41. 40
The wind whipped through my hair. Grey clouds considered breaking over the unsteady sea before us. But in the distance, the blue sky waited to pull over. On our cliff head, the grass was dotted with white and purple flowers, inviting the spring.
“I think it’s going to rain,” Davian said.
I turned to him as he stared up at the sky.
The smudges under his eyes were long gone.
The grief had come in waves, sometimes retreating so it almost felt forgotten, and then a moment later, the wound was as fresh as the day it was carved.
But we had found joy in the retreat, and even stability on the worst days.
“Maybe,” I said. Then I pointed ahead to the edge of the clouds. “But not for long.”
Davian nodded. “We went too far with the names this time. The owner was suspicious.”
I didn’t hide my smile. “What’s so strange about Drangible and Dolly?”
Davian only shook his head, but his eyes lit with the same humour. “I still maintain that you should have been Dolly.”
I shrugged, and he laughed. The sound never got old.
Davian wore his mask. His mark of Wisdom was too recognisable without it.
There were more masked men than there were former devotees of Knessus.
Still, men of Aralaji descent with a mask was a very small number, so we moved quickly up the Adrisus coast, never stopping for more than a handful of nights.
For a single year, Ragnifort would still be trapped inside a mortal.
He had no window into our lives. It pleased us both to know he had no idea where we were; to have disappeared from the edges of Dytho.
If he did hear word, it would be weeks out of date.
We would have found the next horizon. Keeping him aware of our movements was not a part of our deal, and he could not punish it. He knew we had to return, after all.
We had left the House of Pain in Eliza’s hands. She wasn’t ready to lead yet, but we hoped by giving her the reins, that she would rise to the task.
“Have you heard anything from them recently?” Davian asked.
I knew who he meant. “All the time,” I admitted.
“I haven’t heard of anything like it,” Davian said. “You shouldn’t be able to hear him without a mark.”
“I have promised to give you pain,” I said. It was my best theory. “Pain you want, and pain you have consented to. It will hurt me to do it. Maybe he wants to guide me through it.”
“And I suppose we’re doomed, in a way,” Davian said. “He’s always chosen those who need it most.”
“That, too.”
“Do you speak back to him?” Davian asked.
I did not hesitate. “No. I do not speak to either of them.”
Davian nodded. He hadn’t asked me in weeks, and my answer hadn’t changed.
Ekris lost more of my love with every passing day. I didn’t want the stain of his mark anymore, and I hated having him in my head. For him to use his deal to come back into my mind was a curse, not a blessing.
And Samiscus was a stranger to me.
A third of our time was gone. I would not waste any of the rest of it on the whims of gods.
No one knew what would happen when our year was up.
Through the veil, would we be able to bring everyone home?
Both of us wished for Fella to return and lead the House, and for us to be reunited under that roof.
Davian and I spoke about her, on the darker days.
Most days, we ignored any discussion of the dead and what awaited us at the end of summer.
“The owner did mention something about some wine,” I said. “I believe he said it was quite good.”
Davian raised an eyebrow. “Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Me neither,” Davian said. “A jug, then?”
I laughed and waved my hand behind us, to where the taverna sat at a crossroads.
It held only four rooms, but they had offered to run a hot bath for us, and the smells from the kitchen were more tempting than I expected.
It was a brief stop, rather than a destination, and already the stable hand prepared our horses for our carriage to leave at day break.
We were hoping to reach Pilos by the middle of spring.
Davian had visited Pilos once, as a younger man.
The day we left Dytho, he had described the orchards on the hills and the beauty of the beaches.
We knew, then, that it would be our destination.
Maybe we would stay there a little longer.
Maybe we would continue up the coast until it was time to come back to face the beating drum.
We walked back to the taverna hand-in-hand, the wind picking strands of my hair and hurling them against my face. The chill of winter was beginning to fade, and with it came a growing sense of our impending fate.
Ragnifort would come to collect. After all, a deal was a deal. But until then, we would love, through all the pain.
The gods hummed their approval into my mind.
I ignored them. This wasn’t their time. This was ours; our one fully mortal year.
We were finite, and oh so alive.