Chapter 48 Home
Home
Soon they left the trees and entered rolling farmland, the town visible in the distance.
They reached it in mid-afternoon, as Niel had predicted.
A man on the street was taking down laundry from a line.
Niel ran the words he’d need over in his head as he approached, bracing himself to use the foreign tongue.
The man looked up at the warrior’s approach, his eyes squinting and his expression a little stern.
In broken words Niel asked after a room, repeating himself twice. Yes, the man said, once Niel had finally gotten the message across, as Ayla absently scratched Flower’s forehead and listened to them talk. That way, and a left.
Not everywhere they stayed was big enough for an inn, though there was often a farmer willing to make a few coins off renting a room, or a barn they could sleep in.
But this place was comfortable, the town big, though not approaching city-status.
A young girl led Flower away to the inn’s stables while the girl’s father led Niel and Ayla up to the second floor of a stone building, to a room with a wide fireplace, a pair of narrow windows, and a neatly-made bed.
Niel thanked the man and closed the door. He set down his pack and stared at Ayla, who’d perched on the dainty chair next to the hearth to unlace her boots.
“Do you want to marry me?” he blurted, before he could consider whether that question was better posed at another time, in another way. Ayla looked up at him, still bent half-over, fingers buried in the knot of her left boot’s lace. The right shoe was already off.
“What?” she asked, and straightened abruptly.
“We keep saying husband and wife,” he said, feeling himself flush. They’d decided it was best to do so on the road, uncertain how Cirancian people would view the two of them sharing a bed otherwise. “I just wondered. Neither of us wants anyone else. Shouldn’t we, then?”
“And here I thought I was running off with a married man.” though her tone was teasing, Ayla bit her bottom lip nervously.
Niel narrowed his eyes. His Aronthian half-wife had become something of a joke that Ayla liked to tease him over. Just now, he didn’t want her laughing at him. He was serious about it, and if he’d waited less long to ask, the question might not have burst out of him at such an inopportune moment.
“Would it change anything?” she added quietly, so soft he barely heard, from where he stood at the doorway.
“Change anything?”
“Well, it’s just. Being married before…” she blinked and looked away.
Niel felt his throat tighten. They were different people now; happier people.
But only so much could change in a handful of months.
Even in a year, or two, or five, he knew they’d still carry shadows of their wounds.
He crossed the distance to her and knelt slowly before her.
Ayla had clasped her hands tightly on her lap.
He took them slowly into his own, and squeezed gently until she met his eyes again.
“No,” Niel told her firmly. “No, it wouldn’t change anything. Not like that. But if the idea troubles you, there’s no need to marry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No. I want to,” she answered quickly. “I won’t let him ruin that.
I want to give you… but could I have a little more time, Niel?
I know we say we’re married, but only when we speak Cirani, and never in private, and I…
” her gaze dropped down, away from his own.
He waited as patiently as he could manage, still holding her hands tightly in his own.
“I don’t have doubts about you,” Ayla added.
“Or about how I feel, or what I want. I love you so much sometimes it hurts to breathe, and I want a life with you, all of it. But I’m still scared, Niel. I can’t help that.”
“Then we’ll take it one day at a time,” he answered. “What’s the rush, when we have our whole lives? But should I keep asking, or should I wait for you to bring it up?”
“You can ask, if you promise not to be hurt if I say I’m still not ready,” she said.
“Will you promise to tell me, if you fall out of love, or you decide you don’t want this anymore?”
“That won’t happen.” Ayla frowned at him. “I told you, it’s not because I’m uncertain about you.”
“But if it did,” Niel pressed seriously.
“If it did, which it won’t, then yes. I’d tell you.”
“Then I won’t be hurt, if I ask for your hand again and you say you need more time. Because I’ll have no cause to worry, if you haven’t told me you’re through with me.”
“Good,” she said.
“Good,” he agreed. He let go of her hands and unlaced her remaining shoe for her, drawing it from her foot. Niel braced his hands on the sides of the chair’s seat and stood, doubled over her, his lips an inch from hers. “Now, will you come to bed with me? Or would you rather rest?”
She tilted her chin up to his and caught his mouth with her own.
Ayla’s hands wound around his neck. Niel crouched, drew her to him, and straightened with her in his arms. The bed was only a few feet away, but he laid her down with great ceremony, removed his own shoes, and climbed on top of her.
They removed each other’s clothes slowly, savoring the feel of each other’s bodies under their hands.
There was never any need to rush. Not here.
It was simple, and it was good, and there was no paradise he found more tempting than her.
Her body was smooth and supple beneath his hands, and she came on his fingers, repeatedly, her body arching up to his as Ayla whimpered into Niel’s lips, small gasps and hitched breaths he studied with hungry devotion.
He groaned as he pushed his cock between her legs, her grip on him tight and warm and slick.
He rocked into her body, each thrust a bolt of tight, mindless pleasure, and he didn’t care what had happened in the past. They’d left it behind, in the frigid cold of the north.
They were here now, and he loved her more than life, and her lips shaped soft cries of pleasure against his neck as his release pulsed inside her.
They had each other again after supper, Ayla riding him this time, and began to drift asleep in a tangle of limbs, the bedsheet damp from his spill.
The feeling of a weight pinning him down made him uneasy, even now, especially with the lust ebbing.
He gently pulled her off him and to his side instead, keeping her head cradled against his chest.
“Sorry,” Ayla whispered. “Know you don’t…”
“Never apologize,” he murmured back, and breathed in the smell of her hair.
She was still in bed the next morning, even after Niel had exercised as quietly as he could, and washed, and dressed.
“Could we stay here another day?” she murmured when he crawled beside her on the bed to check on her.
“If you like. Are you feeling alright?”
“I’m just tired.”
He considered this for a moment. She’d been tired a lot in the last few days.
“I’ll get a healer,” Niel offered.
“No.” Ayla’s hand settled on his arm. “Never better, truly. I think all this walking is just getting to me. I just want a day in bed. You don’t mind?”
“Of course not, if you’re certain,” he said carefully. It was still hard not to worry, even if she said she was fine.
“Go,” she said, sleepily. “Explore the town. Enjoy yourself. Am I terribly spoiled if I ask you to bring me something good for lunch?”
“No,” Niel said, feeling a little cheered by this invitation to check up on her. “Do you need anything before I go?”
She shook her head no, drowsily, and curled up tighter on the bed. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and left.
He returned at noon to find Ayla out of bed, pacing between the two small windows and worrying her thumbnail.
“Ayla,” he said, and set down the stuffed bread he’d brought her. She turned to face him, her face ashen beneath the light tan she’d acquired from all the hours spent outdoors. “What’s the matter?”
“I haven’t known how to say it,” she whispered.
His stomach sank, and he drew a deep breath.
“It was yesterday, wasn’t it?” Niel asked hoarsely. “You don’t want to get married, someday. Or—you aren’t sure you want to be with me, and…”
“No,” Ayla said sharply, nearly scoffing. “Don’t be foolish. It’s not that.”
“Then what?” he asked. She shook her head and buried her face in her hands for a moment. If the problem wasn’t him, it had to be something worse. Maybe she was sick. Or maybe she loved him, but she couldn’t stop missing Enar. “Ayla, you’re frightening me. Just say it. What’s wrong?”
“I might be with child,” she whispered into her hands.
“I think I’m with child. I’m tired, and I’m weeks late, and my breasts ache.
Only, you keep saying how well you like traveling, but the money won’t last forever, and we’ve got nowhere to live, and we barely speak the language, so how are we to sort it all out or speak to a midwife properly or raise a baby on the road, and we’re going to need a second donkey to carry everything or, or a cart, but I don’t want to raise a baby on the road, I want a proper bed and a cradle and a roof when it rains, but I’m scared I’m going to be the one to ruin everything and you won’t be happy like you’ve been.
” She scarcely drew a breath as she spilled this out, her voice thin at the end.
She gulped air and stared up at him in teary horror.
Niel stared back wide-eyed. He’d heard all of it, distantly, but his brain had tripped over the first mention of child, and refused to get up again.
“...Pregnant?” he felt dizzy. He didn’t fully understand how. She had purchased contraceptive tea. At least, they’d thought it was, from the stilted conversation in the herbalist’s shop. The leaves had been ground up, but Ayla had said they smelled right. “You… we’re… what?”