The deepest bowels of the night were still quiet in early May. No crickets sang under the starry, blue-black mantle yet. They would not awaken until later in the summer. A bullfrog, perhaps, might croak his serenade from a distant pond. But under the shaft of cool, pale moonlight that fell through the cottage window, everything was hushed.
Ivan was sleeping peacefully. It was only his deep, steady breathing that filled the silence. She could not hear her own breaths, for they were soft and subtle. His torso was bare, his lean-muscled arms flung carelessly over the rumpled sheets as if he had crash-landed there. Tendrils of ink-dark hair lay across his faintly scruffed cheek, threatening to dip into the corner of his open mouth. From where she sat, with her own flesh free of garments, and her knees pulled up to her chin, she reached down to draw the locks safely back with a solitary fingertip.
He reminded her sometimes of Tara. They were both lean and rakishly handsome and dark-haired and blue-eyed. Tara, too, had held a delightful, boisterous, irreverent sense of humor. But that was where the similarities ended. Tara had a temper that was terrifyingly brutal. Not towards her; never towards her. But she would never forget the memory of his rescue of her. How long ago was it now? So many years! She'd been but a child. Reckless and foolish and wildly in love. When he found her struggling beneath the wolfish groping of a would-be defiler, he had pinned the man to the earth. Then slowly and methodically sliced, pierced, cut, and mutilated him. It was a horror she would never forget. But it meant that he loved her truly. Didn't it?
She frowned at these musings. She examined her heart. There was no sadness. No longing. Good.
It wasn’t Taraborn who had been niggling at the edges of her mind. No, it was another shadow of memory that she couldn’t seem to escape. Another man with raven hair and eyes like a lake on a summer afternoon. She hadn’t seen the ghost himself in some time, and for that, she was breathlessly grateful. And she prayed to whatever gods might be, that he would stay away. These past few months were the first in a long string of years where she had felt anything akin to what she might call “happiness”. A glimmer of hope, of recognition of self, of the luminous joy that comes from feeling liked, accepted, and wanted.
Her hand came down on the back of Ivan’s neck. Slender fingers pulled tenderly through the ends of his long hair. His skin was so warm. His breathing changed slightly, the unseen legs and hips squirming for a moment under the coverlet, before settling once more.
She hated sobbing on his breast. She hated that cathartic, vomitous expulsion of emotion and weakness and vulnerability. But she couldn’t put her finger on just why she loathed it so. He was so willing. So terribly willing! He welcomed her rages, her fits, her tantrums, her tears. He knew when to be silent, when to speak a soft word, when to stroke and pet the frenzied vixen, when to simply offer his chest as a sturdy bulwark. He was like a tonic. He knew how to deftly navigate the twisted labyrinth of her moods.
It was maddening.
Was this the way a soul found its path from darkness and despair, back to the light? By allowing itself to crack along the weakest seam? To permit examination, even the most gentle?
Her palm moved over Ivan’s bare back. Over the softened edge of his shoulder blade.
She had seen glimpses of brokenness in him. They were, of course, far more subtle and well-controlled than any passion of hers would ever be. He had mastered the art of the cool grin, the quick jest, the deflecting wisecrack. Only in those moments when they were alone had she glimpsed the rare whisper of past hurt in his eyes. It was buried deeply, sealed under stone. But it made her feel that there was hope. That she was not the only one to be pitied, for pity was something she despised.
And that woman. That bloody woman! Why couldn’t she just vanish into the air, like a pesky fog at morning that melts under the rising sun? She was everywhere! Hadn’t the begrudgingly-bought dessert been enough? Enough penitence, enough self-flagellation? Her voice grated on Narys’ ears. She felt sickened at the sight of the woman’s face. Why did she think it permissible to speak of him? Even without saying his name, the mere mention was like a torrent rushing in from the sea, threatening to sweep the huntress from her perilous perch upon sanity, back into the frothing tempest.
She wanted to punch the woman square in her beautiful, foreign face.
No. She didn’t.
She had no wish to hurt her. Not truly. She was merely another victim of that Gondorian plague, in all his wicked, seductive, poisonous glory. More than that, she had a child. A boy. She was listed among Those To Be Pitied, too.
“Let me pity her from a great distance then,” Narys breathed out into the soft, dark shadows of the bedroom. She adjusted herself on the bed, trying to hold her weight as lightly as she could, so the mattress would not jostle about and wake Ivan. Her hands lifted up to cover her face, the fingers rubbing and tugging roughly at her freckled skin. Sleep was impossible.
Ivan had coaxed her to speak. She never intended to utter more than a word or two. But he pulled her against his heart and ran his fingers through her hair and asked, oh, so gently, for her to tell him about it.
About Dagramir.
She gazed down at Ivan’s form. He was a pale, fuzzy shape in the darkness. The beam of moonlight was restless, moving. Now it lit upon his ear, the sharp angle of his jaw, and made a patch of his hair shine like polished onyx. The sweet fondness that swelled in her chest was tainted with the bitter grief of the memories she had spewed forth. She didn’t want to think about Dagramir now. She wanted only to look at Ivan and feel that wonderful, heady thing that he always elicited within her. Her hand returned to his flesh, hoping that by grounding herself to him with a touch, she might push the memories further away. Back into the abyss of long-ago and far-away where they belonged.
Why, then...as her fingertips drew a light pattern over his shoulder, did she fancy that a voice was crying in the night beyond the walls of the cottage? Crying out her name, over and over.
