Exile. Part 17

"Aurelia, you're eighteen." He laughed, his parents' voices joining in from nearby.

Her birthday. She was the one who had forgotten.

"I'd like to give you a gift," he said, "but you have to promise not to refuse."

"Why would I refuse?"

"Promise."

Her mind scrambled, trying to heed the warning pulsing through her veins. But she fell victim to her curiosity. "Yes." She opened her eyes.

His fingers slid from her face....

To reveal the c.o.c.ked ears of the chestnut filly. The red and brown mane sprang up wildly behind those ears, and the matching tail arched above the glowing bronze back. The soft pale muzzle stretched eagerly in Aurelia's direction, the filly's reach held in check by Mr. Vantauge.

Falcon. Bridled, saddled, and determined.

Aurelia felt her heart break. Robert couldn't give her this beautiful, strong-willed horse. Her own mare had already paid the ultimate price.

The filly strained forward, no doubt antic.i.p.ating one of the treats Aurelia always brought when she and Robert came out to visit the horses. She felt him slip something into her hand before subtly retreating.

Mr. Vantauge released the bridle.

And Falcon broke forward, her muzzle diving down and nibbling until Aurelia opened her fingers, exposing the oats just placed there. The filly stole the food. Then, instead of backing away, stepped close.

No, Aurelia thought. But the questing nose was so insistent, sniffing her chin, her cheeks, her hair. Don't let yourself fall in love with her. The black eyes were so wide. The red-brown neck so soft. She let her face fall against the filly's shoulder and lost her heart.

Then she whirled, flung her arms around Robert's neck, and kissed him.

Fast.

In fact, Aurelia had already mounted Falcon before she realized what she had done. And in front of his parents.

The tears in her eyes obscured the others' reactions. Her hand rose, but she forced it down. "Thank you."

Surely they would realize there was nothing intentioned in the kiss. Nothing ...

Except for the way she felt about him.

She buried her face in the horse's mane, and within moments, she and Falcon were flying over the gra.s.ses of the frontier.

He wanted to go after her. But both his parents were standing there. Watching. He could feel their eyes drilling into him, and he knew they were thinking he would misinterpret the kiss, let himself believe it meant more than grat.i.tude.

The contact had been so swift. So brief. How could he imagine it meant anything?

But she had never kissed him before.

Once, months ago, he had kissed her. Frightening her. And she had run away.

Now she had run again, but this time he had not caused her fear. Something else had. Like her own feelings.

If the kiss had meant nothing, would she have fled?

He was a fool.

His father's hand clapped down on his shoulder, a light in the older man's eyes.

Robert knew the breeze chasing Aurelia had caused that light. With a wind, the thres.h.i.+ng could commence. And he would have to resign himself to a long day of beating grain with a flail. Beside her. Within inches of her. And without a moment alone with her.

Sure enough, as Robert had antic.i.p.ated, she insisted on helping with the thres.h.i.+ng. And after her delayed birthday breakfast, he, his father, and Aurelia all scaled the barn ladder to confront the ma.s.sive pile of wheat under the eaves. Golden stalks, long spiky heads, and, somewhere in the midst of those pointed beards, the precious kernels of grain.

Mr. Vantauge began pitching the wheat.

And Aurelia, hefting a pitchfork, moved to help rake the long golden stalks into a smaller pile at the room's center.

Robert shoved open the large sliding door on one end of the loft, crossed the room, and tugged open the other door so that not only the light but the breeze could fly through the entire s.p.a.ce. Then he turned to watch her, trying to take in how the same young woman who had appeared before him several months ago, draped in violet silk and a diamond tiara, could now be here, hundreds of miles north, in battered boots and borrowed clothes, her hair bound in his mother's blue scarf, and her hands wielding a pitchfork as though she had been born to it.

His father was saying something, but Robert blocked out the words. He knew the job.

Lifting the flail, he brought the tapered end swinging down onto the wheat, beating the grain from the husk, expelling his emotions. All he wanted was a minute alone with her. Though what he would say, he could not decide. His mind kept taunting him, about all the days-and nights-he had spent with her on his way here. Saying nothing. Or rather, saying everything except what he felt.

But something had changed. The moment he had relinquished his father's sword, the guilt that had clung to Robert's chest had retracted its fangs, and the pool of blood that had haunted his nightmares for months no longer held sway.

Instead, every night this week when he had closed his eyes, he saw her. A hundred images of her: stepping out from the trees in the Asyan to defend him; confronting her father, her stepfather, and the Lion; dancing in common clothes while somehow outs.h.i.+ning everyone at the fort.

And now another image. The blue fabric around her head coming loose, slipping forward. She reached to push it back, but the entire scarf unraveled, falling in a blue ripple to the floor. Exposing her hair to the sunlight.

The flail in Robert's grip stilled, useless. All he could do was stare.

"Can you manage that, son?" His father was saying something.

"What?"

Mr. Vantauge sighed. "Show her how to clean the grain while I go help your mother."

His father was leaving! Giving Robert the chance he had craved all morning.

And then Mr. Vantauge was gone, not even waiting for his son's response.

Aurelia waited, the blue scarf forgotten, her dark eyes on Robert.

He opened his mouth.

And still had no idea what to say. All this time, and the words refused to come. He could have flailed himself.

Instead he dropped the tool, bent down, filled his arms with the separated wheat, and tossed the pieces into the air. The grain plummeted, and the chaff floated east, drifting in the breeze, the lightest pieces swirling between him and Aurelia in a dancing veil.

She bent down, filling her own arms, then flung them upward, shutting her eyes. Gold s.h.i.+mmered over her, attaching to her brown skin, tiny specks glittering from her cheeks, her throat, her eyelids.

And it occurred to Robert that the feeling storming in his veins had nothing to do with speech. He stepped through the wheat, toward her.

Her eyes flew open-her arms still over her head-and she stumbled back as if giving him s.p.a.ce.

He didn't want s.p.a.ce. Instead, his hands ended her flight, and he lowered his mouth to her lips. Not questioning. Telling. Telling her his feelings the only way he knew how.

He could sense her entire body s.h.i.+ver.

Her arms hovered over his, her hands trembling. And then her fingers threaded through his hair, pulling him closer, and her lips spoke back. Warm. Saying in no uncertain terms that they also had no desire for talk.

Chapter Fifteen.

HUNTED.

THAT NIGHT HE TASTED BLOOD, DRIPPING ON HIS face, one... drop ... at a time, from the rafters of the barn. Robert didn't scream. The blood had drowned him before. Instead he rolled to a crouch, the floorboards creaking beneath him, the unthreshed wheat stabbing his back.

An eerie red light flooded the loft. Compelled, he looked up to confront the boy with the sword in his torso. His cousin, Chris. Absent his lackadaisical manner, the jesting irony. Blood oozed from the wound, spreading in a wide crimson stain upon the silk s.h.i.+rt.

Robert backed away. He had been here before. And won. But now he had no weapon.

The muscles in Chris's arms strained, and inch by reluctant inch, the blade slid from the cavity beneath his rib cage. Metal tore free, and blood poured, drenching s.h.i.+rt, breeches, and stockings.

Then, with a trembling, halting movement, the blade pointed.

At the closed loft door.

Chris's lips moved, forming one familiar, hideous word. Fire!

And then the door peeled open, revealing the screams.

Robert ran, but not fast enough, the ladder battering his s.h.i.+ns, the door fighting his weight, the gra.s.s clutching at his ankles. Red flames swarmed the cabin, scaling every log and crevice, sweeping out the front window, and covering the door in an upward inferno.

He plunged into the blaze. The smoke had no smell, but it a.s.saulted his eyes, flaming cinders stinging his pupils. And he followed the screams.

To his mother, afire by the table. He reached for her arms, and her skin came off in his hands. His father, a bonfire of flames before Robert could even reach him. His parents' screams died.

And Aurelia? Robert yelled for her. The flames attacked his voice, leaping over his limbs and face and down his throat.

He swallowed them. And they went out.

Blackness tumbled, leaving a hollow, barren pit. Cold. A wind blew through the gutted interior of the cabin. From the west window.

And close outside the window, a gray figure. Her. Motionless.

He said her name, then reached to touch her shoulder.

And it crumbled into charred ash.

Robert woke to his own screams. He had told himself the nightmares were gone, relinquished with the sword. A fallacy that had burned away and left a scar.

He choked, rolled from his pallet, and fled out of the loft into the predawn gray.

His father stood just outside the barn, breathing hard, a fallen milk pail twenty feet behind him. Abandoned. No question he had heard his son's delusional screams.

Not able to face those brown eyes, Robert swerved away toward the empty paddock, a vacant ring of horizontal rails. He propped his elbows against the wood and buried his head in his hands, struggling to corral his cowardice.

"I know what it is to kill a man." His father's voice tore through Robert's chest.

Chris's body shuddering on the end of my sword.

The silence was long. And hideous. But his father refused to walk away.

Finally the words came from Robert's own throat. "He didn't deserve to die."

"He tried to kill you."

Yes, and there was no solace in that fact, only fodder for more nightmares.

"Chris was guilty, Robert."

Guilty? He himself was guilty. Aurelia was guilty. The king. The queen. Melony. "It was not my place to dispense justice."

He felt his father move up beside the rails.

"Justice is an illusion," said Mr. Vantauge.

Illusion? Was that what the nightmare had been? Paranoia? But Robert knew the gutted cabin and crumbling ash had signified more than ancient memories. "I should never have come home." His voice rasped as he dug his fingers into the thick waves of his hair. "I told myself I had to come to return the sword."

"I gave you the sword, Robert."

"I can't ..." The fingers pulled his hair tight. "I can't use it."

"Are you sure?"

He thought about Aurelia's a.s.sailant at Fort Jenkins. "I don't want to use it, ever again."

"Ah, that's different." There was no judgment.

But there should have been. Robert let the rough wood slice into his forehead. He had placed his mother, his father, and the young woman he loved in danger. "The a.s.sa.s.sins will know to search here. If they find her under your roof ..." He let the words trail off, certain his father was already well aware of the threat.

"Who are they working for, Robert?" The tone was all business. "Is Melony powerful enough to hire the palace guards?"