Surrender
Chapter seventeen
Mara lay beside Ethan for a long time, listening to the rush of his breath, the night sounds of the desert. His fingers had gone slack in hers, and she aimlessly traced patterns in his palm as she thought. The solar lantern had gone pale, ready to sleep until the sun returned to revive it.
She could not sleep.
It had hurt to speak of Tristan. Of course it had. She still missed him, every moment of every day, the loss a gaping hole in her soul.
But it had not hurt the way she’d expected.
She had laughed, remembering their meeting, the clumsy way he’d introduced himself in the park, long before the nightclubs and beer gardens of the city had come to be. The sweet kisses and pointless arguments and tender apologies.
It had been good. They had been good. Perfect. A love for the centuries.
But Tristan was dead.
And she had to live.
On a whim, she reached out and set her hand to Ethan’s chest, felt the pump of his heart, rise rise and fall of his breath.
There was something primal in it, gently so, the simplicity of his existence.
Not just any man’s existence, but this man.
Ethan. He had been kind, yes, made her laugh, bantered and teased, but that did not explain the warmth in her breast when she gazed at him, the way the lantern shone in his hair and carved out the contours of his face.
Mara did not want him to leave.
But he had made up his mind. He would not stay.
He had decided he would not force his presence on Mara anymore.
Which was what she had always asked of him.
And if she asked now… He would still leave.
She could see it now, see that his distance over the past days had been the beginning of his departure.
He was surrendering. Giving her what he believed she wanted and needed, ceding the field to Tristan’s ghost.
And suddenly Mara was furious.
How dare he decide what she needed? What she wanted?
How dare he not fight for her?
It was ridiculous. She knew it. She knew she was getting angry over a situation she herself had created, pouting because she’d gotten what she wanted and now decided it wasn’t what she wanted at all.
And she could only blame herself, her own stubbornness. He was only doing what she had asked. Leaving her with the garden she had wounded him to defend. Siege ended, war over. He no longer wished to scale her walls, not the physical ones she’d created nor the ones in her heart.
She caught her breath, an idea taking root. Blooming into a plan.
Heart beating fast, she reached into his open backpack for his sketchbook. It was mostly full now of sketches and notes, but there were a few blank pages at the end.
With a wicked smile, she wrote her message, complete with diagram. She was a better artist than he, but not by much; the diagram was crude. But he was intelligent enough to understand it.
Mara took care of a few more preparations and left the notebook where Ethan was sure to see it.
See it and make his own decision. If he chose not to follow her, then, well, he clearly was not worthy.
He would still have been the catalyst for her to do what she needed to do for herself. She would remember him with gratitude.
But he would follow. She was sure of it.
He was not a man to resist a challenge.
She gave his sleeping form one last smile and retraced their steps to the flower she’d called forth for him. It was pale and colorless in the moonlight, but she knew its truth. With a sigh, she traced the petals, treasuring each ruffle and fold, the fragile silk of its splendor.
It was not possible to lie to the elements.
To Ethan, yes, of course. Words were almost always lies of one sort or another.
And to herself. She’d lied to herself for so long she barely knew how to be honest. But the elements, the magic, always knew the truth.
Knew when it was time to bloom, time to wilt, time to fall.
She had been forcing herself on her garden, begging and cajoling and inducing the plants to bloom as she willed, to uphold her self-deception. But she was listening now. She was ready to listen.
And so she reached into herself, gave herself to the flower, told it the message of her deepest truth.
It’s time to let go.