One Night in Parth （The Dealer）

A sterin had been following Rhiain for hours, but what was time when he'd been silently guarding her for years? When he knew her every move by heart, even when she did not?

It was how he knew she'd end up in Parth that night, even though she hadn't visited the Tavern at the Middle of the World since the place had been leveled to cinders by her father's men several years past. She should still be at the Wintertide Jubilee, her father's precious collecting of tithes disguised as a mid-season celebration, but something had happened in Riverchapel that had sent Rhiain fleeing to the font of her guilt and shame.

Asterin hadn't intended for it to be the night he finally encountered her, but plans had changed.

Parth was a traveler's town, a place between places. The abandoned, boarded-up shops and smithies greeted visitors with the macabre silence of a checkered past. The tavern itself, once a leaking, cloudy-windowed mess of song and vice, gleamed like an eyesore in its newness, with its neatly tiled roof and the fresh coat of paint on the alabaster steps. Patrons bantered how strange it was to actually see through the windows for a change.

Asterin arrived ahead of her, having taken a shortcut. He passed under the arch and sign reading All Ye Who Passes Beneath the Arches Passes the Bread and Ale, a slogan which had followed the tavern from one life into the next. He bought a round of ales for a group of bawdy men already half in their cups to strengthen the illusion their run-in would be unintentional, and waited for her to arrive.

He knew her even before she tugged the hood back, her dark red locks framing her flushed and troubled face. Wide, suspicious eyes traveled the tavern in a hurried sweep, eyes that had once carried the softness of a young woman untouched by the horrors of hard living. Her daggers were out and turned backward to hand to the doorman, a sign she still remembered the rules. The man put them in a barrel, alongside all the other weapons he'd been charged to watch while patrons enjoyed a violence-free evening.

Rhiain's hood went back up. Of course. She wouldn't want others to know a Skylark was there. They'd either sneer at her in disdain or fall all over themselves to impress her, depending on their views of highborns. Asterin was just as pedigreed, but was a frequent visitor to the tavern, so most gave him a pass for it.

Asterin pretended to be interested in the men hyperbolically recounting their many conquests on the road—screaming, really, as if the lively music was somehow growing louder—eyes solely on Rhiain's guarded approach to the bar. She stood at the corner of the end nearest him under an aromatic bouquet of garlic, cinnamon, and thyme, her unusual reticence causing her to be overlooked in favor of those who had come up to the bar after her. It was frustrating to watch, and he nearly went over himself to signal the pubkeep, until he saw Rhiain drop her coin on the bar. Ale clutched to her chest, head down, she pushed through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd into the backside of the tavern where she tried to disappear herself along the back wall ledge.

He mumbled a half-assed apology to the men and made his way to her. Should he ignore his thumping heart or let it be what led him through a moment he'd envisioned so many times but still wasn't ready for?

"Are you using this chair?" He waited for the precise moment her attention was fused elsewhere to ask. As expected, she sloshed ale over herself, her sleeve taking the worst of it. He lifted the edge of his cloak in apology and dabbed at the spilled drink.

"That's really not necessary," she said, her voice hauntingly small. Oh, how it hurt to hear. Rhiainach Skylark was life personified. Fire and ice and everything in between. The years had whittled her down to this , and he would fix it, before the end, Guardians willing.

Not tonight. Tonight I just need to see her. Speak with her. Remind myself why I've held on so very long.

Asterin drunk in the glossy tint in her irises like the sea, the crescents of despair under those same striking eyes. What else could he do, faced with the woman who he'd shared dreams with, soothsaid a future with? Her stolen memories kept these truths from her, but they were no less real. "Perhaps you're right," he said quickly, when he realized how obvious his staring was to her. "You'll fit in better if you don't smell like you just came from Riverhelm Citadel."

Her mouth hung, and he didn't need to hear her thoughts to feel them whirring, wondering how he'd so easily guessed where she was from when she was so—poorly—disguised. "I have no cause to be at Riverhelm Citadel."

"Indeed?" Asterin laughed. She was clever, a bit cunning, but not then or ever a good liar. "Nor do I then."

Rhiain waved a hand at the chair he'd asked about. "You can take it."

"No one is joining you?" He knew they weren't, but he was curious how far she'd take her facade.

"That's my business."

"Was only making conversation."

Rhiain's troubled eyes drifted to the window. Whatever she was running from, she hadn't run far enough. "I don't even know you."

Asterin chose the first name that came to him. "I'm Percy."

"I don't know any Percy." Her developing suspicion, the careful instinct she'd honed since she was a little girl, reminded him of their future memories rather than the past. Ten years from now, she'd be a force, unstoppable and courageous, a lioness. There were no words capable of conveying that now though, when she still had years of her life missing.

"I thought we were pretending to be no one tonight."

"We? We aren't doing anything ." The rage that skated across her face was startling, but short-lived. She sighed. "You can call me..." Sighed again. "Dani."

Asterin knew he shouldn't be enjoying the exchange so much, so soon. There was an imbalance between them, scored in his favor, and would be until she recovered her memories. If she recovered them. "Dani? That's the best you could come up with?"

One eye squinted. "So I should be a smooth liar, like you?"

Point to Rhiain. His heart sang remembering how she would, one day, feel in his arms, breathing against his heart to fall asleep. "Fair enough, Dani."

"Your mates are looking for you." She gestured toward the men Asterin had already forgotten.

"I'd hardly call them mates."

"Well, whoever they are, they're on their way over. I came here to be alone so if you'll excuse me, Percy..."

He hadn't intended to grab her arm, but it happened, and the look she gave him, followed by the ungraceful stumble, had him falling in love with her all over again.

"Hey!" When they stepped outside, boots crunching in the thick snow, she wrenched her arm back and shoved it under her cloak. With the other, she tugged her hood around her face. For one solemn moment her gaze locked to his, and he could see what the years had done to her.

"Now then." He held out his arm, which she only stared at, but he hadn't expected her to take it. He grinned like a fool. She certainly must have thought him one.

"Now then." Rhiain wrapped herself tighter against the cold. "You've used me to successfully escape your mates, so I suppose you'll be on your way. With luck, my ale will not have absconded with some drunkard."

"I thought I was helping you escape." He couldn't stop looking at her. He needed to stop looking at her.

"Me? What gave you that impression?"

"Call it a feeling. A sense."

Her eyes narrowed. "Ah. You're one of those men, aren't you?"

When he scoffed, the offense was genuine, even if she couldn't have known how wrong she was. "Dani, I don't know what you mean by that, and I already know the answer is no."

"I'm not available for your...pleasures."

The fleeting fear passing over her was so much worse than apprehension. He'd been keeping her safe for years. Whatever he was doing tonight, it could not, ever, undo any of it. "That's what you think?"

"What am I supposed to think? I don't know you. You don't know me. You're clearly noble born but pretend to be clumsy enough to force me to spill my ale on myself to get close to me. Then you usher me out the back entrance under some ridiculous pretense of needing to help me escape when I gave no indication I was in need of anything of the sort. You aren't the first man to try something like this on me, but most employ at least some creativity in the endeavor."

And there was she was. His Rhiain. It gave him hope the future was still possible. "All right. I did want to get you alone. In a sense." He was rambling. "Sort of."

Rhiain's eyes were practically squinting after that. "What?"

"Not for that. " Asterin watched her watching him. Most of his guise for the night was invented, but he'd worn the dark blue regalia of his house. A small thing, a tease to test whether just being around her might cause a flicker of recognition. "I saw you were alone and no one should be alone on a night like this. I could see something was troubling you, and I thought—"

"You thought you were just the man to ease me of these troubles?"

Actually yes, he thought, but winked instead. Winked. Like a buffoon. "I could be." Guardians on high, someone stop me.

Something he'd said, or done, had her laughing again. He wished he knew precisely what so he could hear it over and over and over.

"Who are you really ?" she asked.

Asterin wagged a finger. "Ah! Not tonight. Tonight, we are whoever we want to be."

Her mirth diminished some. "I don't know who I want to be."

"I'm not sure I do either. But tonight, this Percy fellow seems like he might be the type for some fun trouble, and Dani, well, I realize we just met, but she..." He squinted one eye, aiming for another beautiful, crystalline laugh. " Seems open to it?"

She smiled instead. "Does she?"

A tiny snowflake dusted just the tip of her nose. He leaned in to clear it with his thumb, forgetting himself. "I have an idea."

"Against the entirety of my better judgment, I'd love to hear it," she answered with only a light recoil, sounding as much eager as acquiescent.

He asked her to walk with him through Parth. Yes, the abandoned village with nothing in it but the tavern they were standing inside. She wanted to know why, and he told her they were both troubled, but perhaps they could help one another with it, which was truer than she could possibly know.

He'd never been so anxious. Every day, watching her drift further and further from herself, was a torture he could not have prepared himself for.

"Let us speak of our troubles in invented terms. Dani, the traveling circus performer, and Percy, the goat breeder. Both aching for a different future than the one fate has set out for them," he suggested.

"We can switch roles, please and thank you," she replied, laughing.

"You have a fancy for goat breeding?"

"I have a fancy to abandon you right here."

Oh, how cold he'd been without the warmth of her fire. "Shall we then?"

"My daggers are still with the warden."

He pretended to be startled. "Was that information or a threat?"

"I haven't decided." She laughed.

He shared it with her, readying for her change of heart.

But in the end, she took his arm.

Snow covered the road. Fresh flakes dusted the earth, covering any evidence left by hooves and carts. She hadn't released his arm, and he shouldn't read into it, but he did.

"So, Percy, if I have this right, your, eh, ringmaster father wishes for you to remain in the family business, which is the, eh, taming of rare beasts?"

Asterin chuckled. "You listen well."

She nibbled her bottom lip. He had to look away. "And you have a fancy for cooking, which has no place in your father's show?"

"That's right, Dani. You have summed up the whole of my problems."

Her boots scuffed the powdery snow as she slowed. "Whatever will you do?"

"In this fantasy of ours? Why, of course I'll go on to become the most renowned chef the kingdom has ever known. People will go to sleep with the taste of my creations on their tongues and awaken with the dream of more."

She turned to look up at him with widening eyes. "Poetry may be your truer calling!"

"But in reality...ah, well I'll just keep taming the exotic beasts now, won't I?"

Rhiain appeared unsettled by this. "Why?"

"Why won't I challenge my father?"

"If you want to say it that way."

Asterin faltered. It was one thing to playfully pretend. Another to veer too close to the truth. "Well...same reason you won't."

Her head tilted back. She scoffed. "You don't even know me."

I know you like I know my own heart, lungs, limbs. "Aren't we all disappointments to our fathers? Few truths are so universal as that, no matter who we are."

"I'm not..." Rhiain trailed off, likely thinking of her complicated relationship with her father. They wouldn't have a relationship at all if she knew what he'd done. But it was more dangerous to tell her that and risk her losing her mind altogether. "I haven't decided what to do about the goats just yet."

"Could always slaughter them. What a shock that would be."

Her gasp was delightful. "How devious! Perhaps I'll do that the night before my wedding, as my parting gift."

Asterin had no choice but to cover the sharp stab of pain with an equally sharp, theatrical breath in. He was shocked she'd brought it up. Her betrothal. To his brother. The very creature who had initiated the chain of events that had torn them apart. For all he knew, those stolen memories had made Castien seem like a prince in her eyes. He cleared his throat and hoped he was still convincingly obtuse, because he sure didn't feel like he was. "Your wedding? Is that how you intend to escape your future as a goat farmer?"

"More like trading one cage for another."

He shrugged casually, the exact polar opposite of his true feelings. "Don't do it then."

Rhiain's laughter cut off. "Don't marry? Whether I'm a goat farmer or a circus performer or a princess, there's little choice I have in the matter of my husband. Unless I've become a man in this game of pretend?"

"Is he a goat farmer too? Your betrothed?"

"Yes. I suppose he is."

He could not tell her all Castien had done to hurt her, but he could lead her down a parallel path, if he was careful enough. "Then your rebellion holds no water. You'll trade the life you have now for a comparable one. An even exchange, if you will."

Her eyes shifted to her boots. "My impending betrothal is the least of my worries right now."

That he hadn't suspected. "We're back to the goats then."

She spun toward him. "Can we be real for a moment?"

Guardians, ask me again and I might say yes. He could only nod.

"I came here tonight after...after learning of a great betrayal." She seemed to linger on each word, choosing them with especial care. "One I cannot forget, nor set aside. I'm not even certain I can ever go home again, unless it's to get my brother. You might say that...I have quite a big decision to make, and I don't know what to do."

If she wasn't speaking of Castien, then what? "Is it about the marriage?" he asked, because a stranger could not guess anything real about her life.

"I cannot even think about that with this other revelation so fresh on my mind."

"Come," he said. "Let's get out of this."

If Asterin had been honest with himself, at any point in the evening, he'd have realized he always intended to end up in that barn with her.

It had once been the town stables in a time predating them both. There was a lingering smell of tack and feed, but it was mostly a story of the neglectful passage of time. Abandoned tools. Hay rotting in bales.

But he was thinking of none of that when he reached for her wrist and spun her into his arms with a gentle snap. He led with his heart as he whispered, "You already know what to do," breathing her in, lips so close he could hardly think. He held her wrist aloft, his fingers folding over each other. "You just need to do it."

"Do you always go around giving advice to women you don't know?" Her chest rose with her breathy answer.

Asterin wasn't himself when he slid his arms to her waist and encircled her, lifting her atop a pile of hay so swiftly it left no more room for their illusion. He traced his mouth along the air she breathed, convincing himself not to do it.

It was Rhiain who bolted forward and pressed her lips to his. Her tongue found his, past and future colliding. Legs clamped the outside of his thighs, and he knew what she was asking for, what she wanted. Guardians, how their needs matched. They always had.

He wound a hand through her hair, so soft and achingly familiar. "I need to see you when I kiss you," he said, deliciously and dangerously aware of the way he ground himself between her legs, her building climax. He murmured something about spoiling her wedding night, her response a weak protest that nearly made him do something he'd vowed never, ever to do as long as her memories were not her own.

Then Rhiain came undone, shuddering over his clothed erection. "Don't be afraid to feel pleasure, Dani." He kissed her through the rest of her release, which was all he could offer her. It was more than he should have offered her. He was a man damned. "With it comes clarity. Freedom."

The way she dug her little fists into the straw when she screamed was a matter between him and his fantasies. A gift for later, when he was alone and questioning every last word and gesture he'd made on that fated night in Parth, where he was Percy and she was Dani and none of the rest had ever happened.

But it had. Past. Future. It had.

As she sputtered through the aftermath, Asterin managed to say, "In your heart, or perhaps somewhere deeper, you know this marriage will destroy you. If you find a way to be free of it...if thoughts of me cross your mind when you're not expecting them...find me again, Dani."

I want this, she kept saying. Not that. This.

I'm a man of honor. And you will appreciate my restraint later.

His words though, did not match the sweltering furnace destroying him from the inside.

Asterin remembered very little of what happened after. She'd pushed for more. He'd gently refused and admonished himself for even letting it get that far. He should have known before starting for Parth how weak he was in his love for her. How strong he felt when she was in his arms.

But he remembered their parting words most of all.

"You were meant for more than this, Dani," he said when they reached the tavern again. "I very much hope our paths cross again once you've realized it."

"They will cross." She seemed adamant about it too, and he wanted badly to believe it was a part of her that still remembered. "But first, I have something very important to take care of. Something only I can do."

"Retrieve your daggers?"

"Thank you for the reminder." She laughed softly. "But that's not what I meant."

"I know." He indulged himself one last kiss, but on her forehead. Innocent. Safe. "I have faith in you. Happy Wintertide, Rhiainach."

It was only after he'd walked away that he realized he'd broken the spell with her real name.