Fell’s stillness dissolved, and his hands again roamed through my hair.
I drifted.
When Dania had gone home for the night, and I’d napped and woken refreshed to find everyone apart from me and Rowan and Fara deliriously drunk, I wrapped myself in whoever’s fur I’d ended up with and took a seat beside Rowan on a log rolled next to a roaring pyre.Fell and his friends were building something out of kindling, but in their state, they kept knocking pieces down that were meant to stay up, losing themselves in a fit of giggles as they did.
The sky was rich with stars, and I felt clear and certain.
“I’m not going to tell anyone back home,” I said to Rowan.“Anything you do here.Anything you see or say or become.”
He looked at me then, and I could sense I’d scraped him with my words.I had found his fear and named it, killed it, and buried it all in a single moment.This too was sorcery, though few would think of it as such.
He opened his mouth and then closed it.Opened it again and halted once more.
I could remember the first night I felt freed in the north, like having wings beating steadily inside my chest, wings stretching out as something inside me soared.I imagined those same wings inside his chest.Flapping slowly and then coasting.Easy.
My insides thrummed like there were two teeny drumsticks within.
Miraculous.
I took a breath and straightened my back.“To prove how serious I am, I will tell you a secret.You can hold it hostage, knowing that if I were to tell on you, you could tell on me.Knowing you can tell me a secret in return, and I won’t repeat it because it cannot be more than what I have to share.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m to have a child,” I said, raising my chin the smallest amount.“A Norsern one.It kicks me even now, and I’m happy its legs are strong.”
Rowan studied me—his moss-coloured eyes hardening and then softening.Hardening.Melting.He swallowed, the bob in his throat moving up and then down.I felt it break—whatever from back home held us into our strict thoughts and postures—it snapped in him.He told me one secret, of which I’m sure he had many.“Once, when I was a boy, I dreamt of you, Gentlewoman.”
We held each other’s gaze for a moment longer before he looked away.
The air felt awkward because so much had been shared.
“I have professed an oath to your brother,” Rowan said, keeping his gaze on the pyre.“I keep thinking it is so strange to have ended up here same as you.I keep thinking my oath now means I must protect you here.That perhaps this is what the gods wanted, why they allowed me to be taken captive.”
“Now Rowan, you sound like a Norsern talking aboutskael,” I said.
He huffed softly, not quite a laugh, but the closest I had seen from him yet.
“And if you truly wanted to protect me, you would go speak to Fara as she keeps looking over here, and it makes me uncomfortable.It’s you she wants to see, not me.”
He did smile then.“And what would I say to her?Stye-ein, stye-ein?”
I laughed.His pronunciation was perfect.“Where did you learn this?”
“It is what my captor says.I don’t know what it means.”
“It meanssteady,” I said.
Finally, he laughed.“So enough for a full conversation then.”
I put on a false stern face.“Go.”
Rowan took a long drink from his goblet and stood.“As you command, Gentlewoman.”
This, I thought as I watched him approach Fara, as she scurried to make space for him next to her, setting her hand on his shoulder in a way no woman on the Isle would ever have done.To command a strong person and have them obey.This is what power feels like.
Thirty-Six
The world emptied, leaving only bare trees, soft light, and long shadows.
