Chapter 10
The next morning, I awoke not knowing quite what to do with myself. There were things to be done, certainly: checking in with the household staff who’d remained at Ivyhill during our absence, visiting our tenant farmers, walking the grounds to assure myself everything was in order. And of course the Warden’s deadline loomed large in my mind. We had only a month to propose a national Order draft to the queen, and two weeks had already passed during our travels home.
But after the night I’d had, I felt both rested and restless, and carrying out tasks I’d done a thousand times suddenly felt impossible. I’d slept like the dead, yet it took me thirty minutes to wash and dress when it ordinarily took fifteen. I was fluttery all over, completely distracted, and realized when I got downstairs that I’d forgotten to make my bed. A simple thing, something I’d not once neglected for as long as I could remember, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to be irritated.
I glided into the dining room, expecting it to be empty and looking forward to enjoying a solitary breakfast with only my jittery body and provocative thoughts of Ryder for company—but shockingly, Gemma was already there. She was barefoot in her dressing gown, golden curls spilling everywhere, tapping her toes against the table leg as she scribbled on a piece of paper.
“You’re up early,” I remarked, a little more testily than was fair. “I expected you to still be in bed with Talan.”
Gemma quickly hid whatever she was writing under her napkin and began eating the fruit on her plate with relish. “I woke up thinking about a million things and didn’t want to disturb him by rustling about in bed. Poor thing, he’s exhausted. We haven’t even gotten the chance to talk about where he’s been these past few weeks, whether he’s learned anything new about Kilraith—”
“What are you writing?”
She blinked up at me, her mouth full of food. “What? I’m eating.”
“Gemma, don’t lie to me.” I sat down in the chair beside her and glanced pointedly at her napkin. “Stealth is not your specialty. I saw you hide whatever that is when I came in.”
She hesitated, chewing, then swallowed and relented, withdrawing the sheet of paper. “Fine. But you have to promise not to be angry with me.”
“I can’t promise that until I know what you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything—”
“And yet you just told me not to be angry with you.”
Gemma sighed sharply. “It’s just that I know how you’ll feel about this and can’t imagine talking about it will be productive. But I can see you won’t give up, so here it is: I’m writing to Great-Aunt Felicity. I’ve been writing to her since we got home from Rosewarren after fighting Kilraith.”
I stared at her. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected her to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. “You haven’t.”
“No, you’re right. I haven’t. I’m lying. I’m writing a novel.”
“That is a lie. You haven’t the discipline to write a novel.”
“Not believing me and then insulting me on top of it!”
I snatched the paper from her. My stomach dropped when I saw the salutation. Dear Auntie Fel…
“Auntie Fel ?” I read, incredulous.
“She calls me Gem, I call her Fel.” She paused, then added, a note of mirth in her voice, “It’s a concept known as nicknaming.”
“I know what nicknaming is,” I snapped. The giddy, scatterbrained strangeness of my morning vanished in an instant. “I just don’t understand why you’re talking to her.”
“Because she’s family.”
“By blood, maybe, but not in any way that actually matters.” I thrust the paper at her. “We promised each other, you and Mara and me… We promised we wouldn’t speak to any of them, not after what they said.”
Gemma sighed again, then took my hands gently in hers. “I know we did,” she said, “but that was years ago, well before we went to the Old Country. That night, everything changed. You know it did. When we were there, we were stronger than we’d ever been before. We moved differently, we looked different. You saw how Ryder and Alastrina reacted to us.”
I did remember, of course. All three of us had glowed from within that night, the Olden air turning our skin and hair unnaturally lustrous and flecking our eyes with gold. While fighting the Brethaeus and the Vilia, Mara had moved so lightning fast that I couldn’t keep track of her, darting from tree to ground to attacker like an arrow shot from a bow. Gemma had ripped entire trees from the ground and glamoured herself to hide the glass embedded in her skin, and the wood itself, every tree and piece of brush, had leaned toward us, all of us, drawn to our power like moths to fire.
And I had used my voice as I’d never done before. I’d found a wordless, unfamiliar song in the depths of myself, and I’d sung it in that forest as enemies swarmed us from all sides. My song had sent the specters attacking my sisters into utter chaos, making them scream and writhe and fling themselves to the ground.
And then together, all three of us—Gemma and Mara and I—had fought a monster capable of entrapping a demon.
And we had won .
Fae blood , Gemma’s Vilia friend Phaidra had declared upon seeing us transformed. The blood of both Kerezen and Caiathos burns in your veins, just as it did in the veins of the first fae.
A wild claim, one I hadn’t accepted then and wouldn’t accept now. Along with the demons, the fae were the most powerful beings in the Old Country, elusive and cunning. The idea that we possessed any of their blood was preposterous. Father was an Anointed sentinel, Mother a low-magic elemental of moderate power with a talent for botanicals. They were human, and so were we, and so were all the generations of our family before us, both on the Ashbourne side and the Wren side. No, there had to be another explanation, perhaps an ordinary aberration in our blood that could exist in any number of Gallinoran citizens. We’d just been unlucky enough—or foolish enough—to venture into the Old Country and see the evidence for ourselves.
“Of course I remember,” I muttered.
Gemma was ducking down, trying to get me to look at her, but I refused. I glared at the table and felt petulantly glad to see her half-eaten eggs sitting there, growing cold.
“I wouldn’t have written to Auntie Fel if I hadn’t a very good reason for it,” Gemma said. “I want to know what happened that night in the Old Country, Farrin, and I want to know if it’ll happen again, what might set it off. What does it mean, and—considering everything that’s happening—can we use it to our advantage in the days to come? Even here in Edyn?”
“And of course Great-Aunt Felicity knows all about such things,” I said peevishly, hating the sound of the words even as I said them.
“Of course she doesn’t, but she’s the person in Mother’s family I felt most comfortable reaching out to. I remember her being nice enough when we were little. I remember her smelling like peppermint.” Gemma paused. “She’s smart and thoughtful, and wickedly funny. I’ve told her about the panic, about the healer I see to help me with it. She’s been so gentle about it, so understanding. You’d like her.”
“I’d like her,” I repeated flatly. “No, Gemma. I wouldn’t. I don’t like any of them. Do you remember what they said when Mother left us?”
Gemma had been expecting that one. “I do.”
But I had to say it anyway, to remind myself—to remind her— of the promise we’d made to each other and why we had made it.
“They said it was Father’s fault that Mother left. They stood here in our own home and accused him of hurting her for years, beating her, beating us , because he couldn’t control his temper and couldn’t win his war with the Basks. They said he’d been driving her mad, that in her letters to them she’d written about how ill she felt, how she couldn’t sleep, how she was hearing voices . And from that they drew the worst possible conclusions. When Father asked to see the letters, read her words for himself, they wouldn’t show him. Every single one of them insisted the same thing—even your beloved Auntie Fel—and leveled the same awful accusations. They united against us, against Father . They tried to take us away from him.”
I barely got out those last words, feeling sick to remember those terrible days after Mother left: Mara gone and eight-year-old Gemma constantly wailing. Father vacillating between sleeping the days away and disappearing all night to visit friends and drink himself into oblivion, some days exhausting his body with hours of punishing exercises out on the grounds. The Wrens, Mother’s family, had tried every lawful and unlawful means of sneaking Gemma and me out of the house. Some nights, Father had camped out in the entrance hall, fists clenched, eyes trained on the doors. Weapons scattered all around him. Waiting, even eager, for the Wrens to try something.
And then there had been me, twelve years old, watching him from the shadows, too sick and worried to sleep, trying desperately to hold everything together and keep the estate functioning while my world fell apart around me.
“And in light of everything you’ve learned about the things Father has done,” Gemma said, very low, glancing at my wrist, “in light of what he’s done to you , can you really say their claims were so very outlandish?”
It was as though she’d struck me. Of course I’d had those thoughts myself, but I’d long dismissed them and continued to, even with his mood so black over the past few months. Father hurting Mother, hurting us ? He’d never done such a thing, had never laid a hand on us in anger. Yet here was Gemma hurling the terrible thoughts back at me, the very fact of what had been done to her as a child reminding me that yes, Father could hurt if he thought he had a reason to.
“Father didn’t hire that artificer on his own, you know.” I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. I was desperate to regain some kind of footing in this conversation. “Mother was there too. She could have stopped it, but she didn’t. She sat in the room right beside you and let it happen.”
Gemma didn’t even flinch. “So Father says, now that Mother’s not around to dispute his version of the story.” She held my gaze for a long time, years of pain swimming in her bright eyes. She sat there proudly, back straight, shoulders squared.
Ashamed, I looked down at my hands.
“Anyway, Auntie Fel has apologized for all of that,” Gemma said at last, wearily. “She admits they made unfair, baseless accusations out of grief for Mother and fear for us. And Farrin…” She drew in a breath as if steeling herself. “As I said, I wouldn’t have written to Auntie Fel unless I had a very good reason.”
Of course I knew the reason. I knew it, and I despised it, and, irrationally, I despised Gemma for having grown into the sort of woman who no longer avoided her problems but instead chose to face them.
I despised myself most of all, anger roiling in my chest like a hot sea, bubbling uselessly, making me feel mighty and dangerous even though I was far from it. In fact, I possessed not even half of my baby sister’s nerve.
“You want to ask her questions about us,” I muttered. “About Mother.”
“Yes.”
“About Mother’s powers , and if she kept something from us, from Father, and why we can do what we did.”
“Yes.”
“Though I’m not sure I can trust anything you say at the moment, I do sincerely hope you didn’t tell her anything about Yvaine, or the sinkhole, or Kilraith—”
“Of course I didn’t,” Gemma snapped. She looked furious all of a sudden, and I didn’t blame her, rightfully so. “Do you really think me that foolish? I’m not a child, Farrin. I’m a woman with as much stake in all of this as you have, and as much responsibility too. Our first letters were just getting to know each other, gaining each other’s trust. I’ve only recently started asking her about the family. I’m making a family tree, I told her. I’ve grown interested in my lineage, as many people do as they get older.”
I scoffed. I was being the child, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Digging around in hopes of finding fae blood somewhere?”
Gemma threw up her hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I have to try—I have to do something . Whatever the reason for it, I do have powers that seem to be of both Caiathos and Kerezen, which shouldn’t be possible. And you and Mara, you changed in the Old Country just as I did. You became stronger versions of yourselves. And we heard the Mist calling to us that night—you, Mara, and me. Not Ryder, not Alastrina, not Phaidra.” Gemma’s mouth trembled a little at the mention of her late friend. “They didn’t hear that voice, that song, telling us where to go, how to cross from Edynside to Oldenside, but we did hear it. What does that mean, Farrin?”
I couldn’t answer. My head was too full, and my chest hurt, and I itched everywhere in this strange, cold way, as if Gemma’s words were beginning to turn me inside out. I’d woken up feeling so different than usual—fidgety and distracted, the whole day unfurling before me with new possibility—and now I could feel myself turning inward again, knotting up from head to toe.
I turned away, waving Gemma silent, but she rose to join me and kept talking.
“We have to do this,” she said, “and it would be easier if you would help me.” Then she paused. “Do it for Yvaine, if not for me. Without question, we’re part of whatever’s happening. If we figure out who or what we are—”
“ What we are?” I stared at her, revolted and furious for too many muddled reasons to count. “And how dare you throw Yvaine at me like a weapon?”
“You’re the one choosing to ignore something that could help her,” Gemma shot back. “If she really is dying, shouldn’t you want to do everything you can to ease her many burdens? I do, and she’s not half as dear to me as she is to you.” She sighed sharply. “I know it hurt you most of all when Mother left, but—”
I stormed away before she could finish. If I hadn’t, I might have said something unforgivably cruel. I hurried out of the house and onto the grounds, which hummed happily with industry—grooms out working the horses, groundskeepers tending to the gardens with both humble shears and elemental magic. Everyone called out to me in greeting; I replied to each of them by name, a false smile plastered across my face, and marched on.
At first, I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew I needed to keep moving. If I didn’t, the rage boiling inside me might turn into tears, and I couldn’t sit around bawling. There was work to be done, a mile-long list of work that I recalled with a cold splash of clarity. Perhaps Gemma could afford to sit and write letters and bed her lover and think about powers and fae blood and what it all meant, but I had an estate to run, one that would crumble around us if I ignored my duties. So I would get to work and put Gemma and Mother and Auntie Fel out of my mind. All of those things were in the past, and the past couldn’t hurt me. I wouldn’t let it.
But telling myself that over and over did nothing to calm me, and by the time I reached the game park, flushing out a startled bevy of quail as I tore through the wetlands in my now-ruined shoes, I knew what I needed. I needed to punch something.
A little jolt shook me as Ryder’s scowling face flashed before my eyes. Was the feeling apprehension? A warning of some kind? I didn’t care. A chill autumn wind was at my back; the western horizon was dark with an approaching storm, and I was glad to see it. I felt a fierce kinship with its roiling churn, its promise of thunder. I turned toward the lake, where the greenway that led to Ravenswood lay waiting in Father’s hidden lagoon.
***
When I found Ryder, I was soaking wet and shivering, drenched from my trip through the lagoon-anchored greenway. It had been some time since I’d traveled north using that route, the last trip being one of Father’s many efforts to spy on the Basks and prepare us all for the eventual cataclysmic attack that never came. My gown growing stiff and cold around me in the mountain air, my sodden shoes squishing with every step, I trudged through the pines, cursing myself, cursing Gemma, cursing the trees themselves most of all, until I finally saw light ahead and felt a rush of relief that I hadn’t gotten lost.
I hurried out of the trees into a clearing beyond and stopped dead.
Ryder was there, sitting on a bench outside one of the Basks’ many stables. Torches flickered in the yard, and four blanketed horses had gathered at the fence to nose at Ryder’s hair and shoulders. Birds of all sorts hopped about at his feet—cardinals, woodpeckers, ravens.
And Ryder…his head was in his hands, his great hulking body slumped over in utter dejection, and when he looked up at the sound of my footsteps and saw me, he did nothing to hide the devastation on his face, the tear tracks cutting paths across his dirty cheeks and into his beard.
Instead he took in the state of my hair and dress and frowned. “What are you doing here?”
In the face of his obvious despair, the truth seemed absurd and even insulting, but I didn’t know what else to say. “I wanted to punch something,” I said bluntly.
That made him smile, a soft flash of a grin. “And so you came to see me? I’m touched.”
I made to go to him, then hesitated, suddenly keenly aware of how stupid I’d been, tearing over here without any thought of how to explain my sudden appearance.
He seemed to understand. “Not to worry,” he said drily, wiping his face on his sleeve. “After I found your sister and Talan snooping about these woods this past spring, Trina and I tracked down your greenway. Cleverly hidden, I’ll give your father that. It took us weeks of work to uncover it. The other end lies in water, does it?”
I was fiercely glad that at least for a moment, he wasn’t looking at me. Only weeks ago, I wouldn’t have felt any shame whatsoever that Ryder knew my family had been spying on his, but now things were different.
I lifted my chin a little and approached him. “Couldn’t you find out for yourself?”
“Of course not. It’s laced with spellcraft, won’t permit a Bask to enter.”
“I’m sure the greenways you’ve built to spy on us are secured in much the same way.”
He did look up at me then, with a roguish sort of smile. “Oh no, you won’t get me that easily.”
I accepted that and apologized with a small nod. “Old habits are difficult to break.”
Then I sat beside him, perched gingerly on the bench, and waited for him to speak. He was horribly quiet next to me, the very air around him heavy with grief. I wanted to reach out to him, touch his arm in comfort. An easy enough thing for people like Gemma, or Gareth, or even Yvaine to do. But the idea of touching Ryder not only felt uncomfortable, inexperienced at casual affection as I was, it also felt dangerous, like inching too close to a blazing hearth.
“Is it Alastrina?” I said instead. An old gray gelding snuffled sweetly at my hair.
Ryder nodded, leaning heavily forward on his thighs. “I don’t know how to exist without her. For so long, it was just us, trapped here in these trees, in this house. Learning how to live a lonely life cut off from the world, learning how to keep Father happy. And now she’s gone, and it’s as if half of me has been torn away.” He looked down at the birds, clucked his tongue. A raven hopped up into his lap, looking up at him expectantly with clever black eyes.
“I’ve wilded thirty of them today alone,” Ryder went on. “Mother says I’ll kill myself wilding so constantly. But I can’t possibly stop. Maybe one of them will find her.”
He cupped his hands, and the bird stepped into them. He brought the creature up to his face and murmured Ekkari to it, a long string of words. Instructions, I assumed. His wilding magic pulsed gently against me, against all of us gathered—a soft ripple of warmth that made the birds squawk and ruffle their feathers. One of the horses stamped its hoof. Then Ryder lifted his hands into the air, and the raven took off flying. In moments, its dark wings were lost in the trees.
I watched the spot for a long time. Then, carefully, I began to speak. “When the Warden took Mara, she was ten, and I was twelve. I woke up every day praying it had been a dream, that I’d run down the hall and find her safe in her bed. For weeks, I would go check every morning before I did anything else, my heart absolutely pounding, every inch of me aching with hope—only to find my mother there instead, clutching Mara’s sheets, crying for her. She wouldn’t let the staff wash any of it—her linens, her clothes. Only after Mother left could we finally clean her room. I stopped talking to the gods not long after that. Every now and then a prayer will escape, but only when I’m truly desperate. Those childhood rituals stay with you, even when you would prefer they didn’t.”
Ryder was very quiet, listening with such intense concentration that I felt a little embarrassed. Somehow I found the courage to look at him and face that hard blue gaze of his.
“I know it’s not the same thing,” I said, “but I do know what it is to grieve, the kind of grief that hollows you out and leaves you changed forever.” I gave him a small, rueful smile. “If I were a woman who prayed with any consistency or sincerity, I’d pray to the gods that you won’t have to know this grief you’re feeling for very long. But in lieu of that, I’ll simply say that if anyone can survive whatever’s happening, be it a firebird or Kilraith or just a dying Mist throwing a temper tantrum, it’s Alastrina Bask.”
Ryder smiled and looked down at his feet. We sat in silence for a moment, and I was ready to rise and say something about the horses, anything to break this strange quiet simmering between us, when suddenly he reached over and took my hands in his, and lifted them to his lips, and kissed my fingers.
He lingered there for a moment, his mouth hot against my skin, his eyes closed tight as if in pain. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I could only stare at my small hands wrapped up in his, his dark head bowed over them.
“You act so fierce,” he said at last, softly, the words washing over my skin as gently as if he’d drawn a feather across it. “And you are, but…” His voice trailed off. He watched my hands as if trying to decipher a puzzle woven into my palms.
“But?” I prompted, my voice a mere breath.
“That was a kindness, Farrin, what you just said. A kindness I’m not sure I deserve.” He released my hands, his brow furrowed, and then looked at me with something like mirth in his eyes. “That’s one of the reasons why I like you when all reason and history tells me that I shouldn’t. Your tongue is sharp, you’re thorny all over, but there’s something underneath that, something you don’t let people see. A softness. We’re alike in that way.”
I was too shocked by the direction this conversation was taking to think before I spoke. “You’re saying you possess a secret softness?”
He frowned at his boots. “I try to. It isn’t easy. You make it look easy, though. I don’t think other people see it—maybe you don’t even see it—but I do. I see what you mean to your family, how much you love them even when they infuriate you, how you’d do anything to protect them even when they may not deserve it.” He found an acorn in the dirt, picked it up, tossed it to a passel of squirrels squatting patiently on the roots of a nearby tree. “How safe that must make them feel, your family, to know that kind of love.”
At first I couldn’t find my words. This was a remarkable moment, and remarkably strange, and I felt ill-equipped to handle it with any sort of delicacy. My heart was beating in my cheeks, my whole body warm and weightless. I was unused to the feeling and wasn’t sure I liked it. Flustered, I grabbed for any anchor I could find.
“If this is some sort of strategy to get me to like you,” I blurted out, “it’s not a very artful one.”
It was a terrible thing to say—not enough humor in it to be a joke, and even then, what a bad joke that would have been. I clamped my mouth shut before I could completely wreck our fragile rapport and watched Ryder nod to himself, elbows on his knees, hands clasped before him. The squirrels were fighting over the acorn, chittering furiously at one another. The absurd thought came to me that perhaps a gift from a Bask was something of a trophy for the Ravenswood squirrels.
After a moment of awful silence, Ryder stood, smoothing his tunic. “So,” he said lightly, all business now and not looking at me, “you said you wanted to punch something?”
I sat there in a stupor, watching him stride into the stable yard and wanting to scream at myself for ruining whatever it was he’d been trying to say. He retrieved our fighting staffs and the leather targets. The horses trotted after him, whickering happily, and still I couldn’t move, nailed to the bench. My fingers burned where his lips had touched them, and my heart raced as if we’d just run a fast mile. I pushed hard against the rise of my tears. A grieving man, worried sick about his sister, had tried to say something extraordinarily kind to me, and I’d bitten it off and spat it back at him as if it meant nothing to me, as if he meant nothing.
I didn’t know what Ryder Bask meant to me, but it was most certainly not nothing .
“Well, come on, then,” Ryder called out. He hung the targets from the stable rafters, and when I finally managed to move my shaky legs and join him, a thousand words of awkward apology fighting each other on my tongue, he tossed a staff at me and lunged before I’d even gotten a good grip on it. I flung it up wildly, instinct screaming at me to protect myself. Our weapons locked, and I reeled where I stood, my arms trembling as I pushed my staff up against his.
“You didn’t give me time to prepare,” I said, glaring at him. “And I said I wanted to punch something, not—”
“And will your attacker give you such a choice?” Ryder said, pushing hard against me.
All my regret and shame vanished in an instant. I got a better grip on my staff and pushed back, indignation giving me strength. I was pleased to see him take a step back and steady himself.
He smiled down at me. “Anyway, shoving something feels just as good, doesn’t it?”
I scowled and pushed him again, even harder, a sharp, mean thrust that made him stumble back just enough. In that moment of freedom, I managed to step away, reposition myself, and spin the staff around to block his when it came flying back toward me.
“Good,” he said, “but try not to give away your next move.”
“That one took you by surprise well enough,” I said. I blew a strand of hair out of my face and began circling him, my staff raised defensively.
“So you think,” he countered with a grin, “but in fact I let you have it as a courtesy.”
And then, too fast for me to block him, he whirled around and flung out his staff at my leg. The thing caught me in the back of my knee and sent me crashing to my hands and knees on the floor. The fall jarred me, made my head spin a little. Ryder came up to me, hand outstretched, and said, a little too smugly, “Sorry, Ashbourne, I couldn’t resist.”
For an instant, I couldn’t even see the stable. I saw the hazy red and black of my anger, and I let out a sharp cry and jumped to my feet, reeling, unbalanced, and swung my staff around hard, intending to crack him on the shoulder with it—but he was fast and dodged me. And so it went for an hour, us circling each other and swiping at each other, his staff clipping me nearly every time. Mine mostly hit air, and sometimes the leather targets, but never him, never his broad back or his thick thighs, never his grinning, bearded face.
I swung and struck and darted and spun myself into exhaustion, but I wouldn’t give up; I couldn’t. As I fought this huge bear of a man I couldn’t possibly defeat, my mind whirled frantically, full of distractions. Yvaine, sick in her palace, possibly dying. Mara, fighting monsters in the Mist. Gemma, writing to people I’d sworn to hate for the rest of my life. Father, brooding in his rooms, most likely attempting to drink away all the knowledge we’d learned over the past few weeks. The firebird, and the Warden, and the Three-Eyed Crown, currently on its way to the capital in the care of Gareth. And what would his investigations unearth? And what would Gemma and Great-Aunt Felicity discover as they rooted around in Mother’s ancestry? What new problems would soon be mine to solve?
And what in the name of all the gods would I say to Ryder once we were finished sparring?
With my head so full, I couldn’t think well enough to aim at anything, and my arms were so wobbly I could barely hold up my staff. I thought I saw Ryder moving in the corner of my vision, and I spun around and let my staff fly—but it only hit one of the targets. It made contact with a deafening smack , which I felt all the way up my arms and into my teeth. The feeling was too good; it shook my thoughts loose a bit, hurt my bones enough to distract me from myself. My palms were burning; I’d have blisters in the morning. But I didn’t care. I swung, and I swung, frantic and clumsy, beating the target so hard it began spinning wildly from the rafters.
“Farrin,” said Ryder quietly from behind me, and it was then that I realized I was crying, that it was hard to breathe.
Mortified, I tossed the staff away, heard it clatter against the hay-strewn floor. I started to leave, but Ryder stopped me before I could get very far. He came around and barred my way, his hands raised, his posture careful, deferent, and I crashed into him without thinking, curled my fingers into his tunic, and held on as tight as I could. I didn’t understand why I was crying, other than the fact that everything, everywhere, was wrong in some way, and I didn’t know how to mend any of it.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, furious with myself. “Here you are, scared to death for your sister, and I’m being absolutely rotten. Rotten person, rotten sparring partner.” Angrily, I wiped my face. “I don’t want to be crying. Gods, what you must think of me.”
I tried again to leave him, but Ryder held on to me. “Please don’t go,” he said quietly into my hair. “You’re in no state to go anywhere. Stay here with me. All right? Just for a few minutes.”
I leaned my forehead against his chest, too tired to resist his steadiness. “I’m horrified. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. You should have seen me earlier. You witnessed only the tail end of it. I’ve been a mess for days.”
“You’re being kind. Thank you, but…” I shook my head and placed my hands flat against him, ready to push him away. “I should go. I’m sorry for saying what I said earlier. Clearly you were wrong. I’ve no secret softness. I’m thorns through and through. You should stay far away, and I…I should go.”
“Please don’t.”
His voice gentled to something impossibly tender, so at odds with his scruffy face, his stature like a prowling lion, that I couldn’t help but look at him. When I did, I lost my breath a little, because he was gazing down at me as if I was dear to him, as if the sight of me crying in his arms was agony. Brow furrowed, eyes soft. He touched the damp strands of hair that clung to my neck; he brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers. Then he leaned down to press his forehead to mine. He closed his eyes, and his jaw worked as if he was struggling deeply with something.
“Farrin,” he said at last, low and rough. “Farrin, Farrin.” He smoothed his thumb against my cheek, shook his head a little, and opened his eyes—a sudden shot of fierce blue. “May I kiss you?”
The question was outrageous. That I was even standing here at Ravenswood, that I was holding on to Ryder Bask and letting him hold me, that I was even considering his request, was ridiculous enough to warrant serious reflection and a prompt visit to Madam Moreen, our family’s healer.
“Why would you want to,” I whispered, “after how I’ve behaved?”
He laughed quietly. “You’re too hard on yourself.”
I shook my head. I told myself to let go of his shirt, to walk away, but I couldn’t make my body obey. “Please let me apologize.”
“You’ve already done that. I accept.”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “ Ryder— ”
“Please, Farrin. Will you answer my question?” He touched my face again with the backs of his fingers, his words still lingering in the air— May I kiss you? —and I couldn’t help myself. I blamed the adrenaline, my exhaustion, my guilt. I blamed how nice it felt to be held, how handsome Ryder looked in the warm lantern light. I leaned into him—the son of my father’s enemy, the man I’d sworn from childhood to hate—and I whispered, “Yes.”
He gave me a gentle smile, so soft and sweet that it made me ache. He let out a breath—an anxious one, I thought, a little unsteady, as if this huge, fearsome man were nervous to touch me—and then he cupped my face in his hands, leaned down, and kissed me.
I’d been kissed before, but only twice: once by Gareth at sixteen, on the disastrous night when we had decided to try what everyone already thought we were doing, and once at one of Gemma’s parties, when I’d angrily downed three glasses of wine in the span of five minutes and then flirted with an Aidurran woman whose name I couldn’t even remember. We’d kissed for a very pleasant—albeit hazy—few minutes under the stairs, after which I’d gotten sick all over her very pretty beaded silk slippers. She’d been exceedingly kind about it; she’d found Gilroy, who’d found Hetty, who had taken me to bed, and that was the last I’d seen of her, for which I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could have borne the humiliation of apologizing to her for ruining what was most certainly an expensive pair of shoes.
The experience of kissing Ryder, though, was entirely different. Gareth had been nervous, and so had I; we had both immediately sensed the wrongness of our little experiment but had pressed on anyway. And the Aidurran woman I remembered only in pieces: her hand on my waist, the rose notes of her perfume.
But Ryder held me with a sure strength that I knew would sear itself into my mind forever. At first his kisses were soft, even a little cautious, but his palms were warm on my cheeks, and the feeling of his taller, larger body looming over mine left my knees wobbly: his head bowing low to kiss me, his big hands holding me as gently as if I were one of his wilded birds. I felt enveloped by him, a precious creature being sheltered in the embrace of a mountain. The feeling was so overwhelming, so new and surprising, that I let out a soft cry against his mouth and pressed closer to him, desperate for more.
His arms came around me at once, and mine slid around his neck, and I pressed up against him, my heartbeat like thunder in my ears. He groaned, and the rough, masculine sound was fuel to my fire. Heat flooded my body. I whimpered in frustration, not knowing what I wanted, and I shifted shyly against him, unthinking and clumsy. That unlocked something in him; he easily lifted me into his arms, an exhilarating sensation that scratched at the corner of my mind. Obviously I’d not once in my life been held by Ryder Bask, and yet with his arms around me, his grip strong and steady, my chest pressed to his, I felt a twinge of recognition, of familiarity.
But then our kisses grew deeper, his tongue opening my mouth; his ardor was intoxicating, insistent, and all rational thought disappeared. I curled my fingers into his tunic and clung to him, and let him have me. The shock of it all, the unexpected pleasure, left me breathless. He started kissing my jaw, my neck, and I tilted my head back and held him to me, threaded my fingers through his thick dark hair. We were moving; then we weren’t. He’d found a bale of hay to sit on, which for some reason seemed wildly funny to me, but then I was in his lap, his arms holding me tight against him, and I felt him hot and hard between my legs, and then nothing was funny anymore.
I gasped and flinched a little, wholly unused to anything that was happening and feeling suddenly embarrassed and exposed. A sort of panic unfolded in my chest, and even though I loved the feeling of his hair between my fingers, even though the sheer bulk of him beneath me made me ache between my legs, I went stiff. All the beautiful open parts of me that had blossomed in his arms closed up tight.
“Ryder,” I whispered. “Wait.”
He stopped at once. He pulled back, released my hips, and looked at me in concern, breathing hard, his face flushed. He reached up as if to touch my face and then hesitated.
“What is it?” he said. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head, tears of frustration burning behind my eyes. “No, you didn’t. You did nothing wrong. I just need…I need to stand up.”
He helped me do so, then stood too, then sat back on the bale of hay, obviously and endearingly unsure of himself. He cleared his throat. I tried very hard not to stare at the obvious evidence of his desire.
“Should I leave?” he asked at last. When I didn’t answer, his expression of concern softened. “It’s all right, Farrin. I can leave right now. I’m sorry if I—”
“No, don’t be sorry.” I spat the words, then turned away from him and hugged myself. I was so furious and mortified that I couldn’t say anything for a moment, and I couldn’t leave, and I couldn’t face him. I could only stand there and burn, needing him desperately yet afraid of the thing I needed, though I didn’t understand why.
“I’ve never…” I started, then lost my voice. I tried again. “I mean, I’m not…”
Ryder said nothing, waiting for me to say whatever it was I needed to say, only I didn’t know what I needed to say. All my words were stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat.
“You don’t have to explain anything,” he said at last, so gently that I had to look at him. I had to make him understand, even if it killed me.
I turned around, my arms still crossed over my chest. “I’m not a virgin,” I announced. At first, that was all I could say.
He waited, and waited, and then said patiently, “All right. Thank you for sharing that with me.”
The sound of his big gentle voice, and the sight of him sitting there on the bale of hay with his long legs and his beard that needed a trim, gave me a spot of courage. I took two quick steps toward him. I unfolded my arms and held them stiffly at my sides..
“I’m not a virgin, but I’ve only done this twice. This.” I gestured between us. “Whatever this is. And I’ve done more than this only once.”
Ryder nodded but said nothing.
“I’m not good with my body,” I said quietly. “Gemma is. Gareth is. Other people are. Not me. I don’t even like looking at myself in the mirror. Gods.” I laughed, feeling slightly hysterical. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I do, because—” I made a frustrated sound; I would not allow more tears, not after I’d already embarrassed myself more than enough for one day. I took a breath and blurted out, “Because I want you. It doesn’t make any sense, but I do. I thought of you last night, and I…it felt good.” My cheeks were burning. I looked very hard at the floor. “And I’ve never felt that way before. So clearly…” I gestured between us again, laughing a little, because the situation felt so absurd. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“I do,” he said solemnly. “And Farrin…” He breathed in and out slowly. “I’m honored.”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard, willing the feeling to pass.
“But you don’t have to force yourself to do anything, ever,” he went on, “no matter what sorts of handsome bearded men you might like to think of while alone in your bed.”
His voice held a smile; I glanced up and saw a slight sparkle in his eyes, and I laughed and covered my face. “Oh gods. I’m sorry. This is…” I waved at him. “You’re Ryder Bask, for gods’ sake.”
“And you’re Farrin Ashbourne,” he replied. His mischievous smile gentled. “Do you want to punch things some more? Or should I walk you back to your greenway?”
I stood there for a moment, forcing myself to feel all the nervy tendrils of uncertainty shivering throughout my body. In the quiet, with only the snuffling horses nearby, my thoughts began to settle.
“I can walk myself home,” I said slowly, “but before I go, would you kiss me again?”
“Are you sure you want me to?”
I nodded, made myself look at him. “I do. I’m sorry for the…” I waved at myself. “I’m sorry.”
He rose and came to me, took my face gently in his hands. “Never apologize to me for that.”
I let my eyes drift closed, relishing the feeling of him so close to me, the earthy, sweaty scent of him. “Never apologize for what?”
“For knowing your body and yourself,” he replied, “and for telling me what you don’t want, and what you do.”
Then he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me—unbearably soft, unthinkably sweet, each touch of his lips a tender brush of skin against skin. I melted into him, my eyes still closed, as his lips feathered across my cheeks, my jaw, and down my neck to the hollow of my throat. His hands slid into my hair, so slow and gentle that my skin broke out into goose bumps.
He noticed and laughed gently against my collarbones. “Quite the compliment,” he murmured. The soft rumble of his voice left me unable to stand on my own. I leaned into him, and he seemed to sense what I needed in that moment; he drew me to his chest and held me, tucked his head over mine, and with my ear pressed against him, I could hear the wild pounding of his heart and felt a sudden fierce tenderness. I pulled back a little and touched his face, traced the lines of his jaw beneath his beard, marveling at him. He closed his eyes and turned to kiss my palm, my fingers.
“Will you come to Ivyhill tomorrow?” I said quietly, watching him, noticing things I never had: the scar above his left eyebrow, the slightly crooked line of his nose. “You don’t have to tell me where your greenways are. I don’t care. I’m glad you have them, really. Just come, please. If you want. If you can. Talan is there, and we should talk, all of us. We need to visit the queen as soon as possible.”
I wanted to say so much more than that—it felt silly to pretend I didn’t—but I couldn’t find the courage. It had taken every scrap of bravery I possessed to ask for those last kisses. Instead I mustered up a small smile, hoping he could see in it at least some of what I was feeling—gratitude, and need, and disappointment, and a hard knot of fear, and a secret, wild hope. If he came to Ivyhill, what would happen then? What would it feel like the next time we saw each other?
He searched my face for a moment, then smiled and kissed my forehead. “Of course,” he said, his lips against my skin, and I closed my eyes and held on to him for another moment. When he released me, I bit back a cry of protest. Part of me wanted to run away from him and never return; part of me wanted to beg him to take me to the nearest bed so we could try again, and properly.
Instead I took a step back from him, my blood roaring, our fingers still loosely joined. As overwhelmed as I felt, that was the most I could manage. There were so many things to say, and I couldn’t untangle any of them. The memory of how it had felt when he held me—that twinge of familiarity, like the faint echo of an old, beloved song—had returned and now sat uncomfortably in my chest. I tried to ignore it; I had more than enough to think about without chasing every stray puzzled thought that flew into my head.
I gave him a small smile. “Tomorrow?” I said quietly.
“Tomorrow,” he replied. Then he kissed my hand and turned away, and I hurried into the woods, where the damp air cooled my cheeks and the quiet was a welcome balm to my bewildered, aching heart.