Chapter 35 #2
The ghost of our hours tangled in his bed haunted me worse than the kiss, and still—I had not the courage to speak of it. I’d rather let it rot inside me and live with this hollow ache than risk this brightness between us.
The ridge of the hill rose just high enough to look over the rooftops into the vale. Woodsmoke climbed the slope and a faint scent of fresh bread hung in the morning mist. On the crest sprawled a wildflower meadow. Tucked between daisies and violets was a shallow pond, guarded by a willow.
Behind that willow sat a small cottage amid the flowers, a crooked thing made of pale stone, carved shutters, a steep thatched roof. A child had painted flowers all over the front door.
“I’m not a very good painter,” said Adrik.
I glanced at him, speechless. His ears were bright red.
“Five moons before I found you, I came with despair to this hill. It had been snowing for seven days and I realized, for the first time, that Almira was fading. I came here and I found, amid the snow, a flower. And I imagined, as if looking through a misted window, a little cottage by the pond. I ached so fiercely to know who would live in such a place, I had constructions start that day. It was made for you, Evana, that cottage. It is yours, if you wish. Your home, should you decide to stay.”
I swallowed the sting of tears as I stared at it, morning sun catching in its wide windows. I could see myself huddled on the kitchen sill with a glass of tea in hand, watching as the streets below filled with conversation and laughter.
Adrik said, when I did not answer, “It was just a suggestion. A foolish idea. You can live wherever you want. I just thought—it seemed like it might suit you to have your peace and quiet when you need it, and still be right at the heart of life.” He paused to draw breath and added quietly, “You’d be close to the castle, too. ”
“What good is a castle to me if its king does not live there?”
He laughed softly. “The king might be inclined to frequent his castle more if the Queen of the Wild lived near.”
“This is perfect,” I whispered brokenly.
Adrik took my hand in his and kneeled before me in a bed of flowers.
“I promised you once to let you go if you wished, and I meant it. I can stand the thought of denying you any happiness at all even less than I can stand that of losing you. I have no wish to tame wild things, for I am exceptionally fond of them. I am exceptionally fond of you.” He kissed the back of my hand and turned it gently to press his lips to my palm.
“I wish you happiness above all else, Ana.”
I whispered through tears, “I have never had a choice before. I do not know what to do with it. I never asked my heart what it wanted for fear that I could never have it.”
“Then ask it now. Take as long as you need, and let me offer you this: That this house will wait for you, always. Whether you settle tomorrow, or visit only for a season ten summers from now. Whether you come back every winter, or never choose to return at all. This home will welcome you back. This town will welcome you back. Its king—I will welcome you back, Ana, as if you’d never left, for my world will remain frozen without you in it. ”
He gave me a bright, heartbreaking smile. Then came a breeze of summer brine, and I watched the fox as it darted off between the trees to heed Zora’s call for aid with dresses and wine from the street below.
I ached… Oh, how I ached to chase after him. To tell him, that for him I’d stay wherever the tides swept us, as long as we were together.
But what of my own heart?
Had I become like a bird, caged for so long I’d cling to my sad little perch even now that the door stood open? Had I not longed to see what lay beyond the mountains and the sea? This town… Was it to become just another prison, one of my own choosing?
Of all the cages I knew, I had always feared love the most.
That afternoon, as Zora and I sat together in the teahouse with berry-wine and mirrors and pearls to dress for the dance, Bahra came wearing Almira’s wide-brimmed straw hat. She purred as we paid her compliments and sat contentedly to watch as Zora weaved golden flowers into my curls.
“Oh,” she said with great lament, “but how good of the boy to let you go.” She chuckled.
“No reason to look so startled, girl, I was there on the hill. But how it pained him to say it, the poor fool! Too blind for his own good. Gone mad for the half-dead girl he brought back from the wastes. Oh, but the things you strange creatures do for love. He will not survive it long, I reckon—feeble, fearful things, these human hearts.”
Fearful things indeed, these human hearts. I allowed it to blind me once more—the fear of having something to lose. The fear of allowing myself a home. A home, not a cage. Not a place where I would be forced to remain, but one to which I could always return.
I whisked in my moss-green dress through the door and I ran, laughing like a madwoman, up the castle hill.
Adrik stood with Yavor and his brothers near a bonfire.
My heart thundered against my ribs, from the strain of running and from the words I carried on the tip of my tongue.
Adrik must have heard my wild panting for he broke from the group.
I cradled his face as we met amid a tangle of peonies and said breathlessly, “I should have told you this much sooner, but I found neither the right moment nor the courage. But the seasons are changing, and I cannot carry the burden of this secret into spring.” I drew a deep breath. “I love you.”
Adrik chuckled as he kissed the tip of my nose and whirled me through the air until I was panting from laughter. “I love you too, Ana—but you must have known it for a while. I am the worst liar you know, after all.”
“I will stay and I will leave,” I said. “I will call this town my home. I will venture past the wastes into the dark lands, and I will guide those who need this town here; the witches and the mages, the little girls haunted by whispers of madness and the tidekissed warriors. I will travel the lands, and I will return, as often and for as long as I can, to Wildemire. Home.”
“Do you think,” Adrik whispered into my hair, “that you might wish for a companion on your travels? That you might appreciate the company of a besotted king at your side who will warm you in the nights and who promises not to tease you too wickedly, unless you ask for it?”
“You would leave this place? These people?”
“They did well without a king before I came, no? Is it not about time they remembered how to shovel their own yards?” He laughed quietly.
“I have not seen much of the world, Ana. Not through these bright eyes. I wish to see it with you. Besides, you said it yourself. We will return. This is our home, after all.”
We danced that night beneath the silver moon—the Queen of the Wild and the King of the Forgotten Lands.
As the music softened, Adrik and I stole away from the crowd and settled for a quiet moment in the glade above the river.
Perhaps the fireflies had lured us there, or the gentle murmur of the water.
We stood on the hill, drunk with mirth, and looked down on the starlit riverwaves.
Below, on the cat-shaped hill, the earth had grown wild and vibrant with spring and swallowed the burrow whole. We would leave it like that.
Almira would have loved it.
I ached as I thought of her. I accepted that ache, and I let it go. I would do it over and over, as long as I lived—I would do the same with the other darknesses that remained a part of me.
We would spend our whole lives healing, but we would spend it well.
“One mild summer eve,” I said quietly, mischievously, “the lovers took a stroll along the river. The boy, I hear, was so enchanted for a moment that he did not notice the girl had gone. She was bathing there, in the moonlit river, the water cascading over her skin like liquid silver—”
I’d unfastened, while I spoke, the pearl-adorned strings of my gown. I let it pool into a puddle of silk and roses at my feet. Adrik’s laugh came sharp and breathless. I ran with a squeal down the slope, faster and faster as he chased me.
I laughed all the way down to the moonlit riverbank.
Perhaps I was a little mad after all.