She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Your Highness.’
CHAPTER38
Wilona came to a stop a safe distance from her son. ‘If you keep chopping wood at this rate, there will be no forest left.’
Roul rested his axe on the ground and wiped his brow. ‘You’ll thank me come winter.’
That made his mother laugh. ‘Winter? What is winter nowadays when there’s snow on the mountains all year round?’ She studied him a moment. ‘You’ve been home nearly a month. When are you going to slow down?’
‘This is slowing down.’
Wilona exhaled. ‘You’re not a defender anymore. You don’t have to get up before the sun and punish your body for hours on end before you take your first bite of food for the day. You’re allowed to sit, rest,sleep.’
Sleep was a problem. He could only manage a few hours at a time. His dreams were vivid and violent. Suffocating. He woke drenched in sweat despite the cooler temperatures that far north. Eda often featured in his dreams, but she was different. If they were being chased, she was slow. If they were fighting, she never drew her sword in time. And if she needed saving, he was always too far away to help her. When a defender’s mind was poisoned with violence and heartbreak, hard work was the only medicine. So he raised the axe and continued chopping.
‘You could write to her, you know,’ Wilona said, looking around.
‘Who?’
‘You know exactly who.’
The axe came down, and the wood fell to either side of the block. ‘Why would I do that? She’s suffered enough.’
His mother looked heavenward. ‘Firstly, because she doesn’t even know if you made it safely home. And secondly, it might help if you put your feelings down on parchment.’
‘I don’t need to put my feelings anywhere, but I do need to protect Eda. I know her. If I start sending letters, she’ll get ideas. Next thing she’ll be climbing walls and travelling through Carmarthenshire alone on foot.’
‘So you’ll just let her wonder if you’re still alive?’
‘She’d know if I died.’
‘How?’
He did not have an answer for that. Not one he could share, anyway.
‘Do you think if your heart stopped beating, mine would stop also?’
He leaned his forehead on the top of the axe, dizzy with the memory of her palm pressed to his heart.
‘You miss her,’ his mother said quietly.
‘Miss her’?He was mourning her.
Straightening, Roul picked up another large log and balanced it on the block. ‘Go inside. It’s freezing out here.’
With a resigned nod, his mother returned indoors.
* * *
Eda always requested the north wall. It was probably a bad idea to torture herself that way, but she did it anyway. Sometimes she would lean on the embrasure and watch the fog below, imagining a single horse appearing through it.
Roul.
He would stop and look up, eyes narrowing on her. He would recognise her, even at that distance. She had conjured up all kinds of romantic reunions that she would not dare speak aloud. Her sisters would fall down with shock if they knew. They thought her incapable of romantic thoughts. They did not know the extent of her attachment because she had not shared any details with them. As far as they were aware, she fell in love with a man she could not have, and now she was moving on. She gave them no reason to think otherwise. It was pointless to mark herself a ruined woman and risk her uncle finding out. So she never mentioned him, and she made a point of not reacting when someone did.
‘Is there no way he can write and let us know he’s home safe?’ Eda overheard Blake whispering to Lyndal in the kitchen one night. They thought she was upstairs.
‘I know he’s home safe,’ Lyndal whispered back. ‘He wrote to Queen Fayre just last week requesting straw to rethatch their roof.’
