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“Then I will treat this like the honor that it is,” I told her solemnly.
Her shoulders slowly sank as some nervous energy she had passed, and she sighed. “Thank you, Val.”
“It is no matter,” I said, turning myself and the child back toward my plants, lying as well, because keeping her close was a very great matter indeed.
We stayed in the barn,pacing around the plants, me murmuring nonsense to the child, until the moon began to set, and Frenel started looking for a teat.
“Is it time to go back?” I said, sniffing him as he passed gas. “Where was there room for all of that inside you?” I teased, and crept back into Xelrim’s home, taking the stairs as quietly as possible, so that Shayla could drink the dregs of her sleep before taking him.
She’d left her door open for me, as if to help me do so—which meant that I was in her room, watching her by the moonlight streaming in through her window. Her hair was streaked out on her pillow, and her chest quietly rose and fell with each of her soft breaths.
I’d walked in here so many times while she was gone, always hoping to somehow catch her when I opened up the door.
Now shewasback—only everything had changed.
She wasn’t the same girl she was when she’d left me. She was far more shapely, there was Frenel, and all that had happened to her when she was alone.
The Shayla I once knew would never return.
I could either pout over the past like a boy, or step up to the moment like a man.
I pressed a kiss to Frenel’s head, and knelt to nestle him against her. Her eyelids fluttered open and she gave me a sleepy smile that was worth waiting four years for.
“See? He didn’t even get cold,” I said, as she curled him into one arm. “But he did get smelly. Are all babies stinky?”
She giggled softly, pulling him to her breast. “Yes. Just like all men. Go and get some sleep before breakfast.”
After that,and for the next month, I questioned nothing. I took my turn with Frenel most days and nights, and the exhaustion and worry that’d lined Shayla’s eyes lessened. Whatever she’d been scared of seem to have been pushed back.
She didn’t touch me again, though.
There were times when she was handing him over to me that our hands brushed, but it was never intentional, which I took to mean that what she wanted was my company and nothing more. And while it would’ve been a lie to pretend that I didn’t ache for her, I managed to keep my feelings to myself, only watching her when she wasn’t looking, and always leaving the room when she fed her child.
Together, the four of us fell into an easy rhythm, taking care of our small household and enjoying one another’s company.
Xelrim would’ve never admitted to being charmed by the child, but soon Shayla’s room was festooned by creations from the nearby reeds of anything that could’ve been twisted into use, baskets and cribs, all made solidly.
Whereas I tried using my own magic for a gift, and when that failed, fell to tools, finishing it on the eve of the same day that Xelrim announced he was going into town to trade.
He overburdened himself with objects he’d created, eyed me warily, saying “Remember my warning,” then opened a portal and disappeared through it.
“What warning?” Shayla asked me.
I shook my head. “Come to the barn and bring Frenel.”
Her eyes scanned my face, like she was trying to read me, then she went to get Frenel’s basket.
The barn wasa good quarter mile from the house we all lived in, equidistant between the river and the trees, surrounded by fields that had gone wild, and bisected by the rough road we were walking down.
“What’s in the barn?” Shayla asked, as I took the basket from her hand.
“A surprise.”
“For me?”
I stopped and turned to look at her. “Not...really?”
Her eyebrows rose. “For Frenel?” she guessed and laughed. “Then surely you can tellmewhat it is.”
