Page 54

She looked up at him, blue eyes roaming over his face like she was learning it anew. The beauty of her struck him again, but it affected him far less than the simple fact of her nearness. Close enough to touch, when he had thought never to see her again.

“It is not mine to choose who rules here,” she said, answering him in his language, and dropped her eyes.

“Nay, that choice is not yours.” He reached out and took her forearm, slipping the knife into the brace. “Yet the blade is yours.”

His hand held her wrist, thumb over her speeding pulse. There was a calm resolve in her, a certainty at the center of her unease. She waited to see what he would do, knowing she had slain men in the shadow of his keep, not regretting it at all though it may mean her own death.

How poor a prince she must think him, if she believed for one instant that this was why he sought her.

“You would have given him mercy,” she said.

He did not deny it. He only set his thumb over the warmth of her pulse and remembered his first sight of her. “Will you always save me, Nan?”

Her fingers uncurled, knuckles brushing loosely against the inside of his wrist – and then moved against his skin with a purpose, a tiny caress.

“If I could.”

It was barely a whisper. He watched her eyes press closed, just for a moment, savoring the touch. Then she lifted her hand away and turned, reaching to pull her hood up, stepping away as though she would leave now, already, with so few words.

“Stay.” His voice too was barely above a whisper, because to watch her walk away closed his throat. But she heard him and halted, her hands still gripping the hood. “I have renounced my betrothal. I will marry no one but you.”

She did not move for a long moment. There was no expression on her face, only a numb stillness. “You cannot renounce it.”

“I can. I have.”

It seemed to him his heart had stopped beating, lying dead in his chest, waiting for her to speak. After a moment she shook her head just barely, her brows drawing together in confusion as though she worked to decipher his words.

“You cannot.” Her hands had dropped the hood to her shoulders and she looked up at him. “You must do as the king commands. You must, if you are to live, and rule.”

He wanted to kiss the frown from her lips, but he only drank in the sight and sound of her. “I will rule with you by my side, or not at all.”

She was shaking her head, denying it, staring at him until he saw her finally understand that he meant it. It did not gladden her, or make her throw herself into his arms. She only pulled her cloak tightly around herself and turn to look again at the sparkling lake.

“You belong here. It’s why you felt the loss so keenly, because you are meant to be here.” Her eyes scanned the peaks around them. “You are not meant to give it up.”

“Nor am I meant to live without you.”

She only shook her head again, so stubbornly sure, refusing to believe him. Of course she would not believe him. He had given her every reason to disbelieve.

“Nan, listen to me.” Urgency strained his voice. “Think you that I do not know the risk? Think you that I would not give this and more – as much as you would give to keep me safe?”

Silence. Always silence, because she thought it was only words. He stepped closer to make her hear him.

“Let him take my land. Let him take my power and my title and my name. Let him take all of it, every possession to the very clothes off my back – and at the end I will come to you on my knees, pitiful and powerless, just as you found me. And I will call him a fool for making so poor a trade, for before God I swear that you are a prize greater than any kingdom.”

She blinked rapidly. He could almost feel her barriers crumbling, all her feeling flooding free of its careful containment. She looked out on the green hills. It was the same way he looked at them, with love and wonder. “You belong to this place,” she said. “It belongs to you.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “It is my heart. And my heart is naught but a desert without you.” He looked at her in the midst of the mountains, the shimmering water, the wide sky. “Well do I know it is what I deserve for leaving you, that no place on this earth can be home to me, without you are in it.”

She looked up at the sky and took a ragged breath, fighting off tears. Fuss was whining faintly, pressing himself against her feet but looking at Gryff, confused. “I think me it would be a great sin, to take you from your people.”

“I care naught for sin or virtue.” He looked at Fuss sitting at her scuffed boots, and at the purse of nails on her belt, and how a strand of hair clung to her neck. “Gladly would I give my soul into the fires of hell if you would have me, even if only for a day.”

She made a choked sound, more tears than laughter. “And I would call you a fool to make such a poor trade.”

He was a fool. Only a fool would ever have let her go. Only a fool would stand here, wanting to touch her, seeing her tears, loving her even more because she thought of his people and of him, but never of herself – yet still he was as uncertain as a boy, because she did not say yes.

“Will you have me, Nan?”

She was very still. Her gaze passed over him, from the scar at his ear to his fine woolen tunic, his belt studded with gems and the ancient golden brooch that pinned his cloak.

“I would have my Welshman,” she answered, switching out of Welsh.

He heard the hope, the yearning for what they had been once – alone together and nameless as they wandered hidden paths – and shook his head. It could not be that again.

“You must take a prince,” he said. “Though the king may strip me of all titles and possession, it is a prince you would take as husband now. And if God grants that I am permitted to rule though I have defied my king, then I will rule, Nan. With you at my side as lady.”

The look she gave him was helpless, despairing. “I am no lady.” Her eyes dropped to her hands where they gripped the edges of her cloak, as though they had never done anything but scrub floors and peel turnips. “You’ve seen it yourself, what I come from. I could never be no great lady.”

He looked at the stubborn set of her mouth, the little frown that put a crease between her brows.

“Already are you greater than any lady I have ever known.” She made a scoffing sound, opening her mouth to dispute it, but he would not hear it.

It angered him beyond reason, that she believed she was so small.

“You think yourself insignificant, born to naught, and yet you are here. You are here , Nan, and why? You have said it is not yours to choose who will rule this place, but it is you who has ended the last threat to its prince. With your own hands. Already you have chosen.”

He stepped closer to her and took her wrist again, ignoring the tension in her as she resisted the movement.

He pointed at the empty place on her forearm where a blade was still missing.

“When you did see a girl in danger – just a girl, ordinary and humble, a stranger to you – did you leave her to her fate? Nay, because you are no meek and shrinking servant.” She was looking down at where he held her, her hand tight in a fist, but she did not pull away.

“Who could be more worthy to protect and love my people, to rule them as their lady? None but you.”

She shook her head, a faint and bewildered rejection. “I am not... I am no one.”

“No one!” He dropped her arm and put a hand to her chin, tilting it upward, making her look at him.

“When I would have you come here as naught but my lover, you did scorn me. For dignity, for your honor, which you would not put aside for anyone. Not for anyone . You refuse a prince and call yourself no one?” He shook his head, amazed.

“Even great ladies do not scorn princes, Nan, nor yet queens. But you did. And you were right to do so.”

She did not see it, this fairy queen who had stretched out her hand and transformed him from a shadow of a man into a prince. He took her face between his palms, soft skin beneath his fingers.

“Full well do I know I am unworthy of you. But all that I have, all that I am is at your feet, Nan. You have only to take it.”

Her breath was harsh against his fingertips, shallow breaths as she gazed at him.

“I want to.” She blinked, and the tears spilled over, a delicate splash against her cheek.

“God forgive me, I want to. But it is not how the world is made, Welshman. There is no way in it for one born so low to marry one so high.”

There was a plea in her, as though she wanted only to understand how it could be, how it could possibly work. As though she had forgotten what she had taught him.

“The roads made by kings are not the only paths a man may travel,” he reminded her. He brushed the tears away with his thumbs. “Is you who told me that we need not follow in the ways the world has fashioned for us.”

Her eyes searched his face, like she looked for some way to dispute and deny, afraid to hope.

He leaned his forehead against hers, willing her to believe.

He waited – he would wait here forever, her breath against his lips, her warmth between his hands.

Just this moment, forever. Just this place they made between them. There was nothing else he wanted.

Her hand came up to lay against his heart.

“Like a bird across the sky,” she said. “It pays no heed to the paths laid out by men.”

He pressed her hand tight to his heart, and nodded. “We will make a way that suits us. Every day, if you will have me.”

Her hand came to cover his at her cheek, gripping hard. He pulled back to see her face and thought he might die of this feeling, of the happiness and the hope that leapt in him at the look in her eyes.

“Welshman,” she whispered, her heart pounding so that he felt it against his fingertips. “We will make a way.”

She kissed him then, fierce and eager, her mouth hard against his for a brief and dazzling moment. It was sudden, unforeseen, because she was as swift and fearless in her love as in everything.

“If you will defy the king then I will dare to be a lady, Welshman. I will have you. Be you beggar or prince, I will have you, and never let you go.”