“It all matters,” he insisted quietly, all the while resisting the urge to tell her wanting to know and needing to know were two separate things, and sometimes knowing meant unnecessary pain. He could not steer her from the path she was meant to travel, no matter how much he wanted her for himself. Knowing that was more painful than he could have ever imagined it being, and yet it was the one thing keeping him on the right path. “Every little detail matters, my lady. Every second, every minute, every hour. It’s all so very important. You can’t even begin to imagine.”
Lowering her head again, her loose auburn hair fell in around her face. “Maybe I’ll never understand.”
“Maybe you won’t. Look, Lorelei, all I want is to spare you from the suffering of ever having to take a life,” he confessed. “To stand in front of you all the way and ensure your slate remains clean, but I can’t do that and I know it. There are things that lie ahead of you, of all of us, things I may not even be there for, and you’re going to have to face them, whether I want you to or not. As much as I want to keep you from ever knowing a single moment’s pain, I know if I spare you from those things you will not become the woman you are supposed to be.”
She was contemplative for a long time, staring absently into the flames. Through the golden red curtain of her hair, he saw she was gnawing the dry skin of her lower lip. It was a habit he’d noticed she took to when she was nervous and afraid, which seemed to be nearly all the time since he’d met her.
“Finn…” he stopped, trying to frame his words carefully. “Finn just wants to prepare you for what’s waiting for you out there. He wants you to go into everything aware, so when the world starts throwing punches, you know to be on your guard. Me…” Pausing again, he turned his own gaze toward the fire and watched the white hot center of the flame lap with blue tongues as it climbed higher and leapt with orange-tipped, yellow fingers toward the night air. “I would spare you from all those things,” he said quietly. “Which means I would hold you back, instead of letting you fly. That is why what I want doesn’t matter, Lorelei. I would stop you from being the woman you are meant to be.”
“It seems he would hold me back in his own ways,” she grumbled. “Push me behind him and fight all my battles for me, rather than giving me a chance to fight them on my own. He seems to come out of nowhere if even the slightest breath of trouble comes too close to me.”
“That is not a bad thing, Lorelei.” As much as he hated to admit that, it was true. “Anyone who would throw himself into the line of fire to ensure you don’t get burned is definitely someone you want on your side.”
“I guess, but…”
“Just like me, he only wants to protect you, but he also wants to show you how to protect yourself. The parts of you I would protect will probably not save your life, but your spirit. Sometimes the breaking of our spirits is necessary so we can become who we are meant to be.”
“You are the last person I expected to champion his cause, especially considering everything you said to make him so mad in the first place.” At last she turned to look at him, her amber eyes like two precious stones glimmering gold in the light of the fire. “Together your counsels provide balance, and perhaps that is what I need most of all if I am to get us all through whatever waits out there.” She waved her hand beyond the barrier, into the dark shadows of the trees surrounding their camp.
“Perhaps,” he nodded agreement. For a long time neither of them said anything, as the words he knew he needed to say and the words he wanted to say battled inside him like a storm. Finally, he cleared his throat and swallowed hard against the bitterness he could feel rising there. “You should never go to bed angry with someone you love. Maybe you and Finn should try to work this out.”
“I don’t love…” she started to protest, his heart leaping with selfish joy. The protest never came, and she lowered her head in defeat. “You’re right. I should go talk to him.”
Looking down at his boot in front of him, Brendolowyn only nodded. He didn’t watch as she pushed herself to her feet, but when she walked by him on her way to chase down Finn, she paused and lowered a hand to his shoulder.
“Thank you, Bren, for being honest with me.” She squeezed gently, and though he never wanted her to lift her hand away from him, she did too quickly. Not turning around, he listened to the sound of her footsteps as she made her way toward Finn—the one place in the world he couldn’t stop her from going no matter how much he wanted to.
He never felt lonelier in his life. Without even Hrafn to keep him company, he ached. The bond he felt with his raven went deeper than any other bond he’d ever known—even the bond he felt with Lorelei, who could never even know there was a bond between them.
His hand absently fondled a pebble he’d picked up from under his leg, fingers stroking the rigid contours until he knew every inch of it as intimately as he knew himself. As a boy, his mother told him all things had a soul inside them, and through those souls everything was connected. Rocks and mountains, streams and oceans, even the smallest grain of sand was a part of the greater whole, but as he rolled the tip of his finger across the jagged edge of that stone in his hand, he felt nothing but the absorbed warmth of his own hand.
Tossing the stone toward the barrier’s edge, he watched it ricochet off the invisible wall and tumble into the grass on the other side of his own tent. Maybe it was him who had no soul, he thought, but then that wouldn’t explain the depth of emotional turmoil that troubled him since the day he’d washed up on the beach, nor the overwhelming heartache weighing him down every time he looked into her eyes. The worst part was, he knew it wasn’t true. In order to wield magic, one needed a soul.
You are doing the right thing.
Yovenna seemed to always be with him since her spirit left her body, a constant conscience, a whisper of strength when he felt most conflicted.
“It doesn’t feel right,” he muttered, resting his chin on his shoulder and staring out through barrier into the shadows of the fir trees surrounding their camp. “It feels awful,” he said. “Like every part of me is breaking.”
Sometimes we must break before we can mend.
He had to resist the urge to shout protest, to insist he didn’t want to break or mend, he just wanted the life in those flashing visions the Light of Madra should never have shared with him. Countless times he asked himself why, why did she spare him if she knew how much denying his love for her would destroy him?
Bunching the grass beneath his thigh into a tight fist, he pulled it free from the ground. Releasing his fist, the blades stuck to the sweat of his palm even after he released it back to the earth.
Lifting his hand up to study that which remained, the connection he felt to the grass was more startling than he could have ever guessed. The Light of Madra reached in and plucked him away from death, only to cast him back into life, still clinging to the shadows of an ending that never came. For years he carried the hope she left with him, only to discover he had no chance at a future with her. He clung to the very idea of her the way that lifeless grass clung to his hand.
Shaking his head, he wiped his hands clean while turning over his shoulder to look in the direction of the tent she’d been sharing with Finn. He heard only the barest mutter of voices, but he did not tune into them. He didn’t want to be a part of what was supposed to happen between them. He just wanted to see her where she needed to go, make sure Finn didn’t die along the way, and then he wanted to move on. Head back out into the world and get as far away from prophecy and broken hearts as possible.
Finally, he stood, stretching the ache from his back before wandering to his tent across camp and slipping inside. It wouldn’t be easy, sleeping alone; he probably wouldn’t even sleep at all, but the more distance he put between himself and his companions, the better they would all be.
Because he didn’t know how many times he would be able to push her in Finn’s direction before his need for her overpowered his common sense.
C
HAPTER SEVENTEEN
Finn pretended to be asleep when she shuffled into the tent and sat down on the bedroll behind him. For a long time she didn’t say anything, didn’t move, but he felt the nervous fluctuation of her heart and emotions as she battled with herself over choosing the right words. It felt like hours passed, though he knew it wasn’t that long at all, before she finally reached a hand out, rested it against his shoulder and gently shook him.
“Finn,” she murmured his name, heart rate increasing as she waited for him to respond. The stubborn part of him refused to answer at first, and though she claimed the bond between them wasn’t compelling enough for her to commit herself to him, he knew she felt those rhythms. She knew he wasn’t sleeping, and that awareness increased the force of her nudge. “Finn, please. I want to talk.”
He rolled onto his back, allowed his eyes to adjust and distinguish the outline of her silhouette among night’s shadows. The fire’s light beyond the tent mingled with the moons’ beams spilling through the treetops, providing just enough illumination he could see the gleam of her eyes, the curve of her nose when she turned her head and the rogue strands of hair still mussed from sparring with him.
“About what?” He’d heard her and the mage talking, though he hadn’t been paying attention to what they said. Probably more foolishness about harboring guilt over killing an enemy, more idiocy that would make her hesitate when she needed to act.
“We have to stop this. We can’t keep playing this game with each other.”
“I’m not playing games, Princess.” His voice was gruff, throat slightly raw from the damp air. It sounded fierce and husky, even to him. “I’ve been straight with you from the…”
“If you’re going to say from the start, I’m going to stop you right there, because that’s a lie.”
He actually wasn’t going to say that. He was going to say he’d been straight with her since she learned the truth, but she didn’t give him the chance to point that out.
“You weren’t straight with me about the connection between us at all. You denied it when I asked you what was wrong with my heart in Drekne, in fact, and then let me discover we were meant to be mated from strangers.”
“I’ve already told you I was sorry for that.” He huffed and dug his elbows into the ground to edge himself upward. “And I still don’t think it would have been the best way to break the ice between us. ‘Hi, I’m Finn. We’re quite possibly going to be together for the rest of our lives, most likely the afterlife too, and there’s not really much I can do to change that. Should I take off my clothes so you can see what you’ll be getting?’”
“No, but you could have said… something. Anything would have been better than not knowing what was going on at all. And besides, that isn’t the point I’m trying to make with all of this. We need to stop the games. The bickering and the brooding silences, it’s all so ridiculous. And there are far more important things…”
“Not to me,” he muttered. “Nothing is more important to me than you are.”
“Finn…” She sighed his name, an amalgam of confused emotions tangling with her breath. Leaning back, she positioned her hand behind her and dropped her head along her shoulders in a slow roll. “I know you feel things for me, and I won’t lie to you. I have feelings for you too, but right now those feelings can’t be the most important thing in my life. All that matters right now is getting to Great Sorrow’s Peak and finding the Horns of Llorveth so the spirits of the people of Dunvarak can be free. So my own spirit will be free.”
The thought of freeing her spirit terrified her. She didn’t have to say it. He could feel the fear.
He was quiet, trying to find the right way to phrase the blast of thoughts exploding through his mind without sounding selfish or stupid to her. He felt like he came off that way with her all the time, and he didn’t mean to. It was just his nature to say what was on his mind, no matter how unnerving his words tended to be. How was he to help it if the things on his mind were the types of things most other people hesitated over before spilling them into the wind?
Finally, his chest expanded with an inhale and sighed out the words, “And if one of us dies before it matters?”
“Is that what this is about?” She answered too quickly, the hitch in her voice conveying her chagrin. “You’re still worried you’re going to die?”
“No, it’s not like that.” It really was like that, but he wasn’t about to admit it.
“What if it is me?” She shot the question back at him too quickly, disguising her trepidation as best she could by taking the thought itself one step further. “What if the only way I can do the things my brother said I did, what Yovenna claims I did for the people of Dunvarak, was because I have to die?”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, no?”
“You have to face the serpent thing. You can’t very well do that if you’re dead.”
“What if that’s the only way to face it?”
“It’s not,” he countered. “If you really are the one who’s supposed to fight it, and you die before it’s summoned, the whole thing will just start over again. And maybe that is how you saved all those people, I don’t know, but I do know you’re not supposed to die.”
“What are you talking about? How do you know that?”
“I’ve been reading through that book the mage gave you before we left Dunvarak,” he confessed sheepishly.
He could tell by the look on her shadowed face she’d forgotten about the book after tucking it neatly into her pack, buried under clothes and provisions. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d dig it out of her pack, slip out by the fire and thumb through the pages while she slept. He wanted to make sense out of what she was really up against, but it felt impossible. The text was old, translated by a scribe into the common written verse from Old Alvarii centuries before, and though the words were all words he knew, the language was archaic and sometimes made his brain feel numb inside his skull.
“You?” she marveled. “You’ve been reading the book Bren gave me?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” he snipped. “I do know how to read, you know.”
“I wasn’t implying that you didn’t know how to read, Finn, I’m just…” She shook her head and then went on, “I can’t imagine when you’ve had time to read, that’s all. I’ve been carrying that book since before we left, and I barely cracked the spine. And besides, it doesn’t exactly seem like material that would catch your interest. Gods and elves and prophecies and…”
“Of course I’m interested in it. It’s your future.” Exasperated, he bolted upright, towering over her, even as they were both sitting. She shrank back a little, stunned by his sudden movement. “A future I want to be there to see, to be a part of.”
“So this is about you dying?”
“No,” he huffed. “Yes. I don’t know. I just know I need to be a part of it, Lore. I know you might never feel the way I feel about you, but so long as there’s a chance, I want to be there to take it.”
“You’re not going to die.” She lowered her head to stare at the shadow hands wringing in her lap. “I won’t let that happen, Finn, I promise.”
“How in the hell are you going to stop it, Princess?”
“I don’t know.” There was more than just frustration in her exhale. There was a hopeless sense of desperation, too, and it made him feel instantly guilty. “It shouldn’t matter how I’m going to stop it, just that I’m not going to let it happen. I’ve accepted this, Finn. I’ve committed myself to what the seers say I have to do, though I don’t even know why. But I’m not going to give up the things I care about just to see it done.”
Finn didn’t say anything. He just watched her shadow hands in her lap, thumbs stroking the insides of her palms. He tried to will the pace of her heart by slowing down his own with calming breaths.
“So, you do care about me then?”
She brought a half-clenched fist up and punched him in the sho
ulder, surprising him not only with the force of the hit, but brushing her knuckles against the healing wound in his shoulder. He gasped, bringing a hand up to rub the throbbing muscle beneath the skin.
“Ow, hey! Llorveth’s horns, what was that for?”
“Because you’re such an idiot. I should have hit you in the head to knock some bloody sense into it.”
“I didn’t do…”
“Obviously I care about you, you stupid, withering…” Withdrawing her hand into her lap, she was rubbing her throbbing knuckles almost furiously. “You’re so… Ugh! What is it going to take? And if you even think about saying a single word about mating, I swear to every one of the gods I will punch you in the mouth.”
“I wasn’t going to…” The words faded into silence, the two of them facing each other in the dark for a long time before she finally spoke again.
“In my heart I think I’ve already chosen you, Finn, though sometimes I don’t even know why. You’re exasperating and obnoxious and…” Shaking her head, she tilted her head back again and blew the hair off her forehead. “And despite that, I already know how I feel about you. Since the day you saved me, a part of me has known, and one day, when the time is right, we will be together. But right now it has to be enough that I am committed to that future, no matter the cost.”
Lifting her hand again, he actually flinched, expecting another collision with her knuckles, but instead her soft fingertips met with his cheek. Stroking them downward through the patchy hair of his beard, they lingered beneath his chin.
“I don’t have to give my body to you completely to know we have a future,” she whispered, and then she leaned forward and touched her soft lips against his in a lingering kiss meant to reassure all those nerves inside him that frayed constantly with jealous thoughts and worries she would never be his.
The gesture took him by surprise. She’d never kissed him before without his initiation, and though the beast within stirred immediately, pressing against his skin and raising the level of his want for her, the man pushed it away.
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 24