Declarations
The Trader’s Way was, Lark decided, significantly more pleasant than the mountain trails.
For one thing, there were no sheer drops threatening to send her tumbling to her death. For another, the ground was flat enough that she could walk without watching every step, which meant she could actually look around at the countryside rolling past. And for a third, there were inns.
Not that they could afford to stay at inns every night.
Their funds were limited, and two weeks of travel required careful budgeting.
But when they would pass through a village large enough to boast a tavern, Darian would calculate their remaining coin and declare that they could afford a hot meal and a roof over their heads.
These nights were treasured. Food that someone else had cooked. Ale that didn’t taste as if it had been brewed in a boot. The five of them sharing a room, one with actual beds that didn’t require rocks to be cleared before sleeping.
“I could get used to this,” Pippa said on their fifth night, sprawled across a bench in a tavern whose name Lark had already forgotten. A half-empty mug of cider sat before her, and her expression was one of profound contentment. “Walls. Ceilings. Tables that don’t try to eat you.”
“Tables don’t eat people,” Darian said.
“You haven’t seen the tables I’ve seen.”
“I’ve seen every table you’ve seen. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”
“Then you should know better than to argue with me about hostile furniture.”
Rion laughed, the sound happy and relaxed. He was sitting beside Lark, close enough that their shoulders touched, his own mug cradled in his hands. The firelight caught the edge of his eyepatch, the curve of his smile.
“She has a point,” he said. “I once encountered a truly aggressive writing desk in the Autumncrown archives. Nearly took my hand off.”
“That was a drawer,” Pippa said. “And it was stuck.”
“It was hostile. I stand by my assessment.”
Lark listened to them banter and let their comfortable rapport wash over her. It was becoming natural now, this rhythm of travel and rest, of walking and talking and sleeping pressed close to someone who made her feel safe. She was forgetting what it had felt like to be alone.
That should have frightened her, but it didn’t.
The days blurred together in a pleasant haze of walking and conversation.
The countryside changed gradually as they traveled, the pine forests of the foothills giving way to the deciduous woodlands and open farmland of the Eastern Terraces.
The weather held fair, with only occasional rain showers that passed quickly, leaving the air fresh and green.
They saw other travelers on the road, merchants with laden carts, farmers heading to market, even a troupe of performers whose colorful wagons drew Pippa’s enthusiastic attention.
“We should have been performers,” she declared, watching the wagons disappear around a bend. “Think about it. Traveling from town to town, putting on shows, never staying in one place long enough to get bored.”
“You get motion sick in carts,” Darian reminded her.
“Details. I would overcome it through sheer force of will.”
“You threw up on my boots just last turn of the moons.”
“That was food poisoning.”
“It was a cart.”
“It was food poisoning that happened to occur in a cart.” Pippa waved a dismissive hand. “My point stands. We would make excellent performers. Lark could throw knives. Rion could do scholarly recitations. You could stand there looking intimidating while I dazzled the crowds with my charm.”
“What would Noctis do?” Lark asked.
They all looked at the wolf, who was investigating something in the undergrowth with intense concentration. His tail wagged once, then he sneezed violently and retreated to Rion’s side, looking abashed.
"Tragic monologues," Pippa said solemnly. "He's got the gravitas for it. Look at those eyes. That's a wolf who's seen things."
On the seventh day, Rion tried to summon his magic.
They had stopped for a midday rest beside a stream, the water clear and cool and perfect for refilling waterskins.
Lark was sitting on a fallen log, chewing on a piece of dried fruit, when she noticed Rion had wandered a short distance away.
He stood with his back to the group, his hands extended before him, his shoulders tense with concentration.
She rose and walked toward him, her footsteps quiet on the soft grass.
“Anything?” she asked.
He didn’t turn. “A single spark. Nothing more.” His hands dropped to his sides. “I keep reaching for it. I can feel it there but I can’t make it speak to me.”
“Morena said it would take time.”
“I know.” He turned to face her, and she saw the frustration in his eye, carefully controlled but unmistakable. “I know it takes time. I know I can’t force it. But I used to be able to call fire as easily as breathing. Now I can barely manage a spark.”
Lark stepped closer and took his hands in hers. They were warm, as they always were, that inner fire still present even if it wouldn’t come when called.
“You’ll get it back,” she said. “When you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready? What if this is permanent?”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.” She squeezed his hands. “You’re more than your magic, Rion. You’re a scholar who found information that could change the course of a war. You’re …” She paused, searching for words. “You’re the person I trust most in the world. Magic or no magic.”
He looked at her. Then the frustration in his expression gave way.
“When did you get so smart?” he asked.
“I’ve always been smart. You were just too busy being unconscious to notice.”
He laughed, surprised, and pulled her into his arms. She went willingly, her head finding its familiar place against his chest, her arms wrapping around his waist.
“I love you,” he said quietly. The words were muffled against her hair, almost too soft to hear. “I know we haven’t … I know things are complicated. But I love you. I wanted you to know that.”
She should say it back. She knew she should. The feeling was there, had been there for longer than she wanted to admit. But the words stuck in her throat, tangled up with old fears and older wounds.
Instead, she tightened her arms around him and pressed her face into his shirt.
“I know,” she said.
It wasn’t enough. But it was all she could manage, and he seemed to understand. He just held her, his cheek resting against the top of her head, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
“Well,” Pippa’s voice floated across the clearing, pitched to carry without being a shout. “If you two are done being disgustingly adorable, we should probably keep moving. Summerbright won’t walk to us.”
Rion sighed. “She has truly terrible timing.”
“The worst,” Lark agreed. But she pulled away anyway, taking hold of his hand as they walked back to join the others.
Pippa was grinning. Darian was studying the treeline with the intensity of a man determined not to witness anything embarrassing. Noctis had found a stick and was chewing on it with great satisfaction.
“Say nothing,” Rion warned Pippa.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were definitely going to say something.”
“I was merely going to observe that it’s nice to see that you two have finally sorted yourselves out, after weeks of the most painful will-they-won’t-they tension I have ever had the misfortune to witness.
” Pippa shouldered her pack with exaggerated innocence.
“But if you don’t want me to say anything, I won’t. ”
“That was saying something.”
“No. That was much-needed context.”
The nights grew warmer as they traveled south through the lowlands, and Lark found she no longer needed her new cloak for sleeping. What she needed, increasingly, was Rion.
They had developed a routine without ever discussing it.
Each evening, after the fire was banked and the watch schedule settled, they would spread their bedrolls side by side.
And each night, they would end up tangled together, her head on his shoulder, or his arm around her waist, or her back pressed against his chest.
It was chaste. It was also torture.
His hands stayed in respectable places, but she felt them everywhere, regardless.
When his thumb traced idle circles on her hip, her whole body tightened in response.
When his breath ghosted across the back of her neck, she had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
And when he shifted in his sleep and pulled her closer, his hips pressing against her, she lay perfectly still, trying not to melt from the heat of him.
She wanted to turn in his arms, to press her mouth to his throat and feel his pulse jump beneath her lips, to slide her hands under his shirt and map the terrain of his chest, his stomach, lower.
She wanted to make him gasp the way she was gasping inside, to know what sounds he would make when she touched him, and to feel him lose control because of her.
But Pippa was snoring three feet away, and Darian was keeping watch from a nearby boulder. This wanting had nowhere to go except deeper into her own skin, coiling tight and hot inside her.
On the eighth night, lying awake while Rion slept beside her, she let herself imagine what it might be like to have him entirely.
Not just his heat, his kiss, and the maddening almost-enough of his body against hers.
All of him. His weight pressing her down as his hands finally wandered where she needed them.
His mouth on her neck, her collarbone, all the places that ached for attention.
The thought sent heat coursing through her veins, wild and unbearable.
She turned her head to look at him. In sleep, his face was relaxed, the lines of tension smoothed away.
His lips were slightly parted, his breathing slow and even.
One hand rested on her hip, possessive even in unconsciousness, his fingers curled just under the hem of her shirt where they touched her bare skin.