Chapter Forty-Nine
Before my marriage, the only men I had been allowed to see without a chaperone were my brothers and father. After, Morsimus was the sole man with whom I was permitted to be alone. It was for my safety, I had been told repeatedly. Now, of course, I see the irony.
But that was before I had become a huntress or a killer, and I felt no fear as Cleon and I ambled away from the fire. Instead, an anticipation I could not fully understand fluttered within me, an anticipation I tried to quash.
“You and Aina were talking very intently. What were you discussing?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“I do not know if I was discussing so much as listening in amusement,” Cleon replied. “She seems to have found herself a great number of willing suitors among the goatherds.”
The comment riled me for more than one reason. I could not forbid Aina from marrying, but she had not yet taught me to ride. Selfishly, I hoped that a proposal would not affect her interest in doing so. The other reasons I was less keen to admit to myself.
“Are you included among those admirers?” I asked with a similar subtlety and grace to that with which I had first mounted Myrina.
I waited for Cleon to answer, but instead, he offered me another question.
“You do not have children, do you?”
It was far too blunt to be polite. Had another asked it, I am not sure how I would have reacted. Yet I suspected my question to him had been equally improper, so I replied.
“No,” I said. “The gods have not blessed me in such a manner.”
“Or perhaps it was a blessing?” he said.
I halted my step in pure disbelief. My heart pounded as I struggled to accept the cruelty of his words.
“How dare you?”
Even in the dim light, I watched the color drain from Cleon’s cheeks.
“Forgive me, Otrera. I did not mean those words to sound as they did. The world would be blessed to have your children in it. I know that, and I believe the gods do too.” He moved as though to take my hands, only to hesitate and withdraw.
“I was referring to your husband. How it was a blessing that his seed did not remain in the world. But that was wrong of me. Forgive me. My manner was callous. I am sorry. Truly.”
I stood my ground, my posture fixed as I stared him down for a moment longer before I swiveled on the ball of my foot and continued up the hillside.
Silence hung heavily between us. Cleon’s intention had not been to hurt me.
I knew that. I could hear the honesty in his tone, the desperation with which he tried to claw his words back.
But that did not make it easy to reply. We walked for several minutes before I spoke again.
“Perhaps the gods were wise in ending Morsimus’s line with him,” I said eventually.
“Yes,” Cleon said. “His line deserved to end, but not yours. You deserve children if that is what you want.”
His hand slipped into mine, and my footsteps slowed a fraction.
I could hear his words but refused to allow myself to believe them.
I was not even sure I wanted to. Since the death of the men, I had envisioned the life I would live.
The life of an eternal widow, leader in Ninniya, childless to the end.
To allow myself to think of anything else, to even believe in the concept of love when I had been married to Morsimus, was more than I could cope with.
Yet my feet no longer moved, and Cleon’s gloved hand pulled me around to face him.
Even without the firelight, his eyes gleamed as they bored into mine.
“Otrera, you are a widow, I understand that. And do not feel you have to answer me now. But I would be a good husband to you. I understand what you are trying to do here. I believe it is for the best. I do. But I also believe there is something between you and me. Or there could be?”
“I am not the type of woman you want for a wife,” I said. The drumming of my pulse was so loud I suspected it could be heard over the frivolities below.
“You are the only one I want, Otrera.”
An endless array of thoughts passed through my mind. A hundred possible futures that could one day be. But I did not hold on to any of them. I held on only to that moment. With Cleon’s hand still in mine, I twisted to face the village again and began to walk toward it.
“I thought the shrine was by the forest,” Cleon said, still gripping me tightly.
“We are not going to the shrine,” I told him. “We are going to my home.”