Page 10 of Fate's Bane
I glared sullenly into my lap. In the shadows, I could no longer see the brightness of the belt’s colors, but they had been so vividly dyed. Purple deep as plums and blue bluer than a summer morning. The cream threads were clean and pure as milk. Hadhnri was right. It was likely an expensive gift. But it was not a blade, as Pedhri had given his trueborn children. I jutted out my jaw.
Hadhnri nudged me playfully with her shoulder. “Besides, you and I both know that you do not want to fight.”
The words stung me where I was already wounded. “You think I am not brave.”
Hadhnri frowned. “That’s not what I think.”
“You know why he will not give me a weapon. What fool arms an enemy’s whelp to kill?” I grumbled. “I’ve given him no reason to doubt me.”
I wondered, then, if that was wrong. Should I have planned Pedhri Clan Aradoc’s doom, as a child of Clan Fein? What would Garadin Clan Fein, my own truefather, say if he saw his lost child so close to his blood enemy’s second-born?
No matter my pain in this moment, I could not see myself hurting Pedhri Clan Aradoc. He had raised me beside his own children, fed me at his table. He had seen my worth. I fingered the braided belt in my hands. Pulled it tight and felt the supple fibers creak. To turn on him would be to turn on Hadhnri, who loved her father as he adored her. But was that enough for me to wish myself marked as he had marked Gunni, to scar me Clan Aradoc for good?
Hadhnri was quiet beside me, and all was the sound of celebration in the roundhouse. I heard frustration in her breath the way a dog’s huff warns of his whine, or his growl, or his bite. I did not know which would come from her.
Without warning, she unsheathed her new seax and pressed the shining blade against her cheek. I startled, afraid she had heard the traitorous beat of my heart—then I heard the whisper through her hair, a sickle cut against high grass.
She held the lock out to me in one shaking hand. I had never seen her tremble so. Not my Hadhnri, brave Hadhnri.
I stared at the offering, my mouth dry and my stomach knotted but my heart oh so full—I had not realized until then how badly I had craved this moment while denying it, how Aradoc-Father’s warning haddragged me like a leash attached to the collar around my throat.
“Will you take it?” Hadhnri asked, her voice— Fate, how it shook.
I took it. Of course I took it. I clenched the love-lock so tightly in my hand the luck-hound itself could not pry it from my grip. But I could not stop myself from saying, “We cannot. Your father forbade—”
“I don’t care. I am my own. Chieftain of my own heart. Master of my own path. Not my father, and not you, sweet Agnir. I swore an oath to you once. Do you remember?”
I would never forget. “We were children.”
Hadhnri clasped her hand over my clenched-tight fist. “I meant it then. I mean it now. By my name and my clan, I pledge myself to you, Agnir Clan Fein.” She stared at our hands, gathering her courage for something else.
In a rush, before I could lose my nerve, I slipped my empty hand behind her head and pulled her face to mine.
How different this was from our first kiss in the spring, or that second kiss in the workshop before our first Making. Something within me snapped free at the first press of her tongue against my lips. I surged into her, trying to pull her closer, clumsy in my eagerness. I stopped once to think—Does she like this? Am I doing it right?—but her small sigh satisfied my fears.
Hadhnri pushed me back onto the cold ground, and I stared up at her. Behind her, the map of the sky stretchedacross the land, and we were all and only. She lowered herself upon me; she tasted of mead and smelt of smoke and salt and leather. Her hand tangled in my hair was an unexpected pleasure that cinched my belly tight. This was a new spell tying us together. Not a joy-spell, but something deeper. Something starved and greedy with it.
What have I done?
I had crossed a line over which I could never return. How could I refuse her, now that I had tasted her? Her mouth was as irresistible as the water of the spring. If only given the chance, I would drink her up until my belly was swollen and I was nauseous with it, and still I would thirst.
I would never be able to deny her again.
“Hadhnri,” I whispered, holding her hips against mine, her love-lock clutched in my hand. “Hadhnri, what shall we do?”
She never answered me. The scuffle of boots and the boisterous jests of Gunni and his age-mates approached from the other side of the roundhouse. We rolled apart.
“My sisters!” he called, wearing a grin of smoke and swagger as he strutted with his hand upon his new sword pommel. “I have not thanked you for this handsome gift. It’s well worthy of the King-Beyond-the-Fens.”
His friends snickered at the long-running joke among the youth of Clan Aradoc. None of us had seen the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens, but we knew the riches her people brought us. Fine furs, gold and silver that weturned into torcs and armbands, jewels the color of berries but cold as ice, cut to refract the light as a raindrop did. Surely, we thought, she must be as beautiful? And Gunni had taken it closest to heart, his dreams shifting from chieftain to king. He was Gunni, First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc—his father was already married and could not take the beautiful Queen-Beyond-the-Fens to wed, but Gunni—how eligible he was!
Hadhnri and I sat apart, clutching seax and belt respectively. Gunni’s eyes narrowed, his thin lips pursing beneath the pup-fur of his mustache, and I knew then for certain that Pedhri Clan Aradochadbade him keep Hadhnri and me apart. And yet, I felt warm: He’d called me sister. He, at least, saw no difference between me and him, between me and Hadhnri. He opened his mouth.
“You’re welcome, brother,” I said, recovering before Hadhnri and couching our crime in a tease. “But you will need more than a handsome sword to be worthy of the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.”
Hadhnri stood and I followed the sway of her broad back hungrily. “And do not be too proud of your blade. She will think you are compensating for something.” She slapped the sword scabbard where it rested astride Gunni’s hip as she passed him. “Come along, Agnir. Let’s see what food the King-Beyond-the-Fens has left us.”
THEHERALD
