Page 32 of Stolen Thorn Bride
But it would never work. She knew better, truly. Her heart, unruly as it might be, was not going to give up so easily on her responsibilities.
So she merely sighed, shook off her sudden melancholy, and pulled herself into Aral’s saddle. Not without a groan of pain. A pig keeper’s muscles were not very helpful for spending day after day in the saddle of a giant wolf.
“Are you well?” Dechlan queried, laying one gentle hand on her boot as she settled it into the harness.
At his touch, Kasia tried to ignore the flush that threatened to betray warmer feelings than she was ready to admit to. “Just learning by doing, remember?” she reminded him with a hint of sarcasm. “Fortunately, I have no recollection of whether learning to walk was quite this uncomfortable.”
Dechlan winced, but there was little he could do aside from mounting his own wolf and leading the way swiftly down the path towards Northwatch Keep. His home. And Kasia’s, until she could find a way to return to her world.
Even though she now suspected that when she finally made her way home, she would leave at least some small piece of her heart behind.
* * *
It waslate afternoon when they crested a hill, and Dechlan pulled his mount to a stop.
“There,” he said, pointing across the valley below them. “Northwatch Keep.”
Kasia gazed curiously across the valley to where the fitful spring sun played on the towers and battlements of an imposing fortress—clearly built more for war than for show. It crouched on an outcropping of the craggy hills to the west and appeared to face north, where larger mountains could barely be made out beneath the dark shadow of a coming storm.
“Looks like bad weather,” Kasia remarked, shading her eyes with her hand as she gazed doubtfully at the roiling clouds. “Will we make it to the gates before that breaks?”
“It is further than it appears,” Dechlan said. “And it is also not a storm.”
His voice… It was not the gentle, thoughtful tone she’d become accustomed to over the past few days. This was the Dechlan she recalled from Caislan Daire.
A sort of armor seemed to settle over him—a hardening of his features and a tensing of every muscle—as if he were even now preparing for battle. It transformed him, from enigmatic elf lord to hardened warrior, bracing himself to confront an ancient enemy.
“The wraiths do not merely take lives,” he told her grimly as they both gazed on the distant darkness. “They steal the very light from the world. Wherever they go, whatever lands they possess are swallowed up by shadow and blight. That cloud is why we fight. A reminder we cannot possibly ignore of exactly what is at stake.”
A strange, creeping dread began to take root in the pit of Kasia’s stomach. It was cold and alien, and it invaded her mind by degrees as she struggled to determine its source. Magic? Surely not. The only person nearby was Dechlan, and he was too focused on the wraith-spawned darkness in the distance to be afflicting her with magical dread.
Never mind that she did not believe he would do such a thing. And yet, the flavor of that dread as it curled through her and rested heavily on the back of her tongue… it was not her own. She was frightened by what lay before her, beyond a doubt. But it was the fear of the unknown that afflicted her, while this dread carried the certainty of deep, personal knowledge. Pain. Heartache.
“Dechlan?” she said softly, and he started, as though being recalled from a great distance.
The feeling vanished as if it had been ruthlessly stamped out and shoved behind closed doors. All that remained was an odd taste on Kasia’s tongue and a vague feeling of unease.
“We should try to reach the keep before dark,” she said, stumbling a little over her words as her mind reeled in response to this revelation.
But was it really a revelation? Or only a suspicion? Could that feeling truly have come fromhim?
It would mean… It would mean the elves had been entirely wrong about their bond. It would mean she and Dechlan were bonded in truth, and that the connection between them was entirely, deeply real.
But Dechlan seemed to have no knowledge of what she’d just experienced. He nodded once in response to her suggestion before urging his mount into a trot, not once looking back or seeming even slightly unnerved by what had passed between them.
Perhaps nothing had. Perhaps this strange connection was entirely on her side, and he remained utterly ignorant of her suspicions.
And if he did? Well, she would have to tell him eventually. Should it prove true that she could sense his emotions, it would feel like a violation of his privacy if she did not share that information with him sooner or later.
But perhaps it did not need to be now. Dechlan was clearly already struggling with the burdens of returning to his home, where so much more was demanded of him than any one man should be expected to bear. She could give him a little time to adjust before sharing this unwelcome news.
Or, if she were honest, she could give herself a little more time to work up the nerve to blurt it out. Dechlan wasn’t likely to be happy when he learned the truth. He’d made it clear that he expected their relationship to be as platonic as possible, and would undoubtedly be distressed by the knowledge that a near-stranger could sense his deepest feelings.
Or perhaps she was simply mistaken, and there was another explanation.
As she urged Aral down the slope in Dechlan’s wake, Kasia was alarmed to discover that she wasn’t entirely certain which answer she preferred.
* * *