Page 28 of This Midsummer Heart
“Moth like a flame.”
“Moth like a flame?”
“You heard me. Cassandra—what must she think?”
“Cassandra isn’t even here. She’s off visiting Lusida.” I hesitated, wondering how much of this discussion Titaine would even remember. “Daegris and Cassandra are moving their people out of Nerania Wood—the ones who haven’t already left for the City of Nox.”
“‘S mistake,” Titaine mumbled. “Home and…still magic.”
“Not the kind of magic they care to be around.”
“Mistake,” she insisted.
I wrung out my shirt, leaving it hanging on a peg meant for cloaks. With any luck, Daegris would be able to find one of those for me, too.
“Titaine,” I asked as I slid into bed, “are you still awake?”
She hummed in reply.
“Why did you ask me to travel to Nox with you?”
“Protect me.”
“You wanted me to protect you?”
She hummed again.
I’d be lying if I said my chest didn’t swell a little at that. But I had other things I ought to ask her, as long as the elven spirits were making her honest. “And what of your magic? You don’t seem to have lost it.”
“Changed,” she replied. “Maybe gone soon, who knows? At least you’re strong.”
“But you hate me.”
My heart skipped a beat as I waited for her to reply. Already, I regretted asking.
“You hate me,” she repeated. “Broke bond.”
Ah. Not repeating, but answering my question with a change of topic. An intoxicated fae was still a fae, after all.
“I don’t hate you,” I said quietly, watching the even rise and fall of her side of the bed in the dwindling firelight. “I never did.”
“‘S that true?” she asked, almost sounding alert for a moment.
“No, Titaine. I could never hate you. I only hated that you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Wanted you,” she replied, slipping back into a half-asleep state. “But you weren’t mine.”
“I was yours.” I sat upright. “I was always yours. I only ever wanted to be yours.”
Soft breathing, barely audible beneath the crackling of the hearth, was my only answer. It was pointless, anyway, trying to have a serious conversation with an inebriated fae.
“You told me how big and strong I was, and how you wanted me here to protect you,” I tell Titaine, watching as her cheeks change from rosy pink to scarlet.
Titaine shifts uncomfortably on the bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin despite the growing heat and humidity in our treetop bedroom. Now that night is through, summer has apparently returned to Nerania Wood.
I let her pretend to be busy while I finish washing up and dress for the day. I wish we could stay another, but we can’t let the bandits get too far ahead. They are on horseback, after all.
This is a fool’s errand. We’ll never catch them. At some point, Titaine will have to accept that Giselda is gone.
