“Oh, well, I have portraits in the gallery in my home in Blackvale if you need proof, Your Grace,” he said, and briefly pictured her in his ancestral home.In his life in the country, in his bed there.
She shifted as if she, too, was thinking of those things.“I will trust your word,” she said softly.“But how does Silas come into the tale?”
“I was often bullied by the other boys at school, or ignored.I preferred the ignoring.”He sighed.“And Silas was, I admit, one of those bullies.”
Her cheek twitched and she dropped her gaze.Once again, he questioned what her experience with his late friend had been.
“I was standing on the bridge over a river one day in the early spring.It was cold, so cold.This group of boys, including Silas, came up and they started tormenting me.I was trying to ignore it and that only seemed to enrage some of them.”
“Silas?”she said softly.
“No, he was in the background mostly.One of them got angry enough that he picked me up and dangled me over the bridge.Well, apparently I was heavier than he anticipated, because he dropped me.I fell into that cold water and the current was racing.”
“Oh no!”Valaria gasped.“How terrifying.”
He felt his breath becoming heavier at the memory.“It was.I kept going under, the flow was so strong.I swallowed so much water.But I somehow managed to paddle over to an old bunch of tree roots that stuck out into the stream.I was clinging there, crying out for help and knowing that none would come.”
“What had happened to the boys who did this to you?”she asked.
“Run off the moment it was clear what they’d done.”He shivered.“I knew they weren’t going to fetch help or they might have to admit their part in what had happened.I became more and more certain that I would die there.My arms were getting tired holding on and the current would eventually win and I would drown.”
“That is horrific,” she whispered.She sat in the chair next to his and reached out to cover his hand.“What happened?How were you saved?”
“Suddenly I looked up and Silas was there on the banks of the river, staring at me.We locked eyes, and then he grabbed a stick and held it out to me.He was screaming at me to grab on.”
“He…he came back for you?”She shook her head.
“Yes.Apparently he had been the only one to stay long enough to watch me struggle and realized the same thing I had: that I would die.I grabbed the stick, he hauled me to shore and saved my life.”
She blinked.“I see.”
“Now, he told me he just didn’t want to get into trouble.”Another ripple went through her face.“But after that, he took me on as a mascot of sorts.The rest of the boys stopped picking on me as much.And then I grew into my body and became much better at fencing and boxing.Eventually we were friends.”He shifted.“I suppose…I suppose the fact that he saved me perhaps colored my view of him over the years.”
“Did he ever mention it to you?”she asked.“Remind you that he’d done it?”
“Yes,” he said.“He often teased me about my owing him a boon because he saved my life.”
She nodded.“That sounds like Silas.He might have pretended to be playful, but I'm sure he meant it when he said you owed him.”
He caught his breath.This was the closest she’d ever come to opening up about Silas with him of her own volition.And he wanted to know more about her past with his friend.He wanted to understand everything about her and what had made her who she was.
“Did he do the same to you?”he asked gently.
Her nostrils flared slightly and she lifted her chin.He could see the answer she wouldn’t give written all over her face in pain and hate.But then she pushed it away and her expression became serene again.Blank.She slowly removed her hand from his and set it in her lap.
“I’m so glad you were saved, Callum.The world would be a much dimmer place without you.”She darted her gaze from his.“But I came here to do something and I should do it.”
“What youthinkyou need to do,” he said.
She shook her head.“No, I know it.And you do, too, if you think about it long and hard enough.We need to end this affair.”
He flinched at the words he’d known were coming and yet had hoped to stave off.“Valaria, please—” he began.
She ignored the interruption as if he hadn’t even spoken and her words fell out in a rush, “I made a rash decision to jump into this…thisthingwith you because of a great many things.And while it was very enjoyable, it was also rash and foolish to do.There are far too many risks.And…and since it was a lark, I think the risks are not worth it.”
“A lark,” he repeated, and it was like she’d reached into his chest and squeezed his heart.“You don’t mean that.I might not be certain of a great many things, but whatever is between us is much more than a lark.”
Once again her lips trembled, but she lifted her chin in defiance.“How could it be?You and I barely know each other, we have no bond, we have very little history.This is pure attraction, Callum, nothing more.So it follows that there should be nothing to walking away from it, especially to a man of your experience.”
