Page 73 of Haunted

She doesn’t move. Snow carpets her body while she frowns into the distance. Her chin is lifted to the horizon. She’ll freeze over if she stays out here much longer, emrys or not.

“I know how difficult this is for you,” I say.

Her eyelashes blink away snowflakes. I don’t need to read her heart-center. Niawen holds back tears. Her pain is just as bad as mine was when Neifion died. The separation doesn’t have to be death for it to have the same intensity.

“I don’t know anymore why I came here.” Her voice is soft. “Do you think this world is evil? I was told Bryn was evil.”

I long to hold her. Every sorrow Niawen experiences moves me. “Evil is in the eye of the beholder. As is beauty. Bryn has both.”

“Do you feel it? When you close your eyes? I tried to ignore it. I tried to see the beauty this world has.”

My hand itches to take hers. “Niawen, come inside.”

“Just a few more minutes.”

My shoulders relax as I slip into place beside her. “Then I shall stand here with you.”

Just two statues in the courtyard.

52

I don’t say a word when she finally abandons her vigil. She heads toward the keep and I follow, not brushing the snow from my body.

I’m worried.

After eating sweet-onion beef stew and richly buttered bread, I excuse myself to take care of a few matters of business. I hate to leave her, so I mark her with my inner sight.

She wanders back into the storm, to the outer wall where we gazed over the city after the tour. I am in my study, talking to my stable man, and though what he has to say is urgent, that there’s an issue with his wife’s baby, I only half listen.

My sight is divided. I have to follow her. I open the swirling sphere of black matter in my heart-center and find my raven. He seeks her out. He is my ever-present spy, and it takes me clutching just one of his feathers in my pocket and uttering an incantation in my mind to possess him.

She makes trails in the snow as she passes the crenellations where archers shoot. She glances through each opening until she stops in front of one on the north side. The world is a blanket of white.

Deiniol is telling me how he needs someone to turn his wife’s baby because the child is breech.

Niawen leans through the gap and peers down a distance of at least forty feet. When she brushes the snow from the ledge and climbs onto it, I jump up from my seat. She drapes forward, extending her arms behind herself. It’s a long distance to the ground below.

Is she going to jump?

“Deiniol,” I throw my cloak over my shoulders. “I shall come straightaway. I have one matter to attend to, but I shall be there within the hour.”

Deiniol mutters thanks as I rush out of the room.

I dive with my light and read Niawen. If she finds out, I don’t care. Her state is too delicate. I shouldn’t care this much. Masters of all creation, why do I care?

She is heavy. Solemn. I look again.

Her fingers let go for the briefest moment, but she catches herself as she pitches. Desperate. She is desperate. Miserable.

I curse myself for not diving sooner. All afternoon she stood in the courtyard deep in the well of her anguish, and I didn’t look.

If she falls, I don’t think I could heal her. Emrys heal fast, but a fall from several stories will take too long for her body to heal before she’d succumb. No. Niawen. No!

Her torment, her disappointment reaches me.

I climb the stairs to the wall. A feeling of worthlessness accosts me, and I know what Niawen is thinking about. Her dark mark. Her impurity from killing those men. I didn’t think Seren’s absence would dredge this up.

This is my fault. I slip on a step and go down on one knee. I curse the pain but leap up the steps two at a time.

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