“But this is what you asked me to become,” she replied, taking in dress, hair, and all with a single gesture. “Daren, dearheart, you don’t really want me as a lover, you want me as a friend, a companion. But I can’t be a companion in your world—I can only be something like this.”
He tried to say something to refute her, but nothing would come out.
“Daren, you have a companion and partner waiting for you—someone who needs your help and support and the fact that you love him, and needs it more than I ever will,” she said softly, but emphatically. “Your brother is and will be more to you than I ever can. Or ever should. And once we’d both gotten to the Court, you’d have found that out. I could never be more than a burden to you then, and it would frankly be only a matter of time until my temper made me an embarrassment as well.”
“I—you—” he sputtered a while, then shook his head, as his gelding champed at the bit, impatient to be off. “I—I guess you’re right,” he said, crestfallen. “I can’t think of any reason why you should be wrong, anyway.”
He looked down at his saddle pommel for a moment, then defiantly met her eyes. “But dammit, I don’t have to like it!”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t change anything.”
She stared right back into his eyes, and in the end, he was the one who had to drop his gaze.
“Daren,” she said, after a moment of heavy silence, broken by the stamping of horses, creak of leather, and jingle of harness, “Wait a couple of years. Wait until I’ve found my place. Then I can be your eccentric friend, that crazy female fighter. Princes are expected to have one or two really odd friends.” She chuckled then, and he looked up and reluctantly smiled.
“I suppose,” he ventured. “You might even do my reputation some good.”
“Oh, definitely.” The smile she wore turned into a wicked grin. “Just think how people will react when they know I’m your lover. ‘Prince Daren, tamer of wild merc women!’ I can see it now, they’ll stand in awe of your manhood!”
He blushed—all the more because he knew damned well it was true. “Kero—” he protested.
“Are we friends again?” she said abruptly.
He blinked, his eyes once more filling with tears, and this time he did not try to pretend they weren’t there. “Yes,” he said. “Although why you’d want a fool like me for a friend—”
“Oh, I have to have someone I can borrow money from,” she said lightly—then reached across the intervening space between them and hugged him, hard.
And when she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes as well.
“Just you take care of yourself, you unmannered lout,” she whispered hoarsely. “I want you around to lend me that money.”
“Mercenary,” he replied, just as hoarsely.
She nodded, and backed her horse away slowly.
“Exactly so, my friend. Exactly so.” She halted the mare just out of reach, and waved at him. “And you have places to go, and people waiting for you, Prince Daren.”
He turned his horse and urged it into a brisk walk, looking back over his shoulder as he did so. He halfway expected to see her making her way toward the Tower, but she was still sitting on her horse beside the path. When she saw him looking, she waved once—more a salute than a wave.
The departing salute he gave her was exactly that. Then he set his eyes on the trail ahead. And never once looked back.
Kero waited until Daren was out of sight, then turned her horse’s head toward the Tower.
I’m not sure what was more surprising—him developing good sense, or me developing a silver tongue. She hadn’t quite known what she was going to say, only the general shape of it. She certainly had not expected the kind of eloquent speech she’d managed to make.
One thing that was not at all surprising; she was already missing Daren—but she wasn’t as miserable as her worst fears had suggested. Which meant, to her way of thinking, that she was not in love with the man. Deep in the lonely hours of the night she’d had quasi-nightmares about successfully sending him away, then discovering she really couldn’t live without him.
She sighed, and Verenna’s ears flicked back at the sound. “Well,” she told the mare, “I guess now it’s my turn to figure out exactly what I’m going to do with my life.”
And Need chose that moment to strike.
Kero had a half-heartbeat of warning, a flash of something stirring, like some old woman grumbling in her sleep, just before the blade began exerting its full potential for pressure. She managed to keep it from taking her over entirely, but she could not keep it from disabling her.
It did its best to overwhelm her with a desire to run away from all this, to be out running free; a desire so urgent that had she not already fought one set of pitched battles with the sword, she’d have probably spurred Verenna after Daren, overtaken, and passed him. Now she knew these spurious impulses for what they were, and she met them with a will tempered like steel, and a stubborn pride that refused to give in to a piece of metal, however enchanted. She had just enough time to toss Verenna’s reins over her neck, ground-tying her, before the sword took over enough of her body that making Verenna bolt for the road was a possibility.
Then she sat, rigid and trembling, every muscle in her body warring with her will. It wasn’t even going to be possible to get back to the Tower and get help from Kethry—assuming Kethry, having spent years under the blade’s peculiar bondage, even could help. Damn you, she thought at the blade, as her body chilled; and Verenna shuddered, unable to understand what was wrong with her rider, but sensing something she didn’t at all like. Damn you, I know who and what I am, and what I want and even why I want it—and if a man I like isn’t going to be able to pressure me into changing that, no chunk of metal is going to be able to either!
Muscle by muscle, she won control of her body back. She closed her eyes, the better to be able to concentrate, and fought the thing, oblivious to everything around her.
Finally, candlemarks later, or so it seemed—though the sun hadn’t moved enough for one candlemark, much less the eight or nine it should have taken for the fight—she sat stiffly in her saddle, the master of her own body again. She waited warily for the sword to try again, as her breath and Verenna’s steamed in the cold—and she sensed that the sword would try again, unless she could devise some way of ending the struggle here and now.
She stripped off one glove and placed her half-frozen hand on the hilt. Listen to me, you, she thought at the blade, and sensed a kind of stillness, as if it was listening, however reluctantly. Listen to me, and believe me. If you don’t stop this nonsense and leave me alone, and let me make my own decisions, I’ll drop you down the nearest well. I mean it. Having a blade that will protect me from magickers may be convenient, but damn if I‘m going to lose control of my life in return!
She sensed a dull, sudden heat, like far-off anger.
Look, you know what I’ve been thinking! I agree with your purpose, dammit! I’m even perfectly willing to go along with this agenda of helping women in trouble! But I am, by all that’s holy, going to do so on my terms. And you’re going to have one hell of a time helping women from the bottom of a well if you don’t go along with this.