“Do they yours?”
Rey eyed the little yellow fluff balls, who’d once more converged around Silla’s skirts. “Loath though I am to admit it, they do.”
“I come here each morning,” she said, smiling at the chick cupped in her palms. “Well. First, I visit Dawn—she’s perhaps a littletoowell fed in Kopa—but after that, I come here. The chicks help me think—help me fill my bank of hearthfire thoughts.”
Rey peered at her from the corner of his eye. Sitting in the barn, surrounded by baby chickens, for a moment, it felt like they’d gone back to a time when things were just a little easier. When it had been the two of them in a shield-home in Kalasgarde, with Runný’s borrowed chicks tottering about.
He slid his hand into his pocket. “I meant to give this to you upon my return, but last night did not go according to plan.”
Perplexed, Silla set the chick down on the barn floor and took the item from him. She blinked, then choked out a sob. “My rock! My heart-shaped rock—where did you get this?”
Rey stared at the strange, gray stone. He supposed if one squinted, it might look like a heart. “The Bloodaxe Crew’s wagon burned to the ground in Istré, your satchel with it. But when I dug through the rubble, I found the stone and thought, surely there’s areasonyou hauled this rock across the arse end of the kingdom.”
Silla’s thumb smoothed over the rock’s surface, her eyes glassy. “My father,” she said softly, “myfosterfather, Matthias, gave this to me the day before he died.”
She flinched, then shook her head. “The god, He’s…grown louder. More active. It’s hard—” Silla pressed fingers to her temples, but did not continue.
Rey watched her with preternatural stillness. “What is it?”
“It’s only”—her voice seemed far away—“sometimes, I do not know truth from lie. What is my own emotion and what is His. Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore. Like I’m losing myself in this place.” Silla turned to him, finally meeting his eyes and letting Rey see it all. The weight of bearing her mother’s bargain all alone, while striving to be Eisa. And in that moment, Rey would have given anything to take the burden from her.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
“I missed you, too,” he replied, sliding his thumb along the smooth skin of her jaw.
But she drew back and said softly, “Then why didn’t you write?”
The hurt on her face was like an axe in his sternum, and Rey would do anything to banish it. But her words made no sense to him. “What do you mean?” Silla looked away, but he gently pulled her chin until her eyes met his once more. “I wrote to you, Silla…every day.Did you not get the letters?”
She blinked furiously, clearly befuddled.
“No.”
“No?” Anger blazed to life inside his chest, and he gritted his teeth. “I swore to you I’d write, Silla, and I did, every gods damned day we were apart.”
“And yesterday?” There was a note of disbelief in her voice, butfar greater than that was her anger. Rey was relieved to hear it. “Why did you not come to me upon your return?”
“Jarl Hakon hauled me to his chambers and forced me into a pointless, hours-long meeting.” Rey’s gaze hardened.
“You wrote to me.” This time it was only confusion in Silla’s voice. “I thought—”
“Tell me.” Rey’s mind was reeling, trying to understand. How had this happened—and how could she think he didn’t write?
“I thought you’d changed your mind.” Her voice was small, but the words slammed into him with the force of a maelstrom. “I thought with space, you’d realized…”
He picked up where her voice had trailed off. “You want to know what I realized?” Rey slid an arm around her back, scooping her onto his lap. “I realized how much had changed in Kalasgarde. That leading the Bloodaxe Crew no longer felt right.”
Silla blinked at him, and this time, when he smoothed a thumb along her jaw, she did not pull away.
“I realized what a mistake I’d made in abandoning you in Kopa, with so much on your shoulders.Frightened together,Silla, I promised you that. And breaking that promise haunted me each day we were apart.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly dumbfounded. And then she softened against him, her warmth seeping into all the cold crevices inside his chest.
“Oh,” he repeated stonily. His hand slipped beneath her cloak and his knuckles brushed up her spine. “I don’t understand why my letters didn’t reach you.”
Rey’s mind raced for an answer, and it didn’t take long to find one. Who had diverted him from seeing Silla? Who was displeased by Rey’s early return? Thishadto be Jarl Hakon and Atli’s doing. Rey’s anger burned to life. They thought they could walk all over him, simply because of their rank—thought they could takeher. But they were mistaken if they thought Rey would ever allow such a thing to happen. This wasn’t over, not at all. But it could wait.
His anger at the Hakon men burned strong, yet the feel of his woman after so many days apart was stronger.
