Chapter 25 Valenna
Chapter twenty-five
Valenna
Valenna’s heart sank. Once or twice in their acquaintance, she’d noticed he pronounced certain words awkwardly—rolled r’s, rounded vowels, and sometimes his syntax seemed off-kilter. She never gave it much thought. Now, she realized he’d had a musical Ashkendoric brogue lurking beneath every word.
“Have you always had that accent?” she demanded.
“It’s such a relief to use it again,” he said, smiling, and he did seem lighter, like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. “It’s exhausting, you know, faking standard tongue.”
“Please tell me Evandaine is a common name in Ashkendor and you really are just a woodcutter’s son.”
“You know who I am, Valenna.”
“Oh … Oh, no, no, no …” She ripped up the vines twining her legs and body, and stood. “This isn’t happening. It’s a nightmare, and it’s not happening.”
“I'm so sorry, Val. I couldn’t work out a way to tell you, especially with the wyvern bone powder running out …”
A stinging breeze blew around the cottage, sending potato skins whirling. “That was you, on the Scathmore Barrens? It was you I struck with my zephyrs?”
“It was me,” he replied quietly.
It was as though Valenna stood on a frozen lake and someone had brought down a sledgehammer between her feet. “So all of this—the headaches, and the bleeding, and the powder, it’s all because of me? I did this?”
“Well, it’s partially my fault.” He was trying to soften it, make it less horrible, but he couldn’t.
Valenna’s stomach turned, and she thought she might be sick. “How?” she demanded. “How is it your fault that I pummeled you …”
“I wouldn’t say pummeled …”
Irrationally, his evasions irritated her. She wanted him to be realistic, to recognize the crime that stood between them. To rain down on her the wrath she deserved.
But he held out his hand. “Come to me, Val.”
“No.” She backed away from him, a profusion of thorns sprouting around her ankles. “I can’t. I don’t understand. We can’t … Is this why you left Largotia? Did you know?”
“I knew the powder was running out, and I knew what that … meant.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “You mean you knew you were dying, and so you left so you could do it alone?”
He nodded. “And I did want to be dragon master. Make changes toward ending the war, leave a legacy, and most likely go out in a blaze of glory. Not ideal goals for a man in a relationship with a woman.”
He was trying to distract her, but she would not be so easily put off.
“Evander, we tried to kill one another! And I … look at what I did to you!” Her voice startled a family of rumor wrens outside in the thatch, and they flapped away indignantly.
Evander, unperturbed as ever, shrugged. “I don’t care about that.”
“You should! We both should,” she cried. “You nearly eviscerated me, and I nearly split open your head!”
He stood and waded through the thorns, unheeding as they snagged on his pant legs. “But we didn’t kill one another. We had the chance, and we both chose mercy. We went against our parents, our countries, and our upbringing, and spared one another.”
“Yes, you spared me, and I healed. But you …” Her lip quivered, the horror swamping her. She covered her face with her hands. “I need to sit down. I think I’m going to vomit.”
Evander looped his arm around her waist and led her to the cot, then sat beside her. She leaned forward, gripping her stomach, and Evander rubbed circles on her back.
She was being punished. She’d let her father manipulate her for years, and then she struck down the man she loved with her own hand.
Her future unfurled before her, a bog of grief and guilt and regret.
Evander was right not to tell her the truth; already, it ate at her heart, like moths on a neglected gown.
Evander touched her cheek, trying to make her look at him.
“Val, for six months in Largotia, you took care of me. You made me take my medicine, you made sure I was drinking enough water, you checked on me every day, and spoke to physicians when I was too lazy to do it myself. I don’t think of you as the woman who struck me, but the woman who saved me.
And you’ve more than made up for Scathmore. ”
“I can never make up for that,” she said firmly. “I thought it was unforgivable before I knew it was you. Now …”
“Like you said, I sliced open your stomach.”
“Oh, barely,” she snapped, standing. “Your heart wasn’t in it. It was hardly a scratch.”
He suppressed a smile. “I thought I nearly eviscerated you.”
“Stop it.” She rounded the table, putting space between them again, and sank into a chair. A patch of ire iris grew around Evander, framing him in a blue cloud. “Do you really love me, Vander? Even now? I took so much from you. I took everything from you.”
“But you also gave me more love, more joy, more hope than anyone in over twenty summers before I met you.” He sat across from her, leaning forward and cupping his hands over hers. “We’re different people now. The past has no hold on us.”
Tenderly, she lifted his hand in both hers and pressed it to her lips.
“Valenna, listen to me,” Evander said. “You’ve got a good position in Largotia, a good life, prospects. What’s the point of putting all that aside for me?”
Valenna dropped his hand, exasperated. “What’s the point? What’s the point? I love you.”
“I love you too. I always have. But we need to be pragmatic …”
“Sometimes, I want to slap you so badly …”
“Because with things as they are, you really should forget about me.”
“Alright then.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I’ll just stop, after two years. People can do that. Shut their emotions off like a spigot.”
He smiled despite himself. “I can’t return to Silvanlight. I had planned to leave with Hera before the paddocking. I planned to go to Cobblepine.”
A part of her had suspected he was preparing to leave Silvanlight. He was slippery like that—a runner.
“Why Cobblepine?” she asked, her brow furrowed. “I thought they hated you there.”
“The wyvern we found on the plains. I think they might have a breeding pair.”
A light flared in Valenna’s bog. More powder meant more time, more hope, more of him. And, oh, she wanted him so badly it hurt.
She reached out and clutched Evander’s hands again. “That means we could save you!”
“It’s not a certainty,” he said quickly. “But it doesn’t matter anymore, because …” He rolled his sleeve and indicated the tattoo on his bicep, now little more than a smudge.
Valenna’s heart sank. “Oh no. You broke the oath.”
“I’ll be worse than scum in that place.”
She raised her chin. She wouldn’t let a simple thing like that stand in her way. “I’ll go.”
“You don’t know where Cobblepine is.”
“You do. Tell me.”
He huffed a laugh. “Absolutely not. I’ll go on ahead and see if I can charm my way in.”
“You are many things, Vander,” Valenna said with a fond smile. “You are handsome, and clever, and funny in a cynical way, but you are not charming.”
He didn’t seem offended. “I know the head woman. She may have pity on me. And we agreed you are going home to your life in Largotia.”
“First, we did not agree. Second, that will be very pleasant for me. I always sleep well at night knowing the man I love is probably lying dead in some god-forsaken gorge.”
“Val, please, just go home.”
“There are two options, Evander. Only two. Either I go to Cobblepine alone or we go together. Choose.”
She gazed levelly at him, daring him to defy her.
He shook his head, fighting a smile. “Why don’t you think on it for an hour or two, and then we discuss it more?”
“Alright. You should rest. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us, and you’re fragile …”
Now he was offended. “I am not fragile.”
“Alright then, you’re in a very fit and sturdy state of imminent death. Why don’t you take an entirely unnecessary rest while I go and talk to Torsten about the journey?”
Reluctantly, Evander returned to the cot and stretched out. Valenna studied the lines of his body, the way the lean muscle in his chest and stomach dimpled his shirt. He smirked at her, and she flushed.
“Sleep!” she ordered and rushed out the door.