Page 7 of Fate's Bane
“It would break the peace.” I sighed, dropping my chin as low as the collar allowed. “We cannot.”
Hadhnri—brave Hadhnri! stubborn Hadhnri!—did not accept defeat as easily. She raised my chin and turned my head. She stroked up my jaw. Her fingertips were cold, and I remembered instantly the spring we should never have discovered, with its sweet, frigid water. A shock passed between us and she jerked away. But she came back. This time, she pulled me to her and pressed her lips against mine. Not swift innocence, but bold and lingering.
My breath fled and I slammed my eyes shut—why? Out of fear? Out of instinct? So that I could pretend it wasn’t happening, so Aradoc-Father could not say it was my fault? Or so that I could feel more present in the heat of mouth and mouth?
Yes and yes and yes and yes. Nothing existed for me in that second but the warm breath from her nose on my face, and yet nothing waited in my future but dread that Aradoc-Father would know. That dread made a snake-coil around the glow in my belly, threatening to snuff it out.
Boots tramped up the steps leading to the workshop, and we sprang apart as Gunni ducked under the flap.
He blinked in the dimness, his thick eyebrows a low scowl. “Hadhnri? Is that you, here in the dark? Agnir?”
“Yes, it’s us. We’re working on something for Father, and he’d hide you if he found you knew of it.”
Hadhnri—clever Hadhnri!—had disguised our hurried separation into an attempt to cover the leather on the table. It was Gunni’s gift, after all. It was meant to be a surprise. My face, however, was scalding, a burning-sun wonder in the dark. I spread my hands over the damp leather belatedly.
Gunni stepped closer, and I stood, hunching over the table. I laughed, short and bright as lightning.
“Go away!” I played along. “Or we’ll tell him you were nosing.”
Gunni grinned back, eager. He knew what to expect with his aging day on the horizon and was torn between the desire to know and the delight of anticipation. Hadhnri and I bunched closer together to hide the leatherworking. Her forearm warmed against mine, and I melted butter-soft into her. I forced myself not to look. To watch the childish glee on Gunni’s face. The plump of his cheeks had not hollowed, might not ever hollow—Aradoc-Father’s cheeks were round beneath his beard, and Hadhnri, too, had a softness in her face that I wanted to brush with my fingertips.
“I’ll leave you be, little shadow-wights,” he said, backing away with his hands raised, while he craned his neck for a peek through the gaps between our arms. (There were no gaps between our arms.) “Father says you’re not to be scheming, Hadhnri, and that he knows you both skipped weapon-work with Lughir yesterday. He says not to do it again.”
Gunni finished with a grim note of warning, the heavy timbre of his deepening voice surprising them all.
Hadhnri shooed him. “I’m no sheep, Gunni, you’ll not hound me. Now get out.”
When we were alone again, I sat with my hands in my lap. Hers rested on the table while she idly flicked the edge of the leather I’d been drawing on. Our heavy breaths and heartbeats were the only sound in my ears. Then Hadhnri sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and reached for my hand. I flinched away before I could command my body not to.
I winced at the pain in her face. I grabbed her hand before it could retreat, but I held it low, beneath the table, as I glanced over my shoulder.
“He’ll tell Aradoc-Father we were here.” I pushed my curls back from my face with one hand, then clasped it back around hers. “We—we have to work on Gunni’s gift. So we have something to show him. Elsewise…” Elsewise, he would know. He already suspected, or else why would he care so much for where Hadhnri spent her time?
Hadhnri set her mouth, her heavy brows in a scowl that matched Gunni’s. Slowly, though, she realized I was right. Her grip on my hands slackened and she scooted closer to me while she pulled the damp leather close.
“Finish, then, and let us see.”
THEMAKING
And so we lit two rush lights and I finished tracing the outline of my vision while Hadhnri grumbled.
“He can’t even lift a warrior’s sword,” she muttered, more cranky than truthful, for we both knew how strong a warrior he would be. “He will bring shame to Clan Aradoc. Better he keep it sheathed than look a fool.”
I raised an eyebrow at her in amusement as she watched over my shoulder. She flushed, abashed.
“Fine. But I curse him still.” Hadhnri laughed. “He should be shamed for spying.”
Idle curses, the curses any sister would swear upon a meddling brother who had paddled her backside with a sword in their youths, or who told tales to guard their father’s favor for himself. Only idle.
I laughed too. “You mean for interrupting.” I looked at Hadhnri through my eyelashes.
Hadhnri traced a caress across the back of my shoulders. My eyes closed involuntarily as I shivered down to my center. She was pleased. Then she took the leatherfrom me, and with nimble hands, used her sharp awl to trace the careful curves and lines I’d drawn with my blunt one, pounding gently with the stone mallet.
It felt strange to work with her, as if the passing of leather between us wove something deeper than the knots we graved. My skin stippled, the hair on my arms rising as if before a lightning strike. It was cold, cold as it had been at the spring in the Baneswood, but our hands were steady.
The air smelt sweet.
Time raced away from us. When we at last lifted our heads, I could tell it was dark by the changing light against the workshop’s walls and the sound of voices as clan members returned from working farther afield, greeting their families and their friends. Hadhnri and I looked at each other, breathless again but giddy this time, a new weight between us. As if wehadbeen together, something precious kindled between us. With both of our hands on the leather, I couldfeelher.
