Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Want
“I’ll work,” Aoife said. “I’ll work harder than anyone.”
The innkeeper stood there, looking her over, his unibrow nearly thick enough to give his nose shade from the sun.
Not that there was danger of sun that day.
The world was thick with wind and snow. The innkeeper’s lifeless grey eyes studied her face, seeming to calculate if she was pretty enough to be a barmaid or if she should be in the kitchen.
She must have been quite the sight, half-starved, half-asleep, and fully drenched in mud and leaves.
They hadn’t stopped running for nearly a full day.
The innkeeper stood back from his reception desk. “You can have a room,” he said, “after you’ve worked a shift tomorrow.”
Aoife’s heart dropped to her stomach. “But it’s night. I’ll freeze to death outside waiting for tomorrow.”
He shrugged, busying himself with some calculation in a little leather book on the tall desk. “Not my problem.”
Outside, Shadach was hiding, waiting, in the cold and sleet.
Probably succumbing to the hypothermia that had nearly claimed them again and again in the last twenty-four hours.
Their plan had been for Aoife to get them a room somehow, anyhow, and then try to sneak Shadach inside.
If the owners knew a Halcin was trying to stay there, they might refuse him.
Not to mention Shadach was wanted for murder.
Aoife looked back, the window putting the icy outdoors on full display. “Please,” she said. “A room tonight and I’ll work a full day, more than a full day, tomorrow.”
The innkeeper studied her again.
“You’re getting the better end of this deal, I promise.”
The innkeeper’s laugh was more of a sneer. “I doubt that.” But then he said, “Fine. Won’t be a nice room, though.”
“Thank you, thank you!”
Looking around at the small tavern behind Aoife, the innkeeper locked one of the desk drawers with a skeleton key then grabbed a different key out of an unlocked drawer.
“Here,” he tossed it to her. “Lose it and it’ll cost you.”
Leading her into the inn down a large hallway, Aoife followed him up a narrow staircase. Back, back, back they went past rooms on either side until they got to the furthest end of the inn. He nodded to a door with a door handle about to fall off.
“You can clean rooms in the morning,” the innkeeper said, “and work in the tavern tomorrow night.” As he left, he said, “I expect you’ll be fresh and charming.”
“The freshest you’ve ever seen,” Aoife said with a smile that made her lips hurt. They were still half-bleeding from the cold.
Placing the key in the door, Aoife jostled the handle and the key until an inner latch gave way and the door creaked open.
She walked into darkness. This was when she missed living in a world with electricity.
Fumbling around in the blackness, Aoife found a candle situated on top of a round, iron box.
Taking the lid, and the candle, off the box, Aoife felt inside for a piece of flint, a striker block, and a bit of cloth.
Readying the flint and block in hand, close to the cloth, Aoife struck the flint onto the block, hard and fierce, until a spark ignited.
She would never stop being excited when that little spark appeared, no matter how many times she did this.
The priestess who had shown her how to light a candle at the Temple of Lust had laughed at her excitement, but Aoife hadn’t been able to help feeling so capable.
So rugged. So self-sufficient. She blew on the ember in the cloth until it became a tiny flame.
Quickly, she put the tip of the candle into the flame, lighting it.
After smothering the flame in the box she replaced the lid, the candle now sitting on a small holder on top.
She turned around, the room illuminated.
Her fierce self-sufficiency sank like a boulder in the ocean.
The room was barely bigger than a shoebox.
The bed on the floor was a tattered blanket wrapped around a smattering of thin straw.
The blanket looked like it hadn’t been cleaned.
Ever. A small trunk was pushed up against a three-legged stool in the corner, and Aoife didn’t want to know what had scurried away from the thin table the candle sat on.
She glanced out the window, reminding herself this was better than being in the snow.
The snow. Shadach.
Jostling the window open, Aoife stuck her head into the cold and frost. After nearly ten minutes, she saw Shadach moving past the window, his face hidden by the hood of his cloak.
Aoife whistled out the window, catching Shadach’s attention.
He looked up, his eyes turning from hard suspicion to gentle trust when his gaze met hers. Aoife’s heart skipped.
This was the man who had traversed a frozen hell to find her. To save her. Even after she’d made choices that were more than a little questionable.
“Hold on,” Aoife said. Turning, she grabbed the tattered blanket wrapped around the straw bed and did her best to put knots in it at even intervals.
It wasn’t long enough to reach the ground outside, but Aoife tossed it out the window anyway, holding onto one end.
Climbing a stubby tree, Shadach reached for the blanket.
Aoife held herself as far out the window as she could manage.
With a slight jump, Shadach grabbed the end of the blanket and Aoife thrust herself backwards, trying to support his weight.
Digging her feet against the wall, she held fast as he climbed, the blanket stretching, the threads snapping.
Please hold, she begged someone. Anyone.
Shadach wouldn’t die from a fall from this height, but it wouldn’t be pleasant either.
The pull of the fabric made Aoife’s palms burn as Shadach climbed, climbed, climbed.
She focused so hard she forgot to breathe, only inhaling when she saw Shadach’s hands grip the windowsill and the slack release on the blanket.
Aoife fell to her knees in a rush of exhaustion and desperate need for air.
“I have to say,” Shadach pulled himself through the window, pulling the blanket in after him, “it’s been a long time since I’ve had to sneak into a pretty girl’s room.”
Aoife laughed. He could still laugh and smile, still make her laugh and smile, even in the state they were in. It warmed her better than any fire.
“I’m sorry the room itself isn’t prettier,” she said.
Closing the window, Shadach helped Aoife to her feet. “What are you talking about?” He looked at her, not glancing at the room, not once. “It has you in it, of course it’s lovely.”
Aoife flushed. The way he’d said that, so natural, without a hint of irony or callousness.
It had been so … impractical. Not at all what she had been told to desire.
The most romantic thing her parents said to each other was a dispassionate, “I find your intelligence particularly appealing just now.” And when it came to her brother and his wife, Aoife had off-handedly wondered if they considered “spicing things up” to mean doing it on top of their most recently published research.
“Besides,” Shadach turned, glancing about the room for the first time, “between a couple of artists, I think we can make this place something special, don’t you?”
A couple of artists. An artist. Aoife flushed hot in a whole new way, the little girl in her with dreams of meeting the Prime Minister because of her artistic talent beaming with joy. Aoife knew she should have told that little girl to stop being a fool. To grow up. She didn’t want to.
“Absolutely,” Aoife said.
Shadach flashed a smile that wiped away the tiredness in Aoife’s bones.
Finding an old rag in the corner, Aoife relieved the more faint-hearted parts of the room from its burdens of dust while Shadach re-wrapped the straw mattress with the blanket.
Opening the small trunk in the corner, he pulled out a blanket riddled with holes.
Then, he pulled out a small wooden box. Opening it, he smiled.
“Now what could we do with these?” Shadach held out the box to Aoife. She took it, the wood rough in her even-rougher hands. Inside were a few sewing needles and a smattering of different colours of thread. Aoife looked to the threads, looked to the hole-riddled blanket.
“Can you sew?” she said.
“No,” he laughed.
“Perfect, me neither.”
Because technical skill didn’t matter right now. Sewing up the holes in the blanket wouldn’t be so much about mending it as it would be about adding colour. Beauty. Life.
Aoife sat on the bed, Shadach beside her, the heat of his body against hers making her toes and lips tingle. Threading a needle, badly, Aoife began working a soft pink thread into the blanket. Shadach had begun with a bright blue.
“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever made?” Shadach said, his lips creased tight in concentration as he tried to re-thread his needle.
“That teapot when I was little,” Aoife said without thinking.
“Teapot?”
Shit. She hadn’t meant to say that. To admit that. It had escaped all the same.
“I … made this teapot. Once. It was awful, and I realised I shouldn’t be an artist after that.” Aoife tried to make her words light. Effortless. They sounded anything but.
Shadach laughed. Aoife felt herself getting hard, ready to defend herself against that laughter. But when she listened to it, really listened to the sound, it wasn’t mocking or condescending. It was … sweet.
“You can’t try something once,” Shadach said, “and decide you’re not good at it. Even Halcin children are terrible at art at first and it’s supposedly in our blood.”
Aoife studied the blanket, the thread loose in her hand.
“What is it?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
His hand was on hers. So warm. So reassuring. So dangerous. He made her believe everything that was past had been wrong.