Page 68 of Ties of Legacy

It had been Elliot’s choice not to do so, and even if Bolivere had subsequently misjudged and rejected him, he should have returned to pay his father his final respects and to check that the community his father had loved was doing well. He could have shown them they were wrong about him—he could have created a future for himself among them, even if it wasn’t as lord of the manor. But instead he had run, and now it turned out the people of Bolivere had been dying.

“Elliot.” Avery took one of his hands in both of hers. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He shook his head, still unable to speak. He had made a mistake three years earlier, and he had been continuing to make it every day since. But Avery was guiding him back to where he belonged. He didn’t need to put down roots somewhere—he already had roots. He had just been too afraid to face them.

The pain and fear washed over him in waves, and he let them come until they began to recede, each wave a little smaller than the one before—Avery’s grip an anchor in the darkness.

But when the ocean inside him had settled, leaving behind new determination, her fingers, which were wrapped around his, began to burn. He leaped to his feet, pulling away from her.

She stood as well, her brow creased with concern and hurt in her eyes.

“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.

He forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “We should head back. The others will be wondering where we are.”

“I don’t care about the others,” she said with her usual determination. “I care about you.”

His heart tried to leap at her words, only to crash back down, caged and restrained. It hurt him all the way to his core to be causing her pain, but the brief glimpse of a possible future together had been doused in the cold waves of an ocean. Elliot wasn’t free to set up home wherever he liked, moving through the kingdoms with Avery.

It would take him years to be half the man his father was, and he was already late starting. He had rejected his father’s legacy—which was the people his father had loved, not his father’s money or his house—for too long already. He would return to his roots, and Avery would return to her wings. There was no future between them once he broke his tie to the lamp.

He had let his emotions sweep him up, his kiss suggesting a future he could no longer create with her. He had already wronged Avery, and the faster he returned matters to how they should always have been, the better for her.

“I’m flattered,” he forced himself to say in a carefree tone. “But we’ll freeze if we stay out here much longer.”

He started toward the cottage, not waiting for her agreement. He could tell her everything, of course, but his mouth still wouldn’t form the words. Not yet. It would be hard enough to admit his mistakes to her, or the way his own father had rejected him as flawed, but how could he confess when it meant admitting the irrevocable truth that he would soon have to separate from her?

He had already endured as much pain as he could take in one evening.

Chapter 23

Avery

Avery’s eyes followed Elliot around the cottage, no matter how much she tried to stop them. She was almost certain he knew it, too, although he was always careful not to meet her gaze. She kept trying to steal a moment alone with him, determined to ask again about what was wrong, but he deftly avoided any such opportunity—an effort that was aided by the number of people in the small dwelling.

She consoled herself that he wouldn’t be able to avoid her once they were traveling alone again, but when morning arrived, Mattie surprised them all with an unexpected announcement. Instead of Ewan’s offered escort back to the capital, she intended to travel on with Avery and Elliot.

“I may not be the traveling type,” she said complacently, “but I’m still a roving merchant by blood. Every now and then I need to get out of the library and see something of the kingdoms.” She cast a knowing look at Avery and Elliot. “And something tells me traveling with the two of you won’t be dull.”

Avery could barely school herself to give the necessary words of welcome. After the dizzying heights and suffocating depths of emotion she had experienced the evening before, she was struggling with her usual composure.

She had never imagined a kiss like the one she had shared with Elliot, but something in her words afterward had made him close himself off from her. It had to be something she had said about Bolivere, but as much as she wracked her brains, she couldn’t think what might have warranted such an extreme reaction.

She wasn’t even sure it had anything to do with her at all. She had seen the pain in his eyes before his walls came up, and she suspected he was shielding himself from something. But it still hurt that he wouldn’t share his pain with her.

When he had taken her in his arms, a whole future together had unfurled before her. But how could they ever share a life if he couldn’t be honest with her?

Her initial reaction to Mattie’s declaration had been disappointment, but perhaps it was a good thing they would have company on the road. If she and Elliot had no future, it was better if she started distancing herself immediately, and traveling alone together wouldn’t help with that. Of course it would also be easier to create some distance if her mind wasn’t determined to replay their kiss every time she closed her eyes.

They left the cottage much as they had arrived—three people and a parrot on the back of three horses. But their saddlebags were much better provisioned, they had proper bedrolls, and all of them were better rested after Avery’s family insisted the guests take the good mattresses so they could have at least one solid night’s sleep.

“I’m glad you had family like Ewan and Sylvia to take you in after your parents passed away,” Elliot said softly as they rode away. “I can see they think of you like one of their own children. They seem like good people.”

“They are,” Avery said confidently. “Uncle Ewan and my mother were the only two siblings in their family, and they wereclose growing up. Even when my parents were still alive, our two families would sometimes travel together.”

“I have no extended family on my father’s side,” Elliot said, surprising her by initiating talk about his family and his past. “And my mother always refused to talk about hers. They were estranged, and she always claimed they treated her badly, but I suspect it was the other way around. She was always full of tales of how she had been wronged, and when I was young, I believed them. But eventually she began telling tales of situations I had witnessed for myself, and her tales always bore little resemblance to reality.”

“I wish you’d had an Uncle Ewan and Aunt Sylvia,” Avery said.

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