Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Fell didn’t return for a day and a half.
I was a complete disaster by the time I saw him, having mulled over my situation to near insanity and having come to the same conclusion I had without any thought: I wished I was not opening the door, but any approach to close it I also did not wish for.
I wished to be able to go home—to see Dayne again, my father, and the hound that always lay at his feet, the little ones.
But I also wished to stay in the Land of the Northernmost Star forever, to be with Fell and to be the person I was there, choosing the course of my days, devoting myself to music.
I felt the need to cry, but no tears came.
And my breasts were so itchy I wanted to scream.
Apparently, this was entirely normal for a woman in my state.
I had hidden in the music library, thinking to tuck my mind neatly between long stretches of song, but I’d scarcely started playing before I heard Fell’s absent-minded humming as he approached.
Perhaps he was looking for me, perhaps he was seeking a tune.
Either way, when he walked in, I set my lyre down, glared at him, and said, “Where were you?”
He tilted his head to the side as he smiled, but it was his I’m-actually-annoyed-smile which I was only learning to recognize. “I am allowed to go places,” he said.
I felt like vomiting fire. “Of course, but you asked the king to throw us a party, and then you left, and I was there alone, eating fish all night, and Jorn was being cryptic…”
A hint of his real smile appeared, and he said, quite teasingly, “Of all the words you could pick, you continuously choose that one.”
I couldn’t say: I felt abandoned by you, and it has made me achingly miserable because I had difficulty implying someone else had done wrong back then. Instead, I said, “I have made you unhappy,” and my voice cracked as I said it.
He shook his head, his blue eyes flooding with water.
“No… my memory has made me unhappy. My luck… it lifts me and drops me and lifts me and drops me… I have my time with you, yes, and we have done a daring thing—opening a door so young, so quickly after meeting—only I keep thinking of my mother… She is not living, but I know from my friends… a mother loves when their children have children. She has missed it.”
My stomach clenched. ‘My mother took it, yet I am here.’ He’d said it lightly, just as he’d said she was dead so lightly, like the words were feathers rather than stinging truths. “Ugh, I am terrible and impatient.”
“Ha! You are vaneurigk, and you are allowed to be any way you want.” That terrible grin.
He came close and set his hands on me, and I forgave him instantly.
His lips trailed down my neck, and I even forgave myself for a moment. Nothing bad could come from something so good, I thought. Right? I leaned into his body, sliding my hands down his chest, my fingers crawling beneath his tunic to the warmth of his skin.
“I was being very serious,” he whispered into my neck. “When I said I would do as you tell me.”
Tears welled in my eyes, and I pulled my face away from him, looking up at him. “I will never see my brother again.”
“You can. I will help you if you wish.”
I shook my head. “You say you understand the Land of Mud and Mist, but you do not. If you did, you would know I cannot go back.”
Fell smirked. “I could capture him and bring him here for a visit, just as I brought you. And then take him home.”
I laughed, but it was a pitiful one.
“You need days to be sorrowful,” Fell whispered.
I nodded. My throat swelled and tasted of salt. “You do, too.”
He set his forehead against mine. “But I would not have you think I feel regret; I do not.”
To breathe in his smell, to have his arms around me…
we walked to his room, hand-in-hand, and spent the day in bed.
I cried on and off, and he traced shapes along my arms, and we kept our faces and bodies close.
He didn’t cry, but he didn’t smile either, which was more of his pain than he’d shown me before.
In some ways it was terrible, but in others, it was beautiful. We spent our first shared day after finding out we would be parents grieving together.