Page 31 of Fate's Bane
“We could ask our fathers to marry us off to each other. Unite the clans, at last.”
I snorted with disdain and Hadhnri flinched.
“You didn’t think it was so cursed an idea before,” she muttered.
“My entire clan has sworn a death-oath to take from your father what he took from mine.” The muddy ash had dried on our foreheads, where we left it until it fell away. “Iswore a death-oath, may the—may the luck-hound turn my blade against me.” A shudder crossed my spine to even mention the fates-bane here, at the seat of its power.
Hadhnri gaped at me, stricken. “But Gunni is your brother too. And I’m—” She broke off abruptly.
“Is he my brother?” I spat into her hurt silence. “He kept us apart as much as Pedhri Clan Aradoc. He never saw me worthy of you.” This old bitter kernel had grown roots since Sunstead. “I’m not a child anymore, Hadhnri. I can see things for what they were.” I sifted my hand through the detritus, chasing the break-joint crack of twigs. “What they are.”
“Am I childish then, Agnir Clan Fein, to have hope still?” Hadhnri said softly. “To remember the oath we made?” She turned to me, moonlight catching on her damp cheeks.
The love in her eyes dried the angry retort on my tongue. It was honest and broken, held together withsheer will—how could I pretend I did not match it? If only I could capture her love and hold it to my chest forever. With gentle thumbs, I brushed away her tears and brought her face to mine. She held me fast as I kissed her softly. We pulled apart to ask the silent question.
The answer was music, a music I knew down to the marrow of me. The moan of the bull deer. The bark of the fox. How to mend what was broken? The drumming of the clans against Hadhnri’s ribs. The pipes in my ear. We were a Made thing, as much as any leather wrought. Steady fingers, the rise and fall of the needle. Blood in the mouth. War was coming, but I was not alone anymore. They could not take the fens from us—not the dragonflies, not the Baneswood; not the rush of the Ene or its floods.Hadhnri, will you forgive me?We were a Making. That warmth in my stomach. Wet flesh under the thumb. The rightness of a stitch placed true. The needle piercing through. Tightening around the throat. Here where we began, we could unmake it all: What if we told them how the luck-hound dogged us? Would the truth mend what was broken?Will you still fly crow-sure to a cold-stone prince with nothing to offer but soft metal?Our warmth rising in my stomach. Would the war still come? Its hot breath on our necks, sharp steel in our backs. I had always been alone.Will you go, Hadhnri?A curse. Blinding warmth. The needle piercing through.
THECHOICE
“Take me,” Hadhnri said quietly into my braids.
“Again?” I startled from the languid haze of our after. “You’re not finished?”
She stroked a thumb along my bare neck. No collar stopped her kissing me there, long and lingering. The spring bubbled at our heads.
“Steal me from my father. We’ll run away.”
I considered it only a moment longer than I had the last time she asked me, so long ago.
“Your father would still blame me, and my father yours. Unless he knows I went willing, and he will not believe it unless he sees it.”
“Then I’ll go back with you, tonight.”
I let myself entertain that too: escorting Hadhnri back to Clan Fein, telling my father we were wedded—that we had been for years, though there’d been no one to witness our oath but the trees and the fens and the fates-bane itself. No matter how I twisted the vision in my mind, I could see nothing but the hatred in his eyes and the smudge across his forehead. He would not haveHadhnri in his clan, no matter how it wounded Pedhri Clan Aradoc or ruined his plans for the Fens.
“I have been thinking. I came because—” With great effort, I let the words rush out. “We should use it. The Makings. You were right. If this is the only way I can touch the world, then—then I will. I’ll grab it by the throat if I must. I want to be my own, for once.”
Hadhnri stared at me, resting on one elbow, mouth open in surprise. My cheeks warmed, embarrassed by my fervor. I waited for her to speak, to say anything at all. Instead, she stroked the bracers at my forearms and looked to the dagger on the belt I had discarded.
I dug into the cool, soft earth with my fingers. The moon above was no longer sick-yellow but bright as the silver torc round Hadhnri’s neck. The chirp and buzz and rustle of the insects and animals who dwelt here had gone faint, as if their domain stopped at the edge of the clearing, which was ours and ours alone. Only I did not think it was.
I pushed myself up, slithered to the edge of the spring, and plunged my hand inside. It was colder than I remembered. I closed my eyes and let it run between my fingers.
“Are we cursed?” I asked through clenched teeth, trying not to shiver.
Hadhnri joined me in the water, twining her hand in mine. I shivered anyway.
“It doesn’t feel like a curse.” She squeezed my handbeneath the water and I opened my eyes to see her staring at me.
The luck-hound wasn’t known for giving gifts. Not in any of the tales I’d heard told. And yet… everything we’d ever Made together had an element of ill-luck. And I couldn’t deny that she had some point—nothing ill had happened tous. I pulled our hands out of the water and kissed her chill knuckles. I licked the water from my lips. It tasted of apples. It tasted of Hadhnri, the salt of her sweat, her pleasure.
“What ifweare a Making?” I murmured.
I did not realize I’d spoken aloud until Hadhnri hummed a question.
“What if it was the spring that brought us together,” I continued, “you for me, and me for you?”
Hadhnri brought my own knuckles to her lips, her tongue flicking against them, teasing, tickling like a fish. There were no fish in the spring. She smirked, and I wondered what she tasted. But her voice was serious when she turned my face up to hers.
