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Darius laughed. Lucius scowled. Mara rolled her eyes. We might have all been in an entirely new place, but somethings hadn’t changed.
“Conrad?” I whipped my head around to see Pasha gaping at me from the crossroads of two streets a little way up from the dock. “My God, it’s really you!” Pasha’s eyes were huge as he took a few, halting steps toward me.
“It’s really me,” I said, beaming with joy as we all walked up to the crossroads.
“Somebody fetch Dushka!” Pasha shouted the words I was tempted to shout myself. That caused a few other people to stop what they were doing and stare at us, but Pasha ignored them, picking up his pace and meeting us in the middle of the crossroads. “We didn’t think you’d ever return,” he said. “When word that General Rufus had destroyed the mountain pass reached us, we didn’t think you’d ever be able to come back to us.”
“I almost didn’t,” I said, breathing hard with emotion. “There were bridges…and avalanches…and we had to climb…I can’t—”
Aurora started crying where she was tucked inside my shirt. That had Pasha’s eyes going even rounder, but he didn’t get a chance to comment.
“Conrad?” Dushka’s disbelieving voice called from the large house that he’d converted into a settlement administration building just after the Dying Winter. He must have heard the commotion on the street and stepped out to see if it was true immediately. When he saw it was really me, he shouted, “Conrad!” with so much emotion that it had me bursting into tears.
He ran toward me, and I bolted for him. He looked so good, just as handsome and masculine as I’d remembered him. His hair was longer, and he had a bit more grey in his beard, which he really needed to trim, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but they seemed to vanish as he burst into a tearful smile.
We ran to each other, arms outstretched, but just before Dushka could slam into me for a tight embrace, I pulled up short.
“Wait! Wait!” I said, clasping my arms around Aurora to shield her. “You’ll crush the baby.”
Dushka stumbled to a halt only a few feet away from me, looking like he twisted his ankle as he did. But he ignored it as he gasped, “Baby?”
Aurora was wailing and writhing under my shirt, against my chest, so I eased her out of my sling with shaking hands to show Dushka. “She’s mine,” I wept, feeling hysterical with joy. “Her name is Aurora.”
Dushka stared at her, agape, then looked up at me. His mouth worked, but he seemed completely speechless.
“Here,” Appius said, stepping up to me and reaching for Aurora. “Let me take her so you can—” He nodded at Dushka. His expression was worried, and his eyes anxious.
I wasn’t oblivious to what he might be feeling, but I had too many emotions roiling through me to concern myself with Appius’s feelings first. I gently handed Aurora to him, meeting his eyes with a promise that we would sort everything out in a moment. Then I turned and flung myself at Dushka.
Dushka groaned and hugged me tight, touching me as much as he could. “I thought I’d lost you,” he sobbed, squeezing me like he could absorb me into his body. “I was certain I would never see you again.”
“I was so scared I would never see you again either,” I said through my tears.
I clasped the sides of Dushka’s face, just gazing at him as my heart overflowed and spilled and filled me with relief that had me dizzy.
Then Dushka clasped a hand possessively on the back of my head and slammed his mouth over mine in a dominant kiss.
I had missed Dushka’s kisses and his aggression so, so much in the last nine months. It felt so good to finally let go and give myself over to him, whimpering and crying and digging my fingertips into his back as he savaged my mouth. I had missed that feeling of being his so desperately. But I was back in his arms, I was his again.
Finally. Finally, I could breathe and let go of the anxiety that had never quite left me from the moment I had left Dushka’s side last summer. The scent of Dushka’s skin and the scrape of his beard against my own scraggly hair growth was everything. It was home, where I belonged, where I wanted to be.
I never wanted to stop kissing Dushka, or feeling his thick arms around me—though he’d lost a little weight since last summer too—but I had so, so many things to explain to him. I leaned back, trying to stay in his arms, as I said, “I have so much to tell you.”
“I’m sure you do,” Dushka said, laughing and crying. He shifted to cup his hands on either side of my face. “You’re dirty, and you need to shave. That’s not like you at all, which means you most definitely have a story to tell.” He glanced past me to Appius, who was trying to calm Aurora. “Start with the baby.”
“She was an accident,” I said, laughing loudly, whether it was appropriate or not. “Two days after parting ways with you, I stayed at an inn up in the mountains. Agnes, the baby’s mother, worked there. She, well, she snuck into my bed that night.”
I smiled at Aurora, my heart melting in my chest at her tears. I couldn’t bear to hear her crying like that, so I stepped away from Dushka to take her back from Appius and cradled her.
“We reached the inn again a few days ago, just in time to save her from dying when Agnes died in childbirth. Aurora was breech, and I…I had to cut her out.”
Dushka’s expression widened with surprised, then fell into sympathy. He wiped his tears away with the back of his hand, sniffed, and said, “I’m certain there’s more to the story than that. And I remember that inn.” He paused and blinked. “I remember a young woman with a round belly too, come to think of it.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “You were at Larth’s mountain inn?”
Dushka sent me a look that was both painful and teasing. “Did you think I would sit here weeping in my ale when I heard rumors that the mountain pass had been destroyed? I took a party of some of my best men and went to see for myself. I fancied that I was going after you to bring you back, but….” He stopped as a wave of emotion overtook him. He even made a sound of sharp grief. “But the pass was blocked by an avalanche, and then we reached the longest bridge I’d ever seen. Two steps out onto it, and I knew it was useless, that there was no way to cross it. I knew you were lost to me.”
I shook my head, shifting Aurora to a position where she could settle and stop crying. “We crossed that bridge almost a week ago.”
