"I'll be back by afternoon," I say.
"Aislin." She says it patiently, the way she says most things. "We know."
I pick up my coat.
The reason I agreed to this — I've been turning it over for days and I'm no closer to a clean answer. It's not the event itself. Painted wooden eggs and whatever Drogath thinks they mean isn't exactly what I'd choose to spend a morning on, left entirely to my own devices. It isn't the territory, the river I haven't seen yet. I have absolutely no interest in whatever tokens or charms are inside those eggs.
It might be the kiss.
I'd kissed him. Me, Aislin — who has not done a single impulsive thing in years, who has not let anyone that close in months. I'd kissed him and he'd kissed back and then I'd run because that's what I do, that's the move I have, I run and I rebuild my walls and I get behind them and I point out every reason why the thing I want is actually something I should fear.
I know what I do. Knowing it doesn't stop me doing it.
The other thing — the smaller thing, the one I like even less — is what I'd thought when he mentioned the hunt.Don't make me find someone else to partner with.And I'd felt something that I refuse to call what it is and I'd said yes before that feeling had time to talk itself into sense. I hadn't wanted someone else spending a day in the forest with him. Hadn't wanted someone else getting the ridiculous grin.
That's a problem. That's a new problem and I'm carrying it across the base in the midmorning sun, bundled in my coat with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, walking toward whatever this is.
The center of the base is already busy. I hear it before I see it — Drogath's voice carrying over the crowd, describing the hunt's sacred meaning, and under that the noise of pairs finding each other, of people I've started to recognize by their voices if not always by name. The Frostfang clan is loud in aggregate. They are loud as individuals too, but there's something about all of them in one place that creates a particular kind of roar, a physical presence.
I find Ursik because I always find Ursik. You could blindfold me and put me in the middle of this base and I'd triangulate him by sheer volume.
He's with Kerra, which doesn't surprise me, the two of them facing each other with the energy of people who have been having this argument for twenty years and are finding it newly enjoyable. Kerra has someone beside her — a young guard, very young, with the expression of a person who has perhaps underestimated what they signed up for. He's watching Kerra work herself up and he looks slightly pale.
"—absolutely down," Kerra is saying, "going straight down, you are going to choke in the final quarter and I am going to be standing at the finish with every token and a list of your failures?—"
"You and this child—" Ursik gestures at the young guard, who I'm increasingly certain regrets all his choices, "—are going to come in last and I will begraciousabout it?—"
"You've never been gracious about anything in your life?—"
"—I'll be gracious because that's the kind of man I am, Kerra, a gracious man?—"
"Name one time?—"
"I'm a very gracious man?—"
He sees me.
The argument doesn't stop — Kerra hasn't noticed, still building her case — but something shifts in his face, quick and real, before it settles back into the grin.
"My partner," he announces, to Kerra, to me, to the general vicinity. He throws his arm around my shoulders and I don't startle. Instead, I sink into his hold, which is something I absolutely should not do. "The two of us are going to dismantle whatever plan you've got, Kerra, I promise you that."
"I'm going to dismantle your kneecaps?—"
"That's not in the spirit of the festival."
"I don't care about the spirit of the festival?—"
Ursik looks down at me and raises his eyebrows in a way that very clearly meansdo you see this? this is what I deal with, and the thing is — the genuinely inconvenient thing — I can't stop the grin. I feel it happen and I can't interrupt it, he's just too ridiculous standing there with his arm around me arguing with Kerra like the fate of the clan depends on painted wooden eggs.
Kerra clocks me grinning and points.
"She's laughing at you," she tells Ursik.
"She's laughingwithme."
"She's absolutely laughing at you."
"It's complicated," I say.
