“I always loved it,” she said. He already knew how her father had paid for her to apprentice with the glassblower just outside Carinth; how she’d adored the glass pieces he sold to his wealthiest customers. And when Mastro Gante had let her work in the shop, she’d told Niel it felt like coming home, an unexpected familiarity in their strange new city. A return to the life Ditmar had stolen her from.
“Is it the shop that’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.
“No. He’s nice enough.” Ayla sighed again, and rested a hand on her stomach. “I don’t know, Niel. It’s like… when I was in Blackfell, I missed all the things that had made meme. I was so miserable that I clung to the memories as a way to survive. And now, I… I’m wondering if maybe I haven’t changed. If I spent three years miserable and living in the past, not realizing it was just that. The past.”
“So you might not want to blow glass,” he said, and crouched in front of her.
“The shop’s hotter than metal left in the sun,” she said. “It smells foul, and the fire’s so bright it makes my vision spotty, and my arm aches from stirring day after day, hour after hour.I loved it enough to put up with all that before Ditmar. I don’t think I do now.”
“Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?” he reached for her hand and took it in his own, looking up at her. “You don’t need to go back. We don’t need the money.”
“I suppose,” she said. Ayla felt doom rising in her, and that made her guilty. She blinked rapidly and squeezed Niel’s hand as he frowned at her.
“Ayla?” he asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t want to sound, for a second, like I’m not happy, because Iam,” she said, desperate for him to believe her, because it was the truth. Shewashappy. She was safe, and loved, and cared for. Blackfell was a distant memory. Niel was her champion, and her lover, and their home was comfortable, and Cirancia was beginning to make its own sense. She wouldn’t trade any ofthat. Not for the world.
“But?” he said softly.
“But I wish, sometimes, it had happened less quickly. Iwantthis baby. I just wish I’d had time to… I don’t know, to figure out who I am now, first. I keep dreaming about rescuing those poor horses we saw in the market last week, whose owner was whipping them, and finding them better homes, or opening a shop like my father did when he was starting out, or building a bakery that sells northern dishes, the kinds we never see here, or… oh, it’s soselfish,” she cried, and reached up to wipe her tears away.
“Ayla,” Niel whispered, with a small shake of his head.
“I wouldn’t choose any of it over this,” she said, with fierce intensity,needinghim to know it wasn’t him she questioned. “I just can’t help but wish, and I know I shouldn’t…”
“Why are you choosing at all? You could still do any of that. Or all of it.”
She looked down at him, over the round of her stomach, and wondered if he was just placating her, or if he didn’t realize how much their lives were about to change.
“We’re having a baby, Niel,” she said.
“I’m aware of that,” he said, with a chuckle. “You’re acting as though your life’s over.”
“I’ll be a mother,” she said.
“Aye,” he agreed. “But I’m only gone, what, seven? Eight? Hours a week, at the school. I can’t nurse the babe, but I can do the rest. I can watch our child. I could help with horses, or mind a shop, or punch dough in a bakery, or whatever you decide to do. It’s notover, Ayla. It’s just starting. Youdohave time.”
“But it’s all changing.”
“I know. But that’s what life does. You think on what you want to do, and we’ll try it. And if you don’t like it, we’ll try something else.”
“But it can’t be that simple.”
“It is.”
He won’t mean that, a part of her thought.He’s saying it, but the moment it becomes too much work, he won’t be helping anymore…
Except this was Niel. Not an ordinary man. And she knew him, and she knew his heart and his strength and how far he’d go just to see her smile. He treated her like an equal, not his property. He had been ready to sacrifice his life for hers.
He meant it. Every word. The voice in her head was nothing more than a foolish shred of her past life. And if things were always changing, well; perhaps sometimes they were changing for the best.
She sniffled, and reached for her pocket. Niel was there faster, offering her his own handkerchief. She blotted her eyes, then blew her nose and drew a wobbling breath.
“Sorry,” she said. “I swear I’ve never cried so much in my life.” That probably wasn’t true, but it felt it, some days.
“Don’t apologize.”
“Where were you this morning? Did you go somewhere?” It was one of his days off, but he’d gone out to buy produce and taken far too long to come home.
