Page 24 of Silverbow
“Perhaps,” Lord Ryerson said slowly. “Perhaps Enya would favor us with a tune?”
Liam knew Enya only suffered her rare piano lessons to appease her father, and she never practiced, but sometimes, with enough goading, she would play for them. She’d likely skin him alive if she knew how much he enjoyed her playing, fumbled keys and all. Especially the fumbled keys that made her scrunch her face in consternation.
“I…I can’t,” she murmured.
“Come on, En,” Liam pleaded.
She shook her head.
“Just one song.”
“No!” It was sharp, frantic, and it made Liam sit back. Her arms were wrapped around her middle like a vice, her face still pinched and pale. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Her father’s question was as probing as his gaze.
“I…” Her jaw worked. “My hand. I can’t.”
Her hand was fine earlier. He’d held it in the yard. Liam grabbed for the wrist she tried to hide. She sighed and let him turn her palm upright. Mistress Ashill gasped. Where skin callused by long days in the stable had been this afternoon, now stretched a raw, red burn dotted with oozing blisters.
“What is that?” Liam hissed. “That wasn’t there before…”
Before the Testing.
Silver rimmed her eyes as she blinked up at him. “It wasn’t hot when you touched it?”
Hot? Light, it was cold.
She had hesitated when she passed it to him. Had she been afraid it would burn him, or that he would betray her? Liam suddenly wished he’d eaten less.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Mistress Ashill snapped, bounding to her feet.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
Too late for that now.
“What does it mean?” She asked her father, a note of desperation in her voice.
Liam looked at the faces that peered at her. They didn’t know. That was plain to see.
***
Arawelo pinned her ears as Liam let himself into her stall. He held his peace offering out in his palm and yelped when his whole hand disappeared into the mare’s mouth with a sharp scrape of her teeth.
“Demon spawn,” he muttered, wiping his hand on his trousers.
Arawelo watched him pointedly as she crushed the peppermint candy between her teeth. Any other time, Enya would have laughed, but she didn’t look up from where she sat with her face buried in her knees.
Liam sank down into the straw next to her and let his knee fall against hers. When the quiet stretched long enough that Arawelo returned to her hay, he reached into his pocket and took out his knife. He turned the piece of white pine he’d been working on over in his hand and set to whittling out the final details.
“What are you doing?” Enya finally asked, her attention drawn by the scratch of his knife.
There was a roughness to her voice that made him still. She’d been crying. Enya never cried. Liam suddenly found himself torn between wanting to close the distance between them and wanting to be far enough away he didn’t have to see.
“Carving. Griff’s been showing me.”
She squinted. “What is it?”
He held the rough hewn shape up to catch the flickering lantern light. “It’s Arawelo, of course.”
