AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait until we get there.”
“You do realize he can’t speak yet?” she teased.
“You talk enough for the both of you,” I said, and she groaned, but kept an easy pace by my side.
When we arrived, I gave her the basket back to pull the barn doors open with a flourish. Early morning sun poured in through them, putting a spotlight on my newest creation. It was a knee-high rocking horse, carved from one solid piece of kaorak wood that I’d dragged into the barn by the dead of night.
I’d tried using my magic on it at first, but then gave up for expediency, working on it sometimes with Frenel lashed to my back, the way Shayla wore him on her front, as I shaped and sanded it into perfection.
“Val,” Shayla gasped. “You made this?” Her jaw slowly dropped as she set his basket down and bent to inspect it.
“With Frenel’s help even sometimes. He was the brains of the operation.”
She laughed again, looking up at me warmly. “I bet,” she said, then her eyes traced over me as her smile tensed. “And you didn’t use magic?”
I shook my head quickly. “Not a drop, no.”
A complicated shadow flowed across her face. “I can’t believe it, Val,” she said when she stood next, shaking her head as she turned away from me.
It didn’t look like she was joking. “Why not? It’s right there.” It was my turn to frown, and I reached to catch her wrist without thinking, to pull her back around to face me, which she did, but she didn’t look up. “Anything else he needs, just tell me, and I’ll make that, too.”
She sighed quietly. “You’re so literal sometimes. Of course I believe you.” I waited for her to go on as my stomach turned into a hive of bees. “I’vealwaysbelieved in you.”
I dared to let go of her wrist, taking hold of her shoulders instead. “If you did, then why did you—” I started asking, but as the words left my mouth, I realized the truth. “You left because of me.” She’d disappeared a few weeks after I’d been deemed “great,” which I so far, most assuredly, had not become. “Shayla—”
“I either shouldn’t have left, or I shouldn’t have come back here,” she said, her eyes brimming, stepping out of my grasp.
“Why? Because I was cursed by a lie?” My voice rose without meaning to. “That old mage didn’t know anything, Shay”—least of all my heart—but I did—“I’m madly in love with you.”
The words jumped out of my throat and squatted between us like an ugly toad, and as I watched her hear them, I wished with all my being that I could somehow scoop them up and swallow them down.
“I know, Val,” she whispered, then reached up and put a gentle hand against the scruff of the morning beard I hadn’t shaved off.
My jaw tensed beneath her palm. Everything in me was flushed and burning. Humiliation warred with defeat, mixed with a certain elated satisfaction that at least I’d finallysaid something, even if it was a terrific error, rather than just letting the knowledge of how I felt about her slowly crush me to a pulp.
“And I love you too,” she said.
I stared at her, suddenly bolted to the ground. “I—I don’t understand,” I finally stammered out.
“I know.” The corners of her lips rose in a sorrowful smile. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t you—” I started to ask, but she stepped forward and rocked up on her toes, till her lips brushed mine.
I’d thought about the quick kiss she’d given me after leaving the carriage a thousand times—I wrapped my arms around her to keep here there, quickly, same as I should’ve then, same as I would have four years ago, if only I’d known.
She didn’t fight me—not that I wanted her to—but I was so used to thinking I needed to trap her, I was surprised by her acquiescence.
But a moment later one of my hands was in her hair, and my fears of Xelrim and whatever shield of honor I’d been wielding in Frenel’s father’s defense disappeared as her tongue slipped past mine.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was filled with an unholy urge to do it.
I tilted my mouth to more easily fit hers, and held her so close there was no way she couldn’t feel my heat against her, and for her part, she melted against me, leaning into me like a cat, running her arms around my neck, as her mouth kept drinking mine.
Nothing about the moment made sense—but I wasn’t about to let it go. I lifted my head up only the smallest amount to breathe words across her lips. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” she whispered back, and I picked her up without thinking, walking the both of us to the nearest table. I set her on the edge, swept an arm behind her, knocking over all sorts of potted plants with a crash, and then came for her mouth again, as her legs wound behind my back.
We stood there for a long time, swaying, each of us taking turns tasting the other, equal in our passion, and then her hands reached for the laces of my pants. I moaned into her mouth as she pushed her fingers into the loosened fabric and met my hungry root there.
