Page 59 of A Baron of Bonds
I didn’t know what decisions we’d be left with.
I didn’t know the Blightress’s intentions with Felgren or the world, let alone the woman I was bound to.
All I really knew was what I had and what I was going to keep.
I wanted to move on, move forward, and no longer dwell on what we’d been through. I wanted to train my channelers and seek solutions to the hard lives people lived in the Hallow Marshes. I wanted to conduct the conduit trials in one more year and have four new conduits. I wanted to do my duties as Baron of Felgren with Karus by my side as my equal. I wanted babies, and laughter, and joy. I wanted to train multiple groups of channelers at a time.
With Karus’s help as a Baron, we could do it. She wanted to take the conduit trials even though they’d be trivial for her. She only needed to pass one to become a conduit, and I suspected she’d pass all four. But the most important trial would be the Baron Trial. If she could get through that, she’d have the choice to accept the Baronship with me.
I couldn’t move back time. I couldn’t move it forward either, but I once again found myself wishing I had that power.
I bent forward, gripping the metal rail of the balcony, watching the street below. The orange glow of the tented lightsalong the street looked warm and welcoming as my mind raced through what I would have done differently—what my life and Karus’s would be like now if her mind had never fogged, and if her memories had stayed.
It would have been seven years of love, and fights, and bliss. What kind of conduit would she have become? What kind of Baron would I have been?
Impossible to say, but I knew that what we’d been through had at least provided us with strength. And perhaps, in some small comfort, that would be enough for us to get through whatever our future together held.
“You’re spiraling.”
By the heart of Felgren, her voice was beautiful.
No, that wasn’t the right curse to replaceby the Blightress, but I’d keep trying.
I turned my head, still leaning against the rails, not ready to go back inside and try to sleep again. “Sorry I woke you.”
She gave me the slightest shake of her head, her skin pale in the soft half-moon light. Her nightgown hugged her chest and hips in such a way that I didn’t mind the nightmares if it meant she came to comfort me looking like this.
“I didn’t hear you. I felt you.” Her eyes flickered over my bare chest and she turned, running back inside. She returned moments later with a cornflower blue quilt bundled in her arms.
“Not a shirt?” I asked.
She silently shook it out, grabbing the corners of each end and letting the cotton fly in the breeze. She draped the quilt over my shoulders and pulled each end down, slipping her body inside our cozy bundle.
“I can’t get this close to you with a shirt.” She took a deep breath at my neck, her lips gently brushing against the stubble left at my chin before she settled herself there, humming our song,The Sun and the Moon.
I didn’t want to say anything.
I didn’t want to listen to anything but the gentle hum of her voice and feel the warmth of her breath at my neck.
We swayed as the moon lowered in the sky, my arms wrapped around her, pulled to my chest on a balcony in the place she was born, but not the place she belonged.
“There you go again,” she scolded, lifting her head and wrapping her free hand at the base of my cheek. “Will you tell me what you’re thinking?”
I sighed, kissing her forehead and mumbling into her hair, “It’s everything. Everything we’ve gone through, everything I want for our future. It feels like we’re at a pinnacle, Karus. It feels like…” I trailed off, not wanting to say it aloud. “It feels like the only thing left is to lose what I’ve gained.”
I wrapped my arms tighter around her, pulling her body so that all of her bare skin, all of her silk nightgown, brushed against me. “If I can stand here with all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever needed, doesn’t that mean that the only thing I have left is to lose it?”
“And what would Baron Revich of seven years ago say to that?”
“Baron Revich of seven years ago had not yet lost.”
“But look at what he gained.” She pulled her head out from under my chin and traced a finger along my brow. “You said I couldn’t go back. You said I need to move forward, and the same goes for you. We don’t dwell. We don’t do anything but learn from our mistakes and move forward. I am happy. I am loved, and I love you, Rev, with more power and strength than I was capable of before. No more spiraling. No more nightmares. You wake from them, you wake me. Your thoughts run down a path that leads to the darkest of nights, you take mewithyou.Thatis how you heal.”
She jabbed a finger at my chest.
“Ouch,” I chuckled.
“You breathe, I breathe. You live, I live, and you don’t get to have it just one way, oh, beautiful Baron of Felgren.” She shook her head in a defiance of any thoughts I may have had at keeping my pain to myself. “You heal, I heal. We do all of this together. Your decisions are my decisions, too. You cannot explain all of this to me and then go off on your own to dwell on what could have been or what pain you still could face.”
