The woods were silent but for the sound of Brin and Havilar’s panting breaths.
Havilar eased herself up onto her feet, surveying the monster-well and truly dead. Well and truly dead by her hand. “Gods,” she said. “Gods! That was fantastic!” She thrust her glaive skyward. “Ha! — oof!”
Brin caught her around the middle and squeezed her tight enough that her ribs spasmed. “Never, never do that again!” he shouted. “Watching Gods-you could have been hurt!”
“What? Why?”
“You’re not invincible!”
Havilar didn’t want to push him away, but that was too much. “I killed it. I’m invincible enough for a flying lamprey monster.”
“Veserab,” Brin said. He shook his head. “Don’t. Please. I can’t just stand there and. . I lost you once already, I can’t do it again.”
Havilar felt her face grow hot, unsure of what to say-it was more, so much more, than he’d uttered the entire trip, but none of it was right. “I’m fine,” she said, and tentatively brushed a chunk of veserab off his shoulder. “I know you’re thinking-”
“You don’t know, all right?” he said fiercely. “You don’t know what it’s like. You had your share of horrors, but you didn’t get this one-you didn’t have to face the fact that I was gone and you couldn’t get me back. Maybe you would have dealt with it better, or been braver, or got to a place where you didn’t care, but I didn’t. And if you’re going to start barreling around, throwing yourself into the clutches of monsters. .” He shook his head again, as if he were trying to shake away the sudden emotion that grabbed at his voice. “You can’t ask me to just duck.”
“Well,” Havilar said, “you didn’t just duck. You pinned the tail-that was really quick and clever.”
Brin gave her half a smile. “You hardly needed it, I suppose.”
“I needed it,” Havilar admitted. “But you needed me too.” She smiled-and she felt a little more like herself again. “And I killed it.”
He looked over the creature’s corpse. “We must be near. Only Shadovar ride them. Unless there’s some Shadowfell portal around here, it must belong to the Netherese camp.” He turned to Havilar again. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Wonderful,” she said, unable to suppress her grin. “Except for the rib.”
“Broken?”
She shook her head. “Maybe.” She stretched up and winced as the twang of pain hit her again. “Or just sprained.”
“Bad enough.”
She shut her eyes and smiled. “It was worth it.”
Brin shook his head. “Here.” He set his hands around her battered ribs, one just under her breast and the other in the middle of her back. He murmured the prayer to Torm, but Havilar didn’t hear a word of it. When the sound of a whetstone ringing came and the injury faded, there was still only the feeling of Brin’s hands encircling her. He wouldn’t look at her. But then, he didn’t let her go.
You killed it, she thought. You took the glaive back.
You’re out of excuses.
“Brin, I love you,” she said, feeling as torn open as the veserab. There was no hiding the declaration, no smothering it anymore with “wait until” and “not yet.” It wasn’t something you sat on, after all. “I love you,” she said again. “Still. And that’s. . Maybe that’s not all right, maybe you have all those princesses, and maybe you don’t want me. But you should know. I love you.”
He didn’t say a word, for so long. But he didn’t let her go either.
“There is not a thing in my life,” he finally said, “that I regret like I do not telling you how much I loved you then. I was scared, and I was stupid, and if I’d known she was going to take you from me. .” He swallowed hard. “I loved you, Havi. I should have said it.” He pulled her nearer. “I love you still.”
He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. And it didn’t matter that her hands were still clumsy or that they were both covered in gore or that the ground was cold and hard: he still loved her.
Chapter Twenty
26 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks
Havilar woke to the sun streaming through a low break in the clouds, through the gap in the trees. Every bit of her was sore, but that, too, was worth it. She smiled to herself. She reached for Brin, but found him already dressed and stirring up the fire under a cook pot. Her clothes were thrown over a nearby tree’s low branches. The smell of the veserab was a faint mustiness on the cold air, almost hidden in the woodsmoke.
Brin stared into the empty air, still looking sad and distant. Like there was a cloud over him, keeping out the sun and turning everything dark again.
“Good morning,” Havilar said after another moment. He turned to her, and the cloud over him lifted. He smiled, and something similarly cloudy lifted off Havilar.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Well enough.” Havilar smiled, feeling suddenly shy. She nodded at the pot. “What’s for morningfeast?”
Brin grinned. “Bathwater. There’s a little waterfall near here, but it’s basically flowing ice. I figured this would be nicer for you.”
Havilar wrapped her cloak around herself and went to sit beside him, not saying that she was pretty used to washing in cold streams. It was too nice of him. She leaned against him.
“How long do you think we have before they find us?”
“Hopefully, we get a little more time,” Brin said. He slipped an arm around her, over the cloak, and drew her close, nuzzling her behind the ear. “If a godsbedamned devil shows up now, I swear to every Watching God. .”
Havilar giggled. “Which is worse right now? A devil or Mehen?”
“A fair point,” Brin said, but he didn’t stop. “I suppose you ought to put some clothes on.”
“I suppose. When I’m ready,” Havilar said, arranging her cloak over her knees. “You’ve had a lot more. . practice, haven’t you?”
Brin chuckled softly. “A little less clumsy, yes?”
Havilar wet her mouth. “How. . much practice?”
He pulled back, far enough to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t really keep track of the times.”
“More than one girl?”
He seemed to search her face. “Yes,” he said.
A weight lifted off her chest. If it had just been one girl for all those years, then he was surely in love with someone else and Lorcan was right, it was all going to end badly. But it wasn’t. “More than a hundred?” she asked.
Brin burst out laughing. “Do you think I became a heartwarder while you were gone? Quit eating and sleeping? Gods.”
Havilar crossed her legs over, pulling herself tighter in. “I don’t know.”
His expression softened and he pulled her close again. “Hey, sorry. It’s three,” he said. “Just three.”
Three-why was that worse than “more than one, less than a hundred”? Havilar shifted. “Do you. . Did you love them?”
Brin hesitated. “I tried to. I thought I could let go of you. I thought I had to.”
“Did you?”
He rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed. “What do you think?”
Havilar bit her lip. She thought it was still too lucky to believe. She thought it was still too wonderful for there not to be some secret trap nestled in the middle of it that she hadn’t found yet. She still wondered why he looked so troubled when he thought she wasn’t looking.
Havilar considered the water, still working toward steaming. “What were you thinking of before?” she asked. “While I was sleeping? You looked awfully unhappy.”
“Court things,” he said, brushing her hair back. “Cormyr’s mired, badly.” He kissed her jaw. “As I said, I probably shouldn’t have left. And before. . all I wanted was to be sure you were all right. Not send you running because you were already completely overwhelmed by everything under the sun, and suddenly here I am, asking you how you feel about me.” A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “For all I knew, you wanted to be away from everyone. I couldn’t make that harder.”