender, but not like it had been. All ten toes responded.

Drazhan's shadow appeared first, followed by the man, perched on a stool. "Another half tick out there, I'd have been breaking some unfortunate news to Aesylt."

"Where is she?"

"You and I are going to talk first."

Rahn pulled himself up, sending his head into a dizzying vortex. He closed his eyes. Without sight, his other senses were pushed into dominance. The smell of old, cracked leather. The feel of rare fur of an arctic yak. The taste of a fire that hadn't died to embers. Drazhan's office. "We do have a matter of business to discuss."

Drazhan folded his elbows over his knees and waited.

Rahn couldn't have the conversation huddled on the floor of a man's office. He hobbled to a nearby chair. "You have my gratitude for not leaving me out there to die. Would have been a simple solution to the problem for you."

"But an unfortunate one for the women I love."

"I love them too, Drazhan." Rahn fought a wash of pain as he pulled himself higher in the chair. "Imryll is family. And Aesylt is... She's..." He had no reason to hold back anymore. "Everything."

"She was everything before you left her, Adrahn. She always was."

"Some plants survive better in the shadows." Rahn squinted through a stream of consciousness. "Over thousands of years, they've adapted to that preference, enough that sunlight can damage or even kill them. They can outlast their sunnier counterparts because this sacrifice leads them to being hardier for it, almost stubbornly so. There are even those who have developed tougher barks or leaves, like armor."

Drazhan scoffed. "And?"

"I should think even you would see the familiarity. We all do what we think we must to endure. We stand beyond the reach of the light, we put on our armor, and we tell ourselves we have no other choice."

"Why did you come back?"

"A man makes two kinds of mistakes in his life." Rahn squeezed the chair arms. It was Aesylt he needed to talk to, but his relationship with Drazhan had always been one of mutual respect. He would no longer answer to the man, but he didn't want to lose him either. "The ones that are beyond repair, and those we'll spend a lifetime never repeating. It's not the offender who determines which is true. Only Aesylt can decide where mine falls."

Drazhan dragged his elbows against his knees with a bracing sigh. "Where was this fight before?"

"I don't know where it was," Rahn replied. "But I know where it is now." He allowed himself a moment before saying what he'd been waiting to say. "When you sent us on to Wulfsgate, you told me one day, if I should want something, you would grant it."

"That's not what was meant." Drazhan sat up. "I wasn't bartering my sister's safety for her person. If you're asking?—"

"I ask nothing of you, Drazhan." Rahn braced and stood, gripping the mantle for balance. "It's Aesylt whose forgiveness I must ask. Then she can decide what to do with it."

"And when she turns you away?"

"Your sister told me what she wanted the night she fled Wulfsgate. I didn't listen then. I'm listening now, either way."

The office door flung open and bounced off a bureau. Imryll entered, shaking her head at Drazhan, right before Aesylt flew in, wearing only a thin nightgown. "Someone is going to explain to me what's—Rahn?"

Rahn gripped the mantle tighter and stood taller. "Squish."

"Cub, head on into the Great Hall. We'll be in shortly," Drazhan said, but it was clear from his defeated tone he expected to be ignored.

She stepped sideways, distancing herself from all three of them. "What are you doing here?"

Rahn started in her direction, but his shaky muscles had his knees buckling. She surged forward in instinct right as he fell to his knees, but he was up before she could reach him. He shook off Drazhan's offer of help.

"Send for the physician," Drazhan called to Imryll.

She disappeared out the door.

"What's wrong with him?" Aesylt stopped halfway, hovering between Drazhan and Imryll. "Draz, what did you do?"

"Saved his fucking life is what I did."

"Your brother didn't do this," Rahn said. "I made it as far as Voyager's Rest?—"

"Why did you go there?"

"To be close to you." Rahn's face scrunched in a well of pain. "Aesylt..." He bowed his head with a soft sigh before meeting her fraught gaze. "I tried to carve you from my heart. A thousand cuts weren't enough, for each of the chambers of this dark, damaged organ is made up of your smile, your laugh... your touch."

"It's late, and Adrahn is unwell. Morning would be better for this," Drazhan said.

Aesylt's head shook as he spoke. "No. You said you didn't love me. You said everything we went through, everything we..." Her gaze shifted to Drazhan. "Was all a misunderstanding."

"And I can no longer call myself an honest man for a lie of such magnitude." Rahn hobbled closer, using the furnishings for balance. Her eyes followed him, glossing over. "There is nothing I don't love about you, Aesylt. There's no morning I don't wake thinking firstly of you. No night I sleep without even the most innocuous of our interactions of the day fresh in my dreams. I could lie further and say I could not see the abyss of my emptiness until you were no longer there to fill it, but I knew from the day I met you, my life was forever changed. I will never believe I am worthy of you, but that is not my judgment to make."

Aesylt's lips parted, but no words emerged.

Rahn removed his shaking hands from the chairs balancing him and folded them over his heart. "If you tell me the damage is too great, if you ask me to leave, I will. But if you allow me to stay, there is nothing in this world, or others, that would send me away from you ever again."

Aesylt stood stock-still, her hands at her sides, tears rolling down her cheeks. "And tomorrow? What happens tomorrow, when you remember yourself?"

Rahn inched forward. "I loved you yesterday, Squish. I loved you a year ago. I love you now, and I will love you until the gods come to take me home to the Halls of Ilyn."

Drazhan folded his arms and spun away with a sharp inhale.

Aesylt took her time crossing the room, but the moment she was in reach, Rahn stretched a hand to cradle her face. Weeping, she folded herself into his arms. They melted against each other, speaking no words until she looked up and into his eyes. "You are as imitable as the stars in our interminable sky, Adrahn. Please don't ever speak of worthiness. Who is worthy of anything, if there is no objective decider? If I say I love you, then I love you. If you love me, then love me. Stop acting as though we've committed some terrible crime."

Rahn nodded through his own tears. "I'm sorry, Aesylt. I am so very sorry."

Drazhan quietly left the room.

"And I will try to forgive you." She stretched up for a kiss, soft and lingering. "In time."

He gripped her face in his hands and kissed her harder. "I'm an imperfect man, and I will make more mistakes, but never one like this. Never again."

She slowly lowered, frowning as she returned to her feet. "Why now, Rahn? Why not say these things before I left?"

He fought the urge to look away. "Years I've been holding onto something terrible... and it was terrible. But in the years since, all I could remember was that the last time I'd loved to the ends of my own soul, all of it was taken from me." A sad smile cracked the corner of his mouth. "So I lied to myself as well, because I've always loved you, and whether I lost you to my own stupidity or to Marek's..." He cleared his throat. "In the end, we're all lost to the inexorable call of time, but we don't have to be dead before it happens, do we?"

Aesylt watched him closely. "You killed him. Marek."

"About eight weeks too late."

"I wouldn't have predicted it."

"Because there are parts of me, Aesylt, that I've not shown anyone." He brushed the back of his hand along her forehead. "But I want to try. For you."

She let the words wash over her in silence. It was another minute before she broke it. "What did happen to you out there?"

"This imbecile rode through an ice storm, broke his arm, sprained his ankle, and nearly lost half of his toes." He chuckled without humor at his idiocy, which was so much clearer with the danger having passed. "Drazhan healed me, but I'll need a few days of rest before I'm back to my usual self."

"I'm surprised he didn't leave you for dead."

"I fear he only saved me because he was afraid to face you if he didn't."

Aesylt laughed softly. "Maybe you'll survive another day. Or two."

Rahn gathered her hands in his and lifted them, then pressed them to his chest. "It was never just research to me, Aesylt. I was in awe of your belief you could separate the emotion from the science, but I knew I never could. Every moment with you felt like an insidious betrayal of your trust because every moment with you was the best moment of my life."

"I failed too, over and over and over."

He smiled. "I know."

"What you said in Wulfsgate... I'll try to forget the words, but I don't think it will be so easy to set aside something that caused me so much pain. You were so... so resolved, a different man than the one standing before me now, but I don't understand how."

"He was a man in denial of more than his own feelings. A man who could not address the past, because to do so would bring forward a brighter future, and he didn't think he deserved one." Rahn kissed her hands. "I'd like to tell you what happened to me the night my family died, if you'll hear it. What I did. Not tonight, but... but soon."

"I would like that." Aesylt rolled her lips in, nodding. "And I... I'd like to tell you more about what happened the night of the Nok Mora. Not tonight, but soon."

"It would be my honor, Aesylt." He swayed, teetering and sinking onto a nearby chair. "I'm..."

"A mess," she said. "You've had a taxing night. Why don't we go to bed?" With a sigh and a soft smile, she said, "We can talk more in a few hours when we wake."

"I'm sure my old room is still made up."

"No, Rahn. Mine."

"Go to bed together? Will I wake with a sword to my throat?"

"I always bolt my door, so if you wake with steel at your throat, it will be mine."

"I don't recall that being on the curricula..."

"Whatever will we do now that we're not bound by their restrictive rules anymore?" Aesylt's eyes narrowed deviously. "You never gave me your answer."

"About what?"

"Reenacting the Dyvareh, but without the restriction of rules."

"Oh." Rahn's face flushed with heat. The prospect hadn't left the back of his mind since she'd proposed it, but no matter how much of each other they'd explored, there were some lines he was still afraid to cross. "Perhaps I'm still considering your request."

"What's your concern?"

He didn't need to think about that. "Hurting you."

"Isn't that the point?" She blinked. "Is that not your fantasy?"

"There's fantasy," he said, "and there's the bleak reality. I wouldn't ever forgive myself if my fantasy caused you actual suffering."

"Well," Aesylt said, lacing her hand through his. "I'll give you until springtide to think of how you'll make this happen without too much suffering. You owe me, after all." She laid her head against his arm. "Will you take me to bed, Scholar?"

Rahn kissed the top of her head, his heart finally settling. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go, Squish."