Page 7 of Fate of Echoes and Embers (Heirs of Elydor #3)

ISSA

I left instructions with Warren and Edric.

Packed my saddlebags. Spoke to the staff.

There was no other reason to delay except that Marek’s suggestion of riding back to Valewood Bay with him made sense.

Stabling my mare there was an option, but not a desired one.

Worse, Marek seemed to be enjoying my discomfort.

Of course he is. The Thalassarian smuggler is as ungracious as they come.

Kael and Mev were mounted already, as was Marek, but as I prepared to reluctantly do the same, my companion’s smile slipped. I looked back to the entrance of the keep where he was staring to discern the reason.

Lord Draven stood there, watching us. We had spoken at length about everything from border security to crop rotation but perhaps he wished to speak to me further?

As I walked toward him, a flash of a younger Draven kneeling beside me in this very courtyard, where I had fallen and scraped my knee, gave me pause.

I realized what disconcerted me about the memory.

It was his smile, the same one he wore now.

There was nothing remarkable about it. Draven was as even-tempered as any man I knew, rarely given to fits of anger, or bursts of joy.

“Did you wish to speak to me?” I asked as he met me in front of the keep’s stone stairs.

“Nay,” he replied. “I wanted only to see you off safely with your friends.”

If he made the word “friends” sound as though they were unruly children, it was only because he had always carried himself as the adult in the room.

I, in turn, felt like that same girl who had scraped her knee in this courtyard years ago.

It was a foolish sentiment, one I kept locked away, unspoken.

“Very well,” I said, preparing to rejoin the others. “I leave Hawthorne Manor in your care.”

“As your father would have wished,” he said, halting me with his words. “You can rest assured, my lady… it is in capable hands.”

“Thank you,” I replied, though something about his measured tone lingered in my thoughts as I turned to go.

Glancing briefly at Kael and Mev, the latter seemingly unpleased by something, I reluctantly mounted behind Marek, even taking his hand to do so.

Though the gesture was initiated and ended quickly, the strength of his grip and warmth of his hand lingered for far too long.

I said nothing, refusing to hold onto him until we lurched forward, all but making my grip on at least his tunic necessary.

“You will get yourself killed for your stubbornness, Issa.”

“Please stop using my name.”

Unreasonableness oozed from me, but I couldn’t seem to put a stop to it. Marek appearing at Hawthorne Manor, coupled with the necessity of my unexpected leave-taking, was not boding well for this rapidly declining state of affairs.

“What shall I call you?” he asked, as pleasant as usual. But today, Marek’s infernal cheer grated.

We rode ahead of Mev and Kael, but I could hear them following. Though they were unlikely to hear our conversation, I lowered my voice anyway as we made our way through the gatehouse.

“Perhaps we do not speak at all.”

He laughed. “We will be gone a fortnight, easily. Likely more. Shall we not speak in all that time?”

I said nothing for a spell since there was nothing to say.

No explanation would ever be adequate, and I refused to allow myself to let him back in.

But having thought of little else but his words since Marek spoke them, it was perhaps better to have the matter cleared up now before we were forced onto a small ship with Mev and Kael also on board.

If I could have trusted myself to say goodbye and not stay, I’d have done so.

“I asked you not to speak of it,” I began, unsure if this was the right decision, “but would amend that request.”

At that moment, his mount narrowly avoided a duskrabbit. Marek spun in his saddle toward me, my heart lurching at the sight. He was as handsome as the day we met, though his carefree grin was turned downward in a rare frown.

“Hold on, will you please? Falling and breaking your neck will serve no one. And I know how precious your people are to you, Issa.”

He was right, despite that it pained me to admit it. Waiting until Marek turned back around, I reached my hands tentatively toward his waist. In response, he grabbed one wrist at a time, his other hands holding onto the reins, and pulled them forward, tightening my grip.

Breathing in a scent that should not be familiar to me, after all these years, I refused to let him know how much the close proximity affected me.

“As to amending my request?” I asked in my most noble-sounding voice, the one my mother used effectively.

“I am amicable,” he responded, in a tone so unlike him it nearly made me smile.

“In an effort to find some measure of peace between us”—his back stiffened at that —“I would like to know why you left without a word to me beforehand.”

And there it was.

If Marek’s stay at Hawthorne all those years ago—his courting of me, the words he spoke, the care he took with my innocence—were genuine, I simply could not reconcile them with waking up to finding that he’d simply vanished.

No note. No message to my staff. Nothing.

Like an Aetherian whisper, heard only by those trained to do so, there was no trace of him.

“As I said, it was cowardly of me to do so.”

He didn’t turn toward me. Or elaborate. It was as lacking of an explanation as when Marek first offered it.

“But never sent a missive later. Or spoke to me in that tavern.”

Marek did turn in the saddle then. He glanced behind us, and apparently seeing nothing amiss but our companions following, he held my gaze briefly before turning back around.

Was that, possibly, regret?

“I assumed there were no words I could have uttered that would have you forgive me.”

A fair assumption, since it was true.

“Then why leave that way?”

I hated the question. Hated the way my voice quivered. Hated being reduced to the very thing I told myself I would not: a simpering fool who cared for the opinion of someone who would do such a thing.

Perhaps if I was Elydorian and lived a few more centuries, I could harden my heart enough not to have asked. I was strong in so many ways, save this one.

He turned his head enough that I could see his profile, though only briefly as a fallen branch demanded he navigate around it.

At that moment, a trexan-pulled wagon appeared on the horizon.

The man guiding it was an elderly farmer, his shoulders hunched beneath a patched cloak as he urged the lumbering trexan forward.

Marek shifted his attention to the wagon, his posture relaxing, as though relieved to have something to draw his focus from our conversation.

I greeted the farmer as we passed.

“I’m not proud of how I handled things, Issa. The reasons for my leaving… weren’t simple. They still aren’t.”

Why had I thought breaking my own rule, talking about the very thing I told him I didn’t wish to discuss, would make things better?

The sting of his unsaid words settled like a stone in my chest. We remained silent then as I deflected Marek’s later attempts at conversation.

By the time we arrived in Valewood Bay, I was certain he might send me back to Hawthorne Manor.

Marek hated silence and that was all I had to offer him.

Instead, as Kael and Mev rode beside us, commenting on the speed of our return, he told them not to dismount.

“We head straight to the docks.”

Dusk had fallen, and I assumed, as it appeared Kael and Mev had, we would not sail until the morning.

But if Marek wanted to get the voyage over with quickly, I would not argue the point.

The sooner I could get back to Hawthorne Manor, despite the mundane days and nights that awaited me there, the better.

For if there was one thing worse than not living an adventurous life, it was coming to the realization Marek left without warning for one reason, and one reason alone.

I meant nothing to him. Not then, or any day since. And I would do well to remember it.