“Maybe. Some of them were rare, I’m told—and others had sentimental value because she made notes in them.”
“Really? In the common tongue?”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s a strange question. How else would she write them?”
Pharis shook his head rapidly, shrugging.
“Oh, I don’t know—you said she had tutors. I thought she might have learned multiple languages.”
“Not as far as I know,” I said.
“What else do you know about her?”
“Well, she was kind, and smart. I remember her being extremely tall, which is why…”
I gestured to my own unusually long legs. Pharis smiled.
“She was very loving,” I told him. “Shereallyloved my father. They seemed happy together, in spite of their different upbringings.”
“It’s funny how people from two seemingly different worlds can connect sometimes,” Pharis mused.
I nodded. Stellon and I had connected in spite of our vastly different backgrounds, and I supposed Pharis and I had managed to form a connection as well during our days and nights on the road.
“And my mother was brave,” I said. “She was strong—inside I mean. When Papa was brought home injured, she went off to fight for our people.”
“It must have been hard for you, being left to care for your war-wounded father at age, what? Seventeen?”
“Sixteen. It wasn’t easy,” I admitted. “But Mama promised me I could handle it, and I did. Before she left, she told me I was in charge of our home now and that I was stronger than I knew.”
“You are,” Pharis assured me. “I’ve seen it.”
“There have been times I wasn’t too sure about that. But she was. When she was about to leave, I was clinging to her, crying, afraid she’d never come home.”
I felt my cheeks go red, remembering my cowardice.
“She told me to get control of myself, to be brave.”
My mind’s eye could still picture her stern face in that moment. “I remember the sound of her voice when she said, ‘Raewyn, you’re stronger than you know. You don’t need me. You don’t need anyone—don’t ever forget that.’”
She’d also advised me to guard my heart carefully and avoid getting swept up in my feelings, saying that love didn’t conquer all.
There was no reason to mention that part to Pharis.
His handsome face pulled into a frown. “I guess I know now why you have a hard time… receiving.”
After a pause, he said, “Everyone needs someone at some point. I’d never have made it without Stellon and Mareth.”
“I know, you’re right, and I’d be dead right now if not for Stellon… and you.”
Stretching my feet out toward the toasty fire, I said, “You know, it’s funny, I’ve never told anyone what my mother said that day. I have—had—a close friend in the village that I talked to about lots of things, but not that. It was the last thing Mama said to me. I guess it just seemed… too private to share.”
“You shared it with me,” he said, the appealing rasp of his low voice sending shivers down my spine.
“Right.”
Suddenly I was embarrassed, the heat in my cheeks rivaling the flames in the fireplace.
Why had I done that?
