Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
“That sounds good,” says Quinn from over Octavia’s shoulders. She thought it best to leave Bitey behind in case he decided to live up to his name with our new friends.
“It’s good and bad. It’s customary to feed strangers on a hunt, so either the hunt is going poorly, or they distrust us. They’ll know some Selaran, but the less you say about why we’re here, the better.”
“We’ll let you do the talking,” I say.
The woman shouts something excitedly in Orsan, gesturing at Ronan and me.
“She’s asking you to join them. They want to hear you play.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Ronan?”
I offer him my hand. He looks at it for a moment, and then he takes it. My entire body relaxes as we walk into the clearing together.
The Orsa gathered there are a strange group.
There seems to be no single defining feature among them, no age or gender or physical resemblance or manner of dress.
The woman who seems to be their leader is no older than me, maybe younger, even, considering how vivid her tattoo is.
Fewer than half of them have instruments, but all of them join in when it’s time to sing.
They make room for us on the logs, but we’re unable to sit together. This, Taran explains, is also customary when meeting with another tribe. “It’s considered rude to sit with people you already know.”
My seat is between a woman with wild red curls and a man in his seventies or eighties with few teeth and very little hair. He smiles a gummy smile at me as I join and says something to me in Orsan.
I shake my head. Just before I open my mouth to speak, I realize I should conceal my accent. “Sorry, I can’t understand you,” I say in what I hope is a convincing Selaran accent.
“Selara?” he asks.
“Yes. Faros.” I feel nothing from my shadows. My magic doesn’t consider that to be a lie.
“Good. Good. You play.” He points to my flute, his words a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, I’ll play.” In reality, I’m nervous about playing, in part because I’m out of practice, but also because I don’t know any of the tunes. I can sort of pick up some of the melodies to play along, but I never got good enough to improvise my own part.
The same can’t be said for the Orsan musicians. They have no music to read from and little communication about what they’re playing that I can hear. Someone simply starts a song, and the others join in.
And though the music begins simply, it’s anything but simple.
The melodies are complex and layered, with themes traveling between the stringed instruments and the wind instruments and the singers.
It takes a lot of skill and practice to get to this level of performance, something I never achieved, having learned the flute from a servant in Kalla I didn’t see often.
I tried playing once in the tavern there a few years back, but I was too embarrassed to play more than a single song.
Ronan, on the other hand, seems to have had much more practice.
He sits across the bonfire from me, playing along as much as he can.
Sometimes, he hits a chord out of key, but he’s close most of the time.
And he brings in flourishes and picks that are purely Selaran in style, to the delight of the Orsa around him.
A pair of lute players comes over, begging him to teach them.
“Husband?” asks the man next to me. He must have caught me staring.
The word sends prickles up the back of my neck. Husband. Ronan could be my husband someday, if we get through this.
“Not yet,” I tell the man. “Partner.” He doesn’t know this word. “Boyfriend?” Nope, not that one either. “Lover.”
“Ah. Love. You love him.” He points from my heart to Ronan, his gummy smile wide.
“Yes. I love him.” My heart aches as I say it. I love him so much.
Gods, I hope this helps him.
The man nods and waits for the song to finish.
Then he starts the next song.
He sings alone at first, his voice clear and higher than I expected. He’s been singing with the other songs, but he’s usually kept a low harmony. Here, on his own, I can hear the beauty in his tone, like a bell ringing over an empty field.
I can’t understand his words, but I can feel them. The song is beautiful and melancholy, full of longing. It’s a love song, I’m certain of it.
I meet Ronan’s eyes from across the fire. His feelings have felt dampened these past few days, as if they were reaching me from a great distance, dull and blunted, edgeless. But now, hearing the song, I feel something in him break.
He looks at me, his eyes drifting over my face like a caress. They’re full of the same melancholy and longing as the song, the look of someone who can feel something precious to him slipping away. The look of someone who wants desperately to grasp it again, to hold on to it and never let it go.
The song becomes breathy and soft, a pair of lutes joining in a gentle harmony. Sparks fly from the slowing fire, rising up through the dark branches into the starlit sky. The air goes still and rare, dreamlike.
It feels as though there is no one else here but us.
My heart swells with emotion, tears springing to my eyes.
I have never felt more in love. I have never wanted anything this way; I have never known a need like this. Everything in me longs for him. Every part of me calls to him, needs him. I am utterly consumed by it, just as I knew I would be before we kissed for the first time.
I miss him so much. It’s killing me to see him this way, but I know I must bear it. I know he would do the same for me.
Please, I pray to Kerensa. I haven’t prayed to the goddess of love in a long time. I haven’t dared ask her for anything more than the gift she has already given me. But now, I’m desperate.
I need him back.
Please bring him back to me.
The song ends. I thank the man next to me, but my eyes never leave Ronan’s. Ronan stands, handing his lute to the woman next to him, his head tilting towards the woods.
I follow.
He leads me to a small grove between our camp and the Orsa, close enough to hear the music but far enough to not be heard.
He turns to me, and I realize I’m holding my breath. He looks so different now: his hair messy and swept back, his jaw lined with stubble. The veneer of godhood has been stripped back from him by travel or by trauma. He’s decidedly human, and somehow, it makes him more gorgeous than ever.
“Sylvie,” he whispers. He pulls me close to him, tilting my chin up to look at him. “Gods, I’m…Fuck. I don’t know what to say.” He shakes his head, enraged at himself. “I fucked it all up. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I say, stroking his hair.
“I do. I pushed you away. I didn’t mean to. I just…”
I kiss his cheek, and he exhales, his breath warm on my skin.
“It’s alright. I understand.” I love that he can see me now in the darkness, here in the woods at night.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ronan.” His grip tightens on my waist. “I love you with everything that I am. Gods, how I love you. Now more than ever.”
“I know,” he says, his fingers grazing my jaw. “I can feel it. I’m just…I’m scared. I’m afraid you’ll see the worst in me, and you’ll hate me. Or you just won’t want me anymore, and that’s even worse. Now that I know what it’s like to have your love, I can’t imagine losing it.”
“You won’t lose me.” I mean that so deeply that I ought to be scared myself, but I’m not. I don’t think I have the capacity to be afraid of this anymore. All I have is a certain, perfect knowledge that we’re meant to be together. It feels like it has been written in the stars. Our destiny.
Fate.
There is a pull between us beyond anything I have ever experienced. Something beyond even the magic that we share, something that we’ve chosen, that we’ve opened ourselves to in spite of everything working against us.
I feel the moment it slides into place for him. His desire at the bonfire to open himself to me once more is fulfilled. He looks at me, and he knows, truly knows now, that I am his. I belong to him, hopelessly, irrevocably.
And he belongs to me.
“I’m yours, Ronan. Always. No matter what.” I hold his hand to my heart.
He tilts his head and shakes it, closing his eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”
I grab his jaw and force him to look at me again. “I’m yours, Ronan.”
His brows pinch tightly together, part of him still fighting his feelings of despair.
“Tell me you aren’t mine,” I dare him.
His breath catches. He knows he can’t.
I wait for a long moment, the air still and quiet. Then he takes my other hand and mirrors my gesture, pressing it to his heart. “I’m yours, Sylvie,” he whispers. “If you’ll have me.”
I lean forward and press my lips to his gently. He exhales as the tension releases, and then he takes my face in his hands, deepening the kiss.
And then I hear the snap of a branch.
Someone is laughing nearby, two pairs of footsteps approaching the grove.
“Oh!” says the young Orsa leader when she spots us.
She says something to us we don’t understand that I imagine is an apology for having the same idea. The young man with her gestures to let us have the space, but Ronan waves his hands at them.
“No, you stay. We’ll go back. Dow natak. Tell Taran—you know what, never mind. He’ll figure it out.”
We embarrassedly head back to the camp, filling the others in on the Orsa and their music. “Fuck, I left my lute,” realizes Ronan.
I pat my pockets. “And my flute.”
“Wait here. I’ll go back for them. I’m ready to see that solo performance.”
My heart soars when he winks at me as he goes.