“Take me to the Painted Tower,” I said, forcing myself back to the present.
“What?” Taran jerked away, whipsawed by my change of subject.
I shook my head, mind grasping for clarity. Trying to hold on to the things I now knew about him.
“Are you…trying to bargain with me?” He was not just stunned but angry, but I needed to remember to stay angry too.
“Yes. If you’ll take me to the Painted Tower, you can have whatever you want from me.”
His lips parted in shock.
“Youstillwant to go? You think, what, Wesha will really give you your betrothed back?”
I didn’t know. Wesha didn’t have the power to change Taran’s heart, did she? She’d promised me Taran exactly as he was—as willing as he’d ever been to weave his life to mine, I supposed, so he might not go home with me.
But at least I’d have a choice about how to spend my life.
“Yes, I do.”
“And what would your husband-to-be think of you buying his life with that bargain?” Taran retorted with silky fury.
“I think under the circumstances, he’d be understanding,” I drawled.
The joke didn’t land, of course. Taran’s jaw tensed, emerald eyes going hard and resistant as he gave his answer.
“No. Don’t ask me again.”
Some part of me was relieved that he didn’t offer anything else, but I shoved at his arm anyway until he slid down the bench so that I could get up.
His expression was still stung when he was on his feet. “So that’s it, then? That’s all you want?”
I nearly laughed, because I didn’t want so very much—only the things he’d chosen to promise me. I hadn’t asked for anything!
But yes, I still wanted all of it.
“I want what I came here for,” I said to his beautiful and wary face. “I was going to be married. To someone who was…the best man I’d ever met. A hero. Who promised to build me a stone house with a plum tree by the front window. And love me forever, until the stars fell out of the sky. We were going to be together for the rest of my life, Taran. That’s what I want! Explain it to me—why would I ever accept less from you?”
I knew he couldn’t actually have an answer for that, so I excused myself quickly, fighting the part of me that wanted to soothe away every hurt on his face, even the ones I had inflicted.
15
A crater lake fedby a mountain waterfall should have been too frigid to swim in at any hour of the day, but here in the Summerlands, it was only bracingly cold if I went in just after dawn. I braved this breath-stealing plunge every morning, because Taran insisted that I wake when he did, and this was the only hour when I could go in and be confident that none of Lixnea’s very friendly priests would try to strike up a conversation while clad in nothing but a look of serenity.
I still wasn’t graceful in the water, but the lake was glass-smooth and clear down to its shallow stone bottom, so I found that if I spread my arms and legs in the shape of Wesha’s star, I could float on my back and look up into a pastel sky that mirrored the one at home. With the water filling my ears and the scent of reeds in my nose, I achieved something like calm, with memory and duty falling away like gravity did.
Taran never followed me out here, which I was silly to find disappointing. I must have been a passing fancy, because he never mentioned his question on the night of the new moon again. I got polite distance instead, leaving me with daydreams where he waded into the water and confessed that he’d never learned how to swim, which would make at least one thing he’d told me true.
That’s alright, we’ll learn together, I’d say, and I’d take his hand, and we’d begin anew.
The daydream felt close to solidifying into an intention, but several weeks after we’d arrived at the house of the Moon, I hadn’t yet acted on it. I was lulled by the simplicity of life here. It felt like I had time to think.
Nonetheless, my tranquility was interrupted on this morning by an enormous black cormorant, whose webbed feet struck my diaphragm with great force and no warning.
“Having a nice time? All relaxed and entertained?” Awi hissed viciously as I rolled and choked on lake water and contemplated a bit of drowning.
That hadhurt.
I hadn’t seen the bird goddess since our arrival, and I couldn’t say I’d missed her.
