Page 83 of The Last Hunt
“Who - the AIs will be obsessed with your parents, or your parents will be obsessed with the AIs?”
“Both,” Aethon chuckles.
Maeve smiles and takes her tab over to the computer terminal. She connects the tab and runs through a few security checkpoints.
“Oooh hello lovelies!” TAI chirps, her voice coming from the speakers set into the walls around the house.
“Good afternoon, Trell family,” CAL intones.
Liadan raises her brows and glances at Aethon. Nikair chuckles.
The next few days are a whirlwind. Maeve slowly realizes that she needs to recover almost as much as Aethon does. The loss of the bounty, her realization that she loves Aethon, and her break from Two Roses are all still working their way through her mind. What could her life look like now?
Maeve finds herself craving time alone just as much as she needs to spend time with Aethon. She sits for hours on the wide deck overlooking the ocean, just watching the endless waves. She takes walks through the forest with Liadan, both silent. Liadan is a serious woman, but with a sharp sense of humor. Maeve enjoys her quiet companionship.
“When was the last time you had a break?” Liadan asks her after they’d been on Freehail for a week. They’re walking a path through the woods that is becoming familiar to Maeve. The trees are tall around them, imposing, but protective at the same time. This place feels spiritual.
“Never,” Maeve replies. “I grew up on Tellamar - no time for breaks there. And then I went right into Two Roses after my parents died.” She strides cautiously through the forest, concentrating on avoiding large sticks and fallen branches. She realizes that Liadan has stopped walking. Maeve stops and turns around. “What?”
Liadan’s lips are tight and she watches Maeve with a tender sort of expression. After a moment, she looks up at the trees around them. “Would you like me to teach you about the forest?”
Over the next few months, Liadan teaches Maeve everything there is to know about the forests of Freehail. She shows her how to walk through the forest without disturbing the plants and wildlife. She teaches her how to recognize certain herbs and make restorative balms and teas. She tells Maeve about how the people of Freehail worked together to restore their world, creating policies and new technologies to fix the harm Brimstone wrought. And through it all, Maeve learns how to relax for the first time in her life. The simple acts of walking and learning about nature are restorative. Maeve realizes that she has never felt consistently safe anywhere. Vigilance has been her companion from Tellamar to Two Roses. She’s spent every day wound up tight, waiting for the next blow to fall.
“It’s not going to be an overnight fix,” Aethon says to her gently one evening when she confides this to him. “This is something you’ll be working on for the rest of your life.”
“I’d rather not,” Maeve grumbles. She leans back against the pillows of their bed, her arms crossed.
Aethon smiles. “I’ll be with you, chrissah.” He bends to kiss her and Maeve lets him slide his hand down her body and beneath her soft pajama shorts. She inhales sharply as his gentle fingers find their way to exactly where she wants them. She wraps her hands around his bicep.
“I love you,” he whispers, his mouth at her ear, his touch teasingly soft.
“I love you,” she breathes.
Maeve has never loved someone the way she loves him. Hard and soft, flexible and rigid, tender and fierce. Neither of them are perfect, but both of them are learning.
Every night, Maeve massages a balm Liadan makes into the scar on Aethon’s spine, softening the stiffness of it, cooling the inflammation. After he’s healed enough, Maeve spends the majority of every day with Aethon. He teaches her how to swim in the cool ocean water. He shows her the beach, the forest, the places he used to play with his brother Devan and their friends. They explore the city, and though Maeve likes the restaurants and parks, she prefers to stay closer to the house.
Aethon takes her to the university where Nikair works and introduces her to people he knew in his youth. Maeve doesn’t spend as much time with Nikair as the others, but she likes the man. Aethon tells her that his father seems to still carry the grief of Devan’s death, but some of his humor and lightness have returned. Nikair and Aethon take turns telling stories after dinner, priding themselves on making the two stoic Tellamari women laugh.
Maeve and Aethon get to know each other outside the pressure of the hunt. And she only falls more in love with him each day. The fear of losing him is still there, but somehow her acceptance of this love makes it fade. She’d rather love him and lose him than never love him in the first place.
The months pass, and Maeve watches as an invisible burden is lifted from Aethon’s shoulders. Yes, he lost his membership in the Guild of Two Roses. But he’s more joyful now, more carefree. Maeve never tires of seeing that huge grin on his face.
They make love almost every day, relishing in pleasuring each other. Maeve learns every inch of Aethon’s body. She memorizes every little touch and word that makes his eyes darken with desire, or makes him groan with satisfaction. Aethon is constantly pulling Maeve in for lingering kisses, or lifting her onto a convenient boulder in the quiet of the forest and kneeling down to get his head between her thighs.
But even though life on Freehail is good, Maeve knows her time on the planet can’t last. After about six months, Liadan makes a Tellamari dish for dinner one night. Maeve smells the bantai stew as it’s cooking and the scent of the root vegetables and spices send her back to her childhood.
“Where did you get the ingredients to make this?” Maeve asks as they all sit down to dinner.
“I have a few friends who still work on shipping freighters,” Liadan says. “They had a shipment of Tellamari vegetables and knew I’d want to purchase some.”
Maeve feels Aethon’s gaze on her as she tastes the stew. She closes her eyes as the spices linger pleasantly in her mouth. “It’s just how I remember,” she says.
That evening, Maeve reaches up to her throat and touches the place her necklace used to be. “I can’t stop thinking about Tellamar,” she says slowly.
Aethon watches her, his eyes serious. They’re sitting on the deck overlooking the black sand beach. The sky is clear, and the stars are just starting to come out after a glorious sunset along the ocean horizon.
“I know,” Aethon replies. He looks out at the beach and then up at the stars. “Me neither.”