“Go back inside,” I said, nudging her. “You’re too thin to be out. I have flesh on my bones for winter. You slender thing, you need fireplaces.”
I left her and walked back up to the keep, the air stinging my swollen lips and wet cheeks. I shielded my face from the celebratory Pikestullians as I passed through crowds, wanting no one to see the state of me. I was in two places, one of ecstasy and one of agony. I was going to lie with my beloved husband tonight and I was going to die sometime soon.
“Is this what I get?” I snarled into the night. “A life of rejection and then a life of hard work and then this death? Did I not suffer enough with my family and Thrush? Did I not work hard enough in Eccleston to build a life for myself? Did I not rally us all together to survive an abduction? Did I not try to worship you and be a good daughter? Why? Why do you speak to me? Why the Knelling? Give me time. I beg for it. Give me—”
I could not breathe. I had found an alleyway and I stood in it, leaning against the stone of a building and looking up into a violet sky with only a speckling of stars for light. I was out of the city center now, away from the holiday. Echoes of music and people felt far away.
“Give me three moons.” I glared up at the night. I was used to praying upward as Rodwin’s face had been seen in the clouds by historic Perpatanians and recorded as a holy sighting. As a result, I had grown up praying this way and I realized the goddess was likely in everything, the stone I leaned against, the ground beneath my feet. It did not matter what direction I faced. “I claim them. I claim the next three moons as mine and my man’s. You will give me this. You will give me this gift, for I have had so much loss. I claim it. I want my time with him. Take me when it is over, but grant me this.”
She said nothing and then, in her scratchy hag’s tone, she said,so will it be, girl. But they will come for you. They will come.
“Then let them,” I declared. “Let them come. I know not ofthem, but let them come. I will go willingly once I have had my— myhappiness.”
I wiped my face and made my way home. Once in our room, I lit a candle and drank a cup of water, trying to sober myself from drink and lightleaf. I stood at one of the windows, peeking out over the city and I resolved to bask in the warmth of my marriage as long as I could, to drink every drop of this love, to feast on it to the bone and suck on the marrow. I would die with satisfaction. And with this resolution, I relived those kisses I had just tasted on my lips. I felt his hands on my back, my cheeks, my head. I reveled in his confessions.
If thought and deed were the same, then I have kissed you already, Edith. Countless kisses.
I have prayed for your kiss, wife.
Never say you are sorry for touching me.
He had given me so much, a man who showed so little of himself, who spoke seldom of himself, a private man. He had kissed me in a public place with passion and mastery and ownership. He wanted me for his bride.
I brought my fingers to my lips, where he had branded me as his. “I’m sorry,” I said to the night sky through the slit on the side of the window skins. “I’m sorry. I know you cannot change fate. I’m so sorry.”
I swore I saw a star dim before her voice came to me.I know. I too weep at what comes.
“I love you,” I said. “You have healed wounds I did not know still bled.”
And you have brought me jubilation, girl.
80. Utmost
There was a knock at the door and I whirled from the window, heart in my throat. Why did he knock? Was he being coy? I opened the door.
Luka, looking sheepish, in his Tintarian black stood in the hallway. “Lady?”
“Luka?”
“Captain has been called away and he wished me to—”
“Called away?” My words were half shriek. “Called away to an invasion?”
“Lady, please do not upset yourself,” he interjected. He was nervous, trying to speak to me with purpose. “Please, he bid me tell you something specific.”
“Something specific?”
He bobbed his handsome young head. “He made me repeat it several times. He says ‘it is with my utmost reluctance that I depart you.’ He said ‘utmost’ twice.”
“Utmost twice,” I breathed. The grandest of love poems could not have competed with ‘my utmost reluctance’ and I would never read lyric or verse like it.
“Utmost twice,” Luka repeated, pleased that he had calmed me.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I worry for him.”
“Of course, lady. And he is not called away to invade or I would be with him.”
“To where does he go and why? Can you tell me?”
