Chapter 51 The Welcome
The Welcome
Ayla leaned precariously over the empty cradle, a nail pinched between her lips and a hammer in her right hand.
Bracing herself upright against the wall—she was liable to topple forwards otherwise, with only a month left in her pregnancy—she tapped the nail into the mortar between two bricks.
Dust and small crumbs of debris fell with each hit.
“Drat,” Ayla muttered. She’d need to clean that. Well, at least the nail was in. She braced both hands against the wall, the hammer still curled in her right fist, and tried to push herself upright.
“Here,” Niel said, appearing behind her and quickly striding over. “What are you doing?”
“I could’ve managed,” Ayla said, as he helped her off the wall and took the hammer from her.
“Doubtlessly,” he agreed. “But why didn’t you ask me to help?”
“Can you hang that?” she asked, and pointed at the small, cloth-wrapped object she’d set on the side table. “Carefully,” Ayla added, as he reached to pick it up.
He unwrapped it, and stared down at the small glass evergreen tree in his hand, no bigger than his palm. She’d threaded string through a loop in the top so they could hang it beside the cradle, with just enough gap between the wall and the railing that it wouldn’t fall inside if the nail gave out.
She couldn’t read his expression.
“It’s not for a Blackfell fir,” she said quickly.
“But I wanted something northern, and I didn’t want stilder berries, and I didn’t think you’d want a dragon.
And it would be hard, anyways, trying to make a dragon.
” Their child would technically be of Mount Eyron, an heir to the Arevon dynasty.
But none of that would matter here in Cirancia.
“You made this?” Niel’s eyes finally left the tree and found hers. Ayla nearly laughed at the awed look on his face. She braced her back with one hand and shrugged.
“It wasn’t too hard.”
“It’s beautiful.” He carefully threaded his finger into the loop of string and went to hang the tree on the wall. “And he finally let you work with the glass. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Ayla said. “Anyways, Mastro Gante made me pay for the time, and the materials. He surely thought I’d make a mess of things.”
Niel stepped back to admire the way the tree looked.
Ayla glanced around, taking in the whole room.
It had been transformed, from the cool clay and brick chamber into a cozy nursery.
There was a rug on the floor, and a plush chair beside a short bookshelf that so far only held one book in their own language; even with Niel’s teaching, books were expensive, and those from Enar were rare here.
“Well, he must have been impressed,” he said.
Ayla shrugged. The tree was quite simple, really, though she did think she’d done a good job on the points of the boughs, and she’d etched in a few lines of needles to give it texture.
“He said I could come back and work the glass, if I’d like.”
“That’s wonderful,” Niel said. He looked at her, and seemed to read her uncertainty. Niel’s brow furrowed. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes,” she said, without hesitating. And then: “it was. I don’t know.”
Niel watched her patiently, brow still furrowed. Ayla sighed, and lowered herself into the chair, sinking into the plush gratefully.
“I always loved it,” she said. He already knew how her father had paid for her to apprentice with the glassblower just outside Carinth; how she’d adored the glass pieces he sold to his wealthiest customers.
And when Mastro Gante had let her work in the shop, she’d told Niel it felt like coming home, an unexpected familiarity in their strange new city.
A return to the life Ditmar had stolen her from.
“Is it the shop that’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.
“No. He’s nice enough.” Ayla sighed again, and rested a hand on her stomach.
“I don’t know, Niel. It’s like… when I was in Blackfell, I missed all the things that had made me me.
I was so miserable that I clung to the memories as a way to survive.
And now, I… I’m wondering if maybe I haven’t changed.
If I spent three years miserable and living in the past, not realizing it was just that. The past.”
“So you might not want to blow glass,” he said, and crouched in front of her.
“The shop’s hotter than metal left in the sun,” she said. “It smells foul, and the fire’s so bright it makes my vision spotty, and my arm aches from stirring day after day, hour after hour. I loved it enough to put up with all that before Ditmar. I don’t think I do now.”
“Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?” he reached for her hand and took it in his own, looking up at her. “You don’t need to go back. We don’t need the money.”
“I suppose,” she said. Ayla felt doom rising in her, and that made her guilty. She blinked rapidly and squeezed Niel’s hand as he frowned at her.
“Ayla?” he asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t want to sound, for a second, like I’m not happy, because I am,” she said, desperate for him to believe her, because it was the truth.
She was happy. She was safe, and loved, and cared for.
Blackfell was a distant memory. Niel was her champion, and her lover, and their home was comfortable, and Cirancia was beginning to make its own sense.
She wouldn’t trade any of that. Not for the world.
“But?” he said softly.
“But I wish, sometimes, it had happened less quickly. I want this baby. I just wish I’d had time to…
I don’t know, to figure out who I am now, first. I keep dreaming about rescuing those poor horses we saw in the market last week, whose owner was whipping them, and finding them better homes, or opening a shop like my father did when he was starting out, or building a bakery that sells northern dishes, the kinds we never see here, or…
oh, it’s so selfish,” she cried, and reached up to wipe her tears away.
“Ayla,” Niel whispered, with a small shake of his head.
“I wouldn’t choose any of it over this,” she said, with fierce intensity, needing him to know it wasn’t him she questioned. “I just can’t help but wish, and I know I shouldn’t…”
“Why are you choosing at all? You could still do any of that. Or all of it.”
She looked down at him, over the round of her stomach, and wondered if he was just placating her, or if he didn’t realize how much their lives were about to change.
“We’re having a baby, Niel,” she said.
“I’m aware of that,” he said, with a chuckle. “You’re acting as though your life’s over.”
“I’ll be a mother,” she said.
“Aye,” he agreed. “But I’m only gone, what, seven?
Eight? Hours a week, at the school. I can’t nurse the babe, but I can do the rest. I can watch our child.
I could help with horses, or mind a shop, or punch dough in a bakery, or whatever you decide to do.
It’s not over, Ayla. It’s just starting. You do have time.”
“But it’s all changing.”
“I know. But that’s what life does. You think on what you want to do, and we’ll try it. And if you don’t like it, we’ll try something else.”
“But it can’t be that simple.”
“It is.”
He won’t mean that, a part of her thought. He’s saying it, but the moment it becomes too much work, he won’t be helping anymore…
Except this was Niel. Not an ordinary man. And she knew him, and she knew his heart and his strength and how far he’d go just to see her smile. He treated her like an equal, not his property. He had been ready to sacrifice his life for hers.
He meant it. Every word. The voice in her head was nothing more than a foolish shred of her past life. And if things were always changing, well; perhaps sometimes they were changing for the best.
She sniffled, and reached for her pocket. Niel was there faster, offering her his own handkerchief. She blotted her eyes, then blew her nose and drew a wobbling breath.
“Sorry,” she said. “I swear I’ve never cried so much in my life.” That probably wasn’t true, but it felt it, some days.
“Don’t apologize.”
“Where were you this morning? Did you go somewhere?” It was one of his days off, but he’d gone out to buy produce and taken far too long to come home.
“I bullied Odilon into translating for me, at the lawyer’s guild.”
“But…?” Ayla blinked at him, her lashes still wet, and tried to figure out why he’d possibly have gone there. If he were in trouble of some kind, surely he wouldn’t be acting so calm, a soft smile on his lips as he shifted from his crouch into a kneeling pose.
“I don’t have an Aronthian half-wife. Not in Cirancia, anyways. They said that here, if you don’t consummate a marriage within a month, it can be dissolved at will by either person. So that’s settled.”
“Oh,” she said. The word came out choked. “Well, that’s good.”
Niel smiled and caught her hands again, pulling the handkerchief out of her grip. He settled her hands into his left one, squeezed them tight, and reached into his pocket with his right hand.
“I love you. I’ll always love you,” Niel said.
“I love you too.”
“...And if the pain I endured led me to you, then I welcome it, and would choose the same road again.”
“Oh,” she whispered, heart pounding, as he drew his hand out of his pocket. She couldn’t see what he was holding in his fist. But she could guess.
“Will you marry me, Ayla? Please?”
He opened his palm to show her a ring, a gold band wrought with tiny flowers that curled around a single, miniature green stone.
She looked down at him, and drew a shuddering breath, and had to take a moment to keep herself from bursting back into tears. Ayla tried to talk, and realized she did not dare open her mouth.
She nodded, lips pressed tight.
“Really?” Niel sounded shocked, but his face lit up, a gleam in his dark eyes and a crooked grin splitting his mouth wide. “You will? It’s not too soon this time? You’ll be my wife?”