Page 25 of Stolen Thorn Bride
So he’d listened. And maybe, just maybe, he intended to make an effort. Not that it mattered. She would still be leaving him behind as soon as possible, but she could not pretend that her heart was entirely unaffected by his request.
“It’s Kasia.”
“Thank you.” The quiet words sounded surprisingly sincere.
After another pause, “Kasia, I truly wish to understand. Were you given a choice in whether or not to accept this bond?”
An uncomfortable question. “Yes, and no,” she replied, as honestly as she was able. “I thought that accepting the bond was the only choice that would allow me to see my home again, and yet now I find that I was… mistaken.”
Misled was more like it.
“I am sorry for whatever you were led to believe,” he said soberly. “I’m certain you have gathered that this would not have been my choice either. Not because of you, but because the one I intended to bond with was lost in battle with the wraiths. We knew one another our entire lives, and I cannot imagine another in her place. But if it eases your disappointment, know that I do not intend to make you suffer for what cannot be considered your fault.”
There were plenty of girls who would not consider this to be suffering—a bonfire under the stars with the most gorgeous man she’d ever met for company. Even now, when Kasia looked at him in an unguarded moment, his beauty took her breath away. And knowing of his loss… Well, some of those other girls would probably think it made him a tragic figure of sympathy.
But it also made him distant and untouchable—an unreachable stranger when what she needed was a friend.
“You don’t need to intend for me to suffer,” she told him bluntly, shoving aside the impulse to comfort him. No doubt he would sneer at her paltry efforts. “Each moment that I am here, wondering whether my family is safe, brings me pain, whether you wish it or not.”
The look he cast her was stern. “If you were so concerned for them, why cross the Hedge? You must have known the consequences.”
Not this again.
“Sometimes,” she said wearily, “the consequences for inaction are as great as the consequences for action. Sometimes, even pig keepers have to make hard choices without knowing which option is the best.”
His head tilted as he regarded her curiously across the flames. “What exactly does a pig keeper do?”
Kasia couldn’t help a small chuckle. “I’m not really a pig keeper. I just said that to annoy those snooty, high-handed elf warriors who seemed so overly conscious of your dignity.”
When his eyebrow shot up, she clarified. “I work for a mage woman in the forest just on the other side of the Hedge. Keeping her garden and her animals. Pigs are just one part of it, but they’re the reason I’m in this mess, so it seemed only fair to blame them.”
“Is there no one else to care for your… children? Or is it your parents?”
“They’re my siblings,” she said briefly, feeling the quick sting of tears as she thought of them and wondered how they were coping with her disappearance. “They’re all younger than me, and I’ve been taking care of them since I was thirteen.”
After another period of silence, Dechlan spoke again, heavily. “If I could allow you to return home, I would. But the border stands for a reason, and I cannot imperil my people by breaking our laws.”
“What reason?” Kasia burst out. “How big of a threat can we possibly be?”
Her husband stood, crossed to where the horses’ packs lay, and retrieved one to bring it nearer the fire. After a brief period of rummaging, he produced a packet and handed it to her.
Curious, she unwrapped it and found a neat square of some sort of food—a dense, cake-like substance that seemed to be made of fruit, nuts, and who knew what else.
“It is safe,” Dechlan assured her. “Other humans stumbled across our borders in the distant past, and they came to no harm from eating any of our food.”
She took a bite and decided it really wasn’t half bad. She also decided it was a mercy the wolves were able to hunt for themselves—packing whatever such creatures were willing to eat would likely have been messy at best.
“To answer your question,” Dechlan continued, “I believe there is no harm in giving you the truth now that you are here.”
Now that there was no danger of her returning to tattle on them to the humans was what he meant, but Kasia decided to keep that thought to herself.
“About a hundred years ago, our queen made the strategic decision to seal us off from the human world due to a threat from the opposite direction. Wraiths had descended from the north—nearly insubstantial beings that brought dark mists to shroud whatever lands they conquered. We were slowly learning to fight them, but for every inch we took back, they took two in another place.
“The humans were peaceful enough, but it was clear that they were fascinated by our people and our culture, and the queen at the time knew we could not risk a war on two fronts. So she created the Hedge, and sealed us away behind both a physical wall and a perception of impenetrable mystery.”
Kasia snorted. “Humans are still convinced you lot are peaceful, nature-loving artists lounging around in the forest all day, looking at your reflections in pools, and composing songs to the moon.”
She heard a brief huff from Dechlan that might actually have been a laugh. But if it was, it was a sad one.