Page 38 of This Midsummer Heart
What if there is still a chance for us?
I catch up to her before she can take the stairs up to her room in the inn. As if she expected me to walk through the door, she turns quickly and tosses me a key. It’s a good thing my elven reflexes don’t rely on magic. I scoop the key and its wooden tag out of the air before I fully register what’s happening.
“Your room’s on the floor above mine,” she says, ruining any hopes I have of there being only one bed we’re forced to share. “Please resist the urge to stomp everywhere.”
“Who do you think I am?” I demand. “Robin?”
She regards me coolly. “Who knows just who you are.”
It’s a parting shot that stings more than it should. Shedoesknow me. Just as I know her. It can only mean one thing.
I’m still not the man she hoped I was. And no matter how hard I try, or how much I’ve changed, or how many times I begged for her forgiveness in the first eight months after she dissolved the bond and the treaty, Titaine will never forgive me.
My throat stings annoyingly as I follow her up the stairs, making a point to be light on my feet. I wish I could blame this feeling, this burning in my throat and ache in my chest, on the miller’s wife’s peerless cooking, and not on its true source.
In Titaine’s eyes, I will never measure up.
And she will never know just how much I wish that I did.
The temperature in the valley soars overnight.
Having a room on the uppermost floor is less than ideal in this heat. The humidity is oppressive in the peaked roof of the inn, the air barely stirring through the single window. I have it open as wide as it will go, and still my skin is sticky and breathing a chore. Even when I rise to brush my chest, neck and face with cool water from the ewer at the toilet table, it evaporates just as quickly.
I cannot sleep. Sometime around midnight, a distant clock chimes the hour, and suddenly the air begins to stir.
It brings with a sweet, soapy fragrance, dashed with an intriguing spice. I think at once of the rose briars, every bud closed as we made our way through to the stream. They must be some kind of night-blooming rose.
Curious, I rise from my mussed bed, the linen sheets wrinkled from sweat. I barely acknowledge this change—such sweating is one of many peculiar new symptoms at this point. But I am glad I do not share a bed with Titaine after all, for she is likely sleeping as cool as petals floating down an icy stream.
I think of the stream that brought us here, and wonder if I could find my way to it for some relief, without getting too near the miller’s home again.
As quietly as a cat, I make my way down the stairs and out onto the empty street, my mail left behind in my room and my tunic open to my naval. The air isn’t as stifling, but it still provides little relief. Only that rose-scented breeze offers me reprieve from this heat.
Then I blink, and I am in front of the briar. Only this time, every bud is open, the roses a deep scarlet that is almost aglow in the light of a half moon. Their fragrance is intoxicating, the spiraling petals seeming to pull me closer like a bee.
The briars creak and sigh, parting for me as they did so soundlessly for Titaine, bending to allow me deeper into the thicket.
Somewhere, far in the back of my mind, I know everything is wrong about this. I know it is a trick. And yet, as if this were a dream, I’m drawn closer until the cool, powerfully fragranced air surrounds me, swirling with succor and spice, soothing my weary limbs, easing the aches in my back and feet and cooling my skin.
Slowly, the briar knits shut around me, drawing closer and closer.
I should be panicked. Instead, I feel lulled into sleep, my eyes drooping. Vines crawl over me, lacing together across my skin, pulling me under into the relief of a comfortable, deep sleep. I don’t even feel it this time as the thorns lash my skin.
I fall to my knees, only to find I am weightless, supported by dozens of vines and canes. My lids droop and fall shut.
Minutes or hours later, I hit the ground with a miserable thump, the pain channeling up my spine and into my head and neck. Still dazed, I scan the thicket around me, confused and disappointed that it is receding, almost quivering as it seems to die back.
A bright light, like the sun has reemerged, sends them scattering for good, blasting a wide path around me.
“Auberon,” Titaine cries, “are you alright?”
Why wouldn’t I be alright?I wonder, realizing for the first time that I am now flat on my back. My limbs are weak and tingling, hatched with dark lines of blood.
That wondrous, sweet scent of roses vanishes, leaving only the smell of iron and dirt in its wake. My eyes widen.
As usual, my timing is awful, for just then Titaine sends out another ray of blinding light, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut. I freely admit that part of me doesn’t want to open them again. I could sleep here forever. Then another pulse of light blooms behind my eyelids, then another, reminding me that it is not just her golden glow that earned Titaine her nickname of lady of the sun.
At last, the magical stupor releases me—but I am still weak, still lying prone as Titaine stands over me. When I turn my head, I can see little of the briar that once clogged this valley, and the remnants of a cracked clay road.
