Page 62 of Time's Fool

“You said that you took him here. Why?”

“To see this,” she gestured at the view, which was even more extraordinary now, with the sun just starting to slide toward the horizon, and the clouds turning pink and orange and gold at the edges.

And through the already awe-inspiring view, magic in solid form gamboled. There seemed to be more dragons arriving, he didn’t know why. But they were congregating together, in a playful mass—if playful involved snarling and snapping and half attacking each other.

Kit stared at them for a moment; it was almost impossible not to. And, once again, he felt his spirits lifted. There was magic in the air in this strange new land, magic such as he had never known.

“Was he as obsessed with these creatures as me?” he finally asked, not seeing how anyone could not be.

But Gillian shook her head. “No, but that was before he saw them. My coven has known about this place for years; we’ve sourced some of the herbs we use in potions and elixirs from these mountains, for longer than anyone can remember. I first saw this as a girl and it changed me. I wanted to share it with him.

“And later, it was all he could talk about, for months. We said we’d come back, after . . . we never did. I haven’t been back since that day.”

She stared off into the void for a long time, her hair blowing slightly in the wind. “It felt like I died with him,” she finally said, so softly that Kit could barely hear. “He was hit with a spell the night of the storm; he tried to counter, and nearly made it. He was so quick . . .

“But it might have been better if he hadn’t been. It took him months to die. He wanted to be there, to hang on until our child was born, and used every trick he knew to postpone the hex that was eating him alive. But it wasn’t enough. He missed her birth by days.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit murmured. Once again, he didn’t know what else to say.

She shook her head. “It was years ago. I thought I was past it. I decided to live for her, for Elinor, and put it behind me. What else could I do? And then it was fly by night and try to survive while the Circle hunted us, and ran us to ground like dogs. For so long, I didn’t have time to feel anything but fear.

“But then I met you.”

Kit didn’t comment. He was afraid that any words might tilt the balance, one way or the other, and he didn’t want that. This had to be her decision; her fight. Or it would forever change what came after.

And he wanted what came after.

So, he took her hand and said nothing, and that seemed to be the right response. For in a moment, she began to speak again. “He was blond and tall, almost your opposite.”

“I’m not tall?” he teased.

She smiled slightly. “Tall enough. Taller than me.”

“I was the tallest in my family—”

“Didn’t you tell me once that you had mostly sisters?”

Kit attempted to look offended. “They were tall for women.”

She smiled more broadly. “We were in neighboring covens; we grew up together, seeing each other at festivals and meeting days. Everyone always assumed that we’d end up as a couple, and then we did. He kissed me first in an apple orchard, at harvest time, amid baskets of fruit. He tasted like apples, fresh and crisp, for we’d been eating them all day as we picked them.

“I remember wondering if we’d still be doing that, years later, with our grandchildren around us, playing amidst the trees. Or stuffing themselves until their little bellies were round enough to pop, like the coven’s children who were there to “help” that day. I remember the chill of the breeze, and the bonfire we made that night, when the day’s work was done. And cuddling under a blanket with him as the stars came out.

“It was perfect, and stayed that way, for a while . . .”

Her face had been wistful, with a faint smile as she spoke about her youth. But it suddenly changed. She looked older, not in features but in expression. As if the soft girl of a moment before had been eclipsed by the woman.

And they had not lived the same sort of life at all.

“But I wonder sometimes if it would be so now. Had he been a fraction of a second faster, had he lived. . . Of course, perhaps then I’d be different, too. But as I am—” she looked down at herself, and then up at Kit, confusion, pain and guilt on her face. “I’m not the same person anymore. I’m vengeful, angry, hard. I’ve done things I never thought I’d do, things that would have shocked the girl I was!”

“War does that to people,” he said tightly.

“I don’t think it would have, for him. He was good and kind and gentle. I remember that about him most of all, how gentle he was. He was training to be a healer, before . . . before.

“He would be appalled at what I’ve become.”

“Then he was a good, kind and gentle fool,” Kit said, before he could stop himself.

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