Anne Bishop: Shadows and Light

Lyrra stiffened, recognizing it was her heart more than her pride that was stung. She had asked a serious question, and had, by the asking, offered to share whatever troubled him. And he was going to brush that offer aside as if it were whimsy. Very well, then.

She leaned over to blow out the candle when he said, “It wears on a man when fear is his constant companion.”

She turned to look at him. “You’ve been afraid you might meet up with the Inquisitors?”

“No. I’ve been afraid you would.”

She didn’t know what to say. Pleasure at hearing he cared lifted her heart. Fear of the things she’d heard Inquisitors did to women accused of being witches churned in her belly, making her feel a little sick.

“Late last summer, I visited a Clan about half a day’s ride east of here,” Aiden said, not looking at her. “They wouldn’t listen to me. There were two witches living in a small cottage in the Old Place that anchored that Clan’s territory to the human world, and the Fae wouldn’t listen to me when I explained the danger that had crept into Sylvalan because of the Inquisitors. When I came back this way on my way to Brightwood, men were in the Old Place cutting down the trees. The witches were gone, the shining road was gone—and another piece of Tir Alainn was gone with it.

“I thought of you, Lyrra. If you’d left Brightwood to meet up with me as we’d originally planned, you might have stopped at that Clan’s house to rest. If you’d stopped there at the wrong time, you might have disappeared with the rest of the Fae who had lived there, and there would have been nothing I could have done.”

“Someone else with the gift of story would have ascended to become the Muse,” Lyrra murmured.

“She wouldn’t have been you,” Aiden said quietly. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “A few days before I reached Brightwood, I passed through a human village and saw a little girl with red hair. And I thought... if you had a child, that’s what she would look like—a darling little red-haired girl with a sweet smile that would grow sassy in a few years.” He swallowed, the muscles in his throat working with the effort of it. “And I thought if I was the man who had sired your child, I wouldn’t be content with knowing your male relatives would help you raise her. I’d want to be the one to rock her to sleep at night and teach her the songs and kiss the scraped elbow or skinned knee. I’d want to be her father instead of just her sire.”

“That’s not the way the Fae live,” Lyrra said. She felt tears sting her eyes and wasn’t even sure why she wanted to cry.

“That may be, but the ways of the Fae may not suit all of the Fae,” he replied a little sharply.

“There are good reasons for our living the way we do,” she said, her own voice taking a sharper edge. “The main one being that Fae males aren’t capable of keeping themselves to one lover.”

A long pause. “I haven’t been in as many beds as you seem to think,” Aiden said, turning his head to look at her. “And I always came back.”

“To dance with the Muse.”

“To be with you, Lyrra. And you haven’t been without lovers when I wasn’t there.” An unspoken question shimmered in his eyes.

“I—” Something was happening here. Something between a man and a woman, not between the Bard and the Muse. “I haven’t invited as many men to my bed as you seem to think.”

He sang quietly, “I gave her kindness, courtesy, respect, and loyalty. I strung them on the strands of love.”

“These are the jewels for me,” she finished just as quietly, unsettled enough to feel dizzy.

“Would they be enough?” he asked, a strange, strained note in his voice. “If they were offered each day, would they be enough?”

“They would be precious,” she murmured. “Priceless.” She bent her head so that her hair would fall forward, hiding her face from him. Her heart beat oddly. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to breathe properly. She felt as if Aiden were holding a treasure she craved just out of her reach.

“Would they be enough for you to accept one man as a friend and lover? As an ... exclusive mate?”

Pushing her hair aside, she studied his face, baffled by the uncertainty in his eyes. “Are you asking if I’d be willing to accept you as an exclusive mate? As a—” What did the humans call it? She knew the word as well as she knew her own name. But she couldn’t remember either at the moment.

“As a husband,” Aiden said softly. “Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”

Tears stung her eyes. She pressed a hand against her mouth, not sure if she was going to laugh or cry. There were too many feelings spinning through her.

She drew her hand away from her mouth, let it rest on her throat, and felt her pulse beating wildly. “The rest of the Fae will say we’ve been contaminated by spending so much time in the human world.”

“These are our lives and our choice,” he said, sitting up so they were eye to eye. “Do you really care what the rest of the Fae will say or think?”

Lyrra shook her head, reached for him.

He pulled her into his arms and held her tight.

“Yes,” she whispered in his ear. “Yes, I’ll take the jewels of love that you offer, and, giving them back in turn, I’ll accept you as friend, lover, and husband.”

When he tried to kiss her, she pressed her head against his shoulder and wept.

“Lyrra,” he said, alarmed. He shifted her until she was sitting on his lap and rocked her. “Why are crying? If you want this as much as I do, why are you crying?”

She made an effort to hold back the tears, since they were making it impossible to speak. “When I was at Brightwood over the winter, I read the journals the women in Ari’s family had left behind. This is what they wanted. This is what they had once and wanted to have again. This is what Ari never would have gotten from Lucian. I met her only that one time, but I liked her. It seems so unfair that, because we met her, I’ve gotten my own heart’s wish and she—” She swallowed the tears. “And she got nothing more than whatever kindness Morag gives to the spirits the Gatherer takes to the Shadowed Veil.”

Aiden rocked her for another minute. The storm of emotions that had battered her was fading now, leaving her limp and exhausted. Comforted by the movement and the feel of his arms around her, she began to drift toward sleep.

“We all have secrets,” he said quietly. “Things we know that we don’t share for one reason or another. We all have the right to have thoughts that are private. But I’ve noticed that, among humans, it usually is not considered breaking a confidence when something is shared between a husband and a wife.”

“That’s part of love,” she replied.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Lyrra, sometimes words can lie even when they tell the truth.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said, a little prickly. “After all, I am the Muse.”

“Ari is gone.”

She felt the tears sting her eyes again. He didn’t need to tell her the obvious. Wasn’t that what she’d been talking about a minute ago? Ari had been captured by the Inquisitors, and Morag had told Dianna and Lucian—

She sat up slowly.

Sometimes words can lie even when they tell the truth.

“Ari is gone,” she said, watching Aiden’s eyes, seeing the silent message in them: there was something under the words being spoken that she needed to pay attention to. Over the past few weeks, they’d gotten very good at giving each other these silent messages as they sang and told stories and listened to what the villagers and farm folk said—and didn’t say.

“Morag told Dianna and Lucian that Ari was gone,” she continued. Truth and lies. “And because Morag is the Gatherer, they assumed Ari was dead. But she never actually said that. She just said Ari was gone.”