“I was told I’d find you here.”
Deckard’s voice soothed over Evylin, and she turned, greeting him with a dry grin. She studied her husband, understanding for the first time how deep his magic ran. It was always within him, always drawing on him. It was the thing that made his eyes shift green and his temperament unfathomably steady.
“I hope my father wasn’t too unbearable,” she said as he approached, sliding the Relic back beneath her collar. A gentle wash of pleasure swept into her palm from the gold and onyx pendant.
Deckard carefully walked through the kirkyard to kneel beside her. “He’s fine,” he said. “I showed him our orders and explained what I could, and he was quite gratified to learn that he’d married his daughter off to the king’s most valued soldier.”
They shared a sardonic grin. The sunlight caught in Deckard’s hair, making it look redder than usual. He still wore his uniform, the gold braid of a colonel looped around his shoulder. His gaze softened with a somber respect as his eyes turned to the grave marker.
Evylin took his hand, ignoring the hesitation in his returned grip. “Thank you for joining me,” she said as he knelt beside her. “I wanted to introduce you. Silly as that may be.”
He squeezed her hand. “It isn’t silly at all,” he promised.
She returned his gentle smile, and they turned to face the headstone embedded into the terrae.
“Jonn, this is Ryen.” Evylin drew a finger along the edge of the stone. “Ryen, this is my husband, Jonn.”
Deckard bowed his head.
“I always came to visit Ryen when I needed to talk to someone,” Evylin said, feeling the need to explain herself. “Of course, Hewitt was who I went to for advice, but... If I just needed someone to listen, Ryen was always there, before and after his death.”
Deckard scooted closer but remained silent.
“I know Hewitt told you about him,” Evylin looked up at him, “but I never did. I should have.”
Deckard shook his head. “You were hurting.”
“You’re my husband. I should have trusted you with it.”
“I never blamed you for it.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re too forgiving sometimes,” she said softly. “But I love you for it.”
He kissed the top of her head.
“Would you like to hear about him?” she asked, sitting up again. “From me?”
Though she could feel a growing tension in his body from their proximity, Deckard didn’t pull away. “I would,” he said. “Very much.”
So Evylin told him all about Ryen. She told him about their promise to one another, their shared dream of adventure. “I haven’t quite become a legend worth five hundred tales, but I’m not sure I’d like to anyway,” she admitted.
Then she told him about their childhood. They’d spent whole days fishing by the river, pretending to be pirates, and taking turns reading aloud from their storybooks. When their mothers forced them to do schoolwork, they would only do it if they were together. Irena was a second parent to Evylin when her father was gone in the war. She felt her aunt’s loss, too, but not nearly as keenly as Ryen’s.
Ryen had been her everything.
“He was so clever, so good,” she said. “He always made me feel so safe.”
But then the fire came and took him away.
“I married you because of him,” Evylin confessed at last. “If it weren’t for my promise to Ryen—that I wouldn’t let our dream die—I would never have agreed so soon.”
“I have much to thank him for, then,” Deckard said. “I only wish I could have met him.”
A wistful sigh escaped Evylin, and she looked down at her cousin’s name embedded in the headstone. “Well,” she began, “I like to think that in another life, you did meet him.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “Yes. In a world where there was no fire—where no one was careless enough to leave a candle burning in the village hall and the houses behind it never burned—Ryen lived and grew to manhood with me. Hewitt stayed in the service, enjoying his commission and helping Ephria excel in the war. At seventeen, Ryen would have joined the army, as we’d agreed. He would have been gone for some time, and that would have been hard, but I would have known that it was in service to our future.I imagine he rose through the ranks, became an officer just as quickly as his father, and shortly after, returned on leave.
