The emerald eyes ran over his features, trying to place the memory of his face into the one she now knew so well. Though he had changed a great deal, there was a clear resemblance; it was the denial brought on by history that made it impossible to see before. And as her eyes took him in, they began to brim with tears. She struggled to form words, but they took a moment to come out.
“Why?” she asked, her voice coming out fragmented, broken. “Why didn’t you come back?”
His hands cupped her face again. “I couldn’t,” he said, tears welling in his own eyes. “I don’t even know how I got there in the first place. I was flung back into the Past for only one day’s time. One moment I was walking the road to Navarne, and then I was in Serendair. And after we met, I would have gladly stayed there forever with you, even though it meant dying, meant losing my whole world just like you did. I would have given it up in a heartbeat, because I had found the other half of my soul.
“I was incredibly excited that next morning, your birthday. I had made myself as presentable as possible, so your father would give his consent and allow me to marry you. I remember being nervous, and happy, but then, as inexplicably as before, I was back on the road to Navarne, back in this world.
“I almost went insane with grief. I looked for you endlessly, seeking out every First Generationer I could find, asking about you. And then Anwyn told me you had not come, and that made me realize it was too late, that you were dead, dead a thousand years or more, that you had not found MacQuieth, or any of the others from your time who could have saved you.
“My father lost patience, told me I had been dreaming, but I knew that wasn’t true, because I had the button, and had seen three drops of your blood on my cloak, from when we made love. And from that moment on I was like the coin; odd, not fitting with anything, worth very little, permanently lonely. There has been no one in my life since you, Emily, no one—except you, the woman I know as Rhapsody. Who could have measured up? My father trotted his whores past me, hoping to shake you out of my heart, but I left and went to sea, rather than betray the memory of the only thing in my life that I had ever held holy, that had ever mattered.
“And that’s all. I lived that way, even before the F’dor took my soul apart. I guess it had already been torn beyond recognition anyway by the loss of you. But now you’re here; gods, you have been here all along. Where did you come over? Did you land in Manosse, with the Second Fleet? Or did you go as a refugee to one of the lands nearer to the Island?” As the questions passed his lips, he noticed her face; she was struggling to keep from bursting into tears, trembling.
He pulled her quickly into his arms, caressing her hair. “Emily, Aria, everything is all right now. We’re together; everything is all right. Finally, for the first time, everything is all right.”
Violently she pushed away, scorching pain in her eyes. “It is most certainly not all right, Ashe. Nothing is all right. Nothing.”
His mouth opened in disbelief, then closed again. “Talk to me, Aria. Tell me what is in your heart.”
Rhapsody couldn’t speak. She looked down at her hands, clutching them until they turned white. One of Ashe’s hands closed gently over hers as the other came to rest on her face.
“Tell me, Aria, whatever it is. Tell me.”
“Well, first and foremost, I won’t know this tomorrow, Ashe. I won’t have any idea when the sun comes up that anything is different. I will go on with my life, with the same belief that you deserted me, that I misjudged you utterly, that you died when the Island was destroyed, or before. It is something I think about every day, Ashe, even now, every day. It makes me doubt myself, it makes me afraid to trust. Gods, you will leave me tomorrow, and I won’t know this. And I will believe that even the love I found with you here belongs to someone else now. Perhaps everything is all right for you, but for me, everything will be just as wrong as it was before, in fact, more so.”
She gave in to the tears. Ashe drew her into his arms and held her as she wept. “You’re right,” he said, kissing her ear after he spoke. “I’m going to get the pearl.”
Rhapsody sat up, pulling out of his embrace again. “What? Why?”
Ashe smiled at her, brushing the tears away with his knuckle. “Nothing, nothing in this world, is worth hurting you for one more second. You have carried too much pain for too long, Emily. I’m going to give this memory back to you. You deserve it more than anyone else deserves the selfish fulfillment of their stupid goals.” He started to rise, but she stopped him.
“What will happen to Llauron?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I care what happens to you.”
Rhapsody’s eyes were now dry, and radiating worry. “Well, I do know, and I think you do, too. If I am useless to Llauron as a herald, because I know the truth, if I refuse to immolate a man I know is still alive, then the plan will fail. And it is already too late to prevent the assassination, isn’t it? Lark’s plans are laid; Llauron will die for nothing, and there will be no chance for immortality. He will be gone, because I was too self-serving to wait to know something I have lived without the knowledge of for more than a millennium.” She sighed heavily.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said, finally using the name. “You couldn’t believe I’m selfish; well, here’s the proof. My whining almost caused you to let your own father die.”
“That’s hardly what happened.”
“That’s exactly what happened.” Rhapsody wiped the remnants of her tears out of her eyes with the hem of her dress. “But at least we caught it in time.”
Ashe regarded her with a sharp look. “What are you saying, Emily? You don’t want to keep the memory?”
She smiled at him. “You keep it for me, Sam. I can live without it a little longer.”
He took her in his arms and held her quietly for a moment. “Do you want to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“What happened to you? When I didn’t come back?”
“I don’t think you really want to know, Sam.”
“Your choice, Emily. I want to know everything I missed, everything that isn’t too painful for you to tell me.”
“So you wish to nullify our agreement? To talk about the Past?”
“Yes,” he said forcefully. “Up to now we have been keeping silent not only to spare ourselves the pain, but to protect the interests of our families, our friends. Blast them. There is nothing in this world, the next, or the last, that ever was or ever will be more important to me than you are. Nothing. Please, Emily; I want to know what happened, whatever it won’t hurt you to tell me, so that perhaps we can make sense of why it happened, and how.”
Rhapsody studied his face, lost in thought. After a few moments, he could see her eyes darken as she came to a decision. “Very well. I need to tell you this, Sam, and you need to hear it. It may make you reconsider things you think you’ve decided.”
He took her face in his hands and stared at her hard, trying to emphasize his words. “Nothing you could possibly say will make me change my mind about you, Rhapsody. Nothing.” He tried to use the tone she did when she spoke truly, as a Namer.
She recognized the attempt and smiled. “Why don’t you hear me out and then decide, Sam.”
“Nothing,” he repeated, almost testily.
Gently she pushed his hands away and rose, crossing the room to the corner by the fireplace. She picked up the paintings of her grandchildren and studied them, smiling after a moment. “Do you remember my recurring dream? The one I told you about that night?”