“Justice or death?”
“Just wondering if you always planned to go out in a blaze of glory to escape your fate. You can’t possibly have wanted to spendyour life diagnosing colic in farmers’ screaming infants in the event you lived through the rebellion. I should have offered you a third option.”
“No, you’ve got it wrong,” I heatedly responded, still startled. “I was going to be married. I was going to have my own home. I was—”
“With a plum tree, yes, I do remember. But that was what someone else promised you, not your idea.”
“Doesn’t mean I didn’t want it,” I said, squirming when he held me in place with his hands on my shoulders. His voice had been gentle, but his expression was more dangerous than usual.
Ihadwanted it; it had been the beautiful dream that sustained me through the worst nights of the campaign. I would lie awake, watching the embers of the campfire dwindle, and think about what I’d plant in our garden and what color I’d paint our front door.
“Do you still though? You’d like to go home with your beloved, have some simple mortal life together?”
There wasn’t an easy answer to that.
“I don’t—it doesn’t matter. Death is going to get free at some point, and that’s more important than what I want.”
Taran’s raised eyebrow said he didn’t believe me.
“It seems to me that the priests of your temple died, your lover died,Idied, and then you promptly threw yourself into the sea in the last of a series of very thinly considered ventures with the likely side effect of a heroic death. I can’t imagine that little mortal life was ever big enough for you to want to live for.”
I pressed my lips together in protest. He was wrong. He didn’t know better—and couldn’t remember. It only sounded horrible to him because he couldn’t remember enough of the mortal world to imagine it.
Maybe Genna’s immortal son was never going to learn stonemasonry and build me a little house by a creek and help me fill it with fat babies. Hewas, if I could manage it by sheer force of will,going to end the war like he promised. He was going to realize that he was, in his real soul, unselfish and loving.
My dreams were not getting any smaller, at least.
Taran ran his hands lightly down my arms, finally linking them loosely around my body when I shivered at the sensation. He propped his chin on top of my head and considered our embrace in the mirror.
“That’s alright, darling. That’s what you have me for. Wanting to live.” He examined my appearance one more time. The concealing white fabric, the tumbling hair. The defiant expression.
“You should take this off,” he said, and I didn’t realize he had a finger and thumb on my ring until he was already sliding it from my hand.
I cried out and tried to put a protective hand over it, but it was too late. He already had the ring in his palm, examining it with the critical eye of a habitual thief.
“That’s mine,” I said loudly, trying to snatch it back.
“I’ll give it back,” he said in a soothing voice. “I don’t want Genna getting sidetracked and wondering who the little priestess I brought here from the mortal world thinks she’s going to marry.”
This explanation didn’t calm me down, barely made sense.
“I’ll wear gloves,” I said, reaching for it again. I’d never taken the ring off from the moment he’d put it on, and my heart was already twisting at its absence.
“In the summer?”
I made another distressed noise and turned around.
“I’ll wear it on a different finger.”
Taran was beginning to look annoyed. “It’s not even very nice. The finish is uneven. Your betrothed should have been embarrassed to propose with that ring.”
“Our friend Drutalos ab Smenosmadethat ring,” I said, nearly stomping my good foot when Taran held it out of my reach. “Hiwagave him her earrings, and Dousonna ter Diopater gave him the silver pin from her cloak. Drutalos stayed up all night working on it so that we could take our vows the very next day.”
This failed to impress. “And where was I, as everyone else covered for your penniless suitor?”
I paused, realizing that I was close to dangerous territory.
“You were there,” I said, cheeks heating. I stopped grabbing for the ring in his hand.
