A Little Fate (17 page)

“Will you come back, my lady?”

“I will. But now you rest, and dream your story. Later, I'll bring you a new book.”

“Be well, young bard.” Kylar took Deirdre's hand to lead her out.

“You rose early,” he commented.

“There's much to be done.”

“I find myself jealous of a ten-year-old boy.”

“Nearly twelve is Phelan. He's small for his age.”

“Regardless, you didn't sit and feed me broth or kiss my brow when I was well enough to sit up on my own.”

“You were not so sweet-natured a patient.”

“I would be now.” He kissed her, surprised that she didn't
flush and flutter as females were wont to do. Instead she answered his lips with a reckless passion that stirred his appetite. “Put me to bed, and I'll show you.”

She laughed and nudged him back. “That will have to wait. I have duties.”

“I'll help you.”

Her face softened. “You have helped me already. But come. I'll give you work.”

T
HERE
was no lack of work. The prince of Mrydon found himself tending goats and chickens. Shoveling manure, hauling endless buckets of snow to a low fire, carting precious wood to a communal pile.

The first day he labored he tired so quickly that it scored his pride. On the second, muscles that had gone unused during his recovery ached continually.

But the discomfort had the benefit of Deirdre rubbing him everywhere with one of her balms. And made the ensuing loving both merry and slippery.

She was a joy in bed, and he saw none of the sadness in her eyes there. Her laughter, the sound he'd longed to hear, came often.

He grew to know her people and was surprised and impressed by the lack of bitterness in them. He thought them more like a family, and though some were lazy, some grim, they shouldered together. They knew, he realized, that the survival of the whole depended on each.

That, he thought, was another of Deirdre's gifts. Her people held the will to go on, day after day, because their lady did. He couldn't imagine his own soldiers bearing
the hardships and the tedium with half as much courage.

He came upon her in her garden. Though the planting and maintenance there was divided, as all chores were in Rose Castle, he knew she often chose to work or walk there alone.

She did so now, carefully watering her plantings with snowmelt.

“Your goat herd has increased by one.” He glanced down at his stained tunic. “It's the first such birthing I've attended.”

Deirdre straightened, eased her back. “The kid and the she-goat are well?”

“Well and fine, yes.”

“Why wasn't I called?”

“There was no need. Here, let me.” He took the spouted bucket from her. “Your people work hard, Deirdre, but none as hard as their queen.”

“The garden is a pleasure to me.”

“So I've seen.” He glanced up at the wide dome. “A clever device.”

“My grandfather's doing.” Since he was watering, she knelt and began to harvest turnips. “He inherited a love for gardening from his mother, I'm told. It was she who designed and planted the rose garden. I'm named for her. When he was a young man, he traveled, and he studied with engineers and scientists and learned much. I think he was a great man.”

“I've heard of him, though I thought it all legend.” Kylar looked back at her as she placed turnips in a sack. “It's said he was a sorcerer.”

Her lips curved a little. “Perhaps. Magic may come through the blood. I don't know. I do know he gathered many of the books in the library, and built this dome for hismother when she was very old. Here she could start seedlings before the planting time and grow the flowers she loved, even in the cold. It must have given her great pleasure to work here when her roses and other flowers were dormant with winter.”

She sat back on her heels, looked over her rows and beyond to the sad and spindly daisies she prized like rubies.
“I wonder if somehow he knew that his gift to his mother would one day save his people from starvation.”

“You run low on fuel.”

“Yes. The men will cut another tree in a few days.” It always pained her to order it. For each tree cut meant one fewer left. Though the forest was thick and vast, without new growth there would someday be no more.

“Deirdre, how long can you go on this way?”

“As long as we must.”

“It's not enough.” Temper that he hadn't realized was building inside him burst out. He cast the bucket aside and grabbed her hands.

She'd been waiting for this. Through the joy, through the sweetness, she'd known the storm would come. The storm that would end the time out of time. He was healed now, and a warrior prince, so healed, could not abide monotony.

“It's enough,” she said calmly, “because it's what we have.”

“For how much longer?” he demanded. “Ten years? Fifty?”

“For as long as there is.”

Though she tried to pull away, he turned her hands over. “You work them raw, haul buckets like a milkmaid.”

“Should I sit on my throne with soft white hands folded and let my people work?”

“There are other choices.”

“Not for me.”

“Come with me.” He gripped her arms now, tight, firm, as if he held his own life.

Oh, she'd dreamed of it, in her most secret heart. Riding off with him, flying through the forest and away to beyond. Toward the sun, the green, the flowers.

Into summer.

“I can't. You know I can't.”

“We'll find the way out. When we're home, I'll gather men, horses, provisions. I'll come back for your people. I swear it to you.”

“You'll find the way out.” She laid her hands on his chest,
over the thunder of his heart. “I believe it. If I didn't I would have you chained before I'd allow you to leave. I won't risk your death. But the way back. . .” She shook her head, turned away from him when his grip relaxed.

“You don't believe I'll come back.”

She closed her eyes because she didn't believe it, not fully. How could he turn his back on the sun and risk everything to travel here again for what he'd known for only a few weeks? “Even if you tried, there's no certainty you'd find us again. Your coming was a miracle. Your safe passage home will be another. I don't ask for three in one lifetime.”

She drew herself up. “I won't ask for your life, nor will I accept it. I will send a man with you—my best, my strongest—if you will take him. If you will give him good horses, and provisions, I will send others if the gods show him the way back again.”

“But you won't leave.”

“I'm bound to stay, as you are bound to go.” She turned back, and though tears stung her throat, her eyes were dry. “It's said that if I leave here while winter holds this place, Rose Castle will vanish from sight, and all within will be trapped for eternity.”

“That's nonsense.”

“Can you say that?” She gestured to the white sky above the dome. “Can you be sure of it? I am queen of this world, and I am prisoner.”

“Then bid me stay. You've only to ask it of me.”

“I won't. And you can't. First, you're destined to be king. It is your fate, and I have seen the crown you'll wear inside your own mind and heart. And more, your family would grieve and your people mourn. With that on your conscience, the gift we found together would be forever tainted. One day you would go in any case.”

“So little faith in me. I ask you this: Do you love me?”

Her eyes filled, sheened, but the tears did not fall. “I care for you. You brought light inside me.”

“ ‘Care' is a weak word. Do you love me?”

“My heart is frozen. I have no love to give.”

“That is the first lie you've told me. I've seen you cuddle
a fretful babe in your arms, risk your life to save a small boy.”

“That is a different matter.”

“I've been inside you.” Frustrated fury ran over his face. “I've seen your eyes as you opened to me.”

She began to tremble. “Passion is not love. Surely my father had passion for my mother, for her sister. But love he had for neither. I care for you. I desire you. That is all I have to give. The gift of a heart, woman to man, has doomed me.”

“So because your father was feckless, your mother foolish, and your aunt vindictive, you close yourself off from the only true warmth there is?”

“I can't give what I don't have.”

“Then take this, Deirdre of the Sea of Ice. I love you, and I will never love another. I leave tomorrow. I ask you again, come with me.”

“I can't. I can't,” she repeated, taking his arm. “I beg you. Our time is so short, let us not have this chill between us. I've given you more than ever I gave a man. I pledge to you now there will never be another. Let it be enough.”

“It isn't enough. If you loved, you'd know that.” One hand gripped the hilt of his sword as if he would draw it and fight what stood between them. Instead, he stepped back from her. “You make your own prison, my lady,” he said, and left her.

Alone, Deirdre nearly sank to her knees. But despair, she thought, would solve no more than Kylar's bright sword would. So she picked up the pail.

“Why didn't you tell him?”

Deirdre jolted, nearly splashing water over the rim. “You have no right to listen to private words, Orna.”

Ignoring the stiff tone, Orna came forward to heft the bag of turnips. “Hasn't he the right to know what may break the spell?”

“No.” She said it fiercely. “His choices, his actions must be his own. He is entitled to that. He won't be influenced by a sense of honor, for his honor runs through him like his blood. I am no damsel who needs rescuing by a man.”

“You are a woman who is loved by one.”

“Men love many women.”

“By the blood, child! Will you let those who made you ruin you?”

“Should I give my heart, take his, at the risk of sacrificing all who depend on me?”

“It doesn't have to be that way. The curse—”

“I don't know love.” When she whirled around, her face was bright with temper. “How can I trust what I don't know? She who bore me couldn't love me. He who made me never even looked on my face. I know duty, and I know the tenderness I feel for you and my people. I know joy and sadness. And I know fear.”

“It's fear that traps you.”

“Haven't I the right to fear?” Deirdre demanded. “When I hold lives in my hands, day and night? I cannot leave here.”

“No, you cannot leave here.” The undeniable truth of that broke Orna's heart. “But you can love.”

“And loving, risk trapping him in this place. This cold place. Harsh payment for what he's given me. No, he leaves on the morrow, and what will be will be.”

“And if you're with child?”

“I pray I am, for it is my duty.” Her shoulders slumped. “I fear I am, for then I will have imprisoned his child, our child, here.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I dreamed of a child, Orna, nursing at my breast and watching me with my lover's eyes, and what moved through me was so fierce and strong. The woman I am would ride away with him to save what grows inside me. The queen cannot. You will not speak of this to him, or anyone.”

“No, my lady.”

Deirdre nodded. “Send Dilys to me, and see that provisions are set aside for two men. They will have a long and difficult journey. I await Dilys in the parlor.”

She set the bucket aside and walked quickly away.

Before going inside, Orna hurried through the archway and into the rose garden.

When she saw that the tiny leaf she'd watched unfurl from a single green bud was withering, she wept.

E
VEN
pride couldn't stop her from going to him. When time was so short there was no room for pride in her world. She brought him gifts she hoped he would accept.

And she brought him herself.

“Kylar.” She waited at his chamber door until he turned from the window where he stared out at the dark night. So handsome, she thought, her dark prince. “Would you speak with me?”

“I'm trying to understand you.”

That alone, that he would try, lightened her heart. “I wish you could.” She came forward and laid what she carried on the chest by his bed. “I've brought you a cloak, since yours was ruined. It was my grandfather's, and with its lining of fur is warmer than what you had. It befits a prince. And this brooch that was his. Will you take it?”

He crossed to her, picked up the gold brooch with its carved rose. “Why do you give it to me?”

“Because I treasure it.” She lifted a hand, closed it over his on the brooch. “You think I don't cherish what you've given me, what you've been to me. I can't let you
leave believing that. I can't bear the thought of you going when there's anger and hard words between us.”

There was a storm in his eyes as they met hers. “I could take you from here, whether you're willing or not. No one could stop me.”

“I would not allow it, nor would my people.”

He stepped closer, and circled her throat with his hand with just enough force that the pulse against his palm fluttered with fear. “No one could stop me.” His free hand clamped over hers before she could draw her dagger. “Not even you.”

“I would never forgive you for it. Nor lie willingly with you again. Anger makes you think of using force as an answer. You know it's not.”

“How can you be so calm, and so sure, Deirdre?”

“I'm sure of nothing. And I am not calm. I want to go with you. I want to run and never look back, to live with you in the sunlight. To once smell the grass, to breathe the summer. Once,” she said in a fierce whisper. “And what would that make me?”

“My wife.”

The hand under his trembled, then steadied before she drew it away. “You honor me, but I will never marry.”

“Because of who made you, how you were made?” He took her by the shoulders now so that their gazes locked. “Can you be so wise, so warm, Deirdre, and at the same time so cold and closed?”

“I will never marry because my most sacred trust is to do no harm. If I were to take a husband, he would be king. I would share the welfare of all my people with him. This is a heavy burden.”

“Do you think I would shirk it?”

“I don't, no. I've been inside your mind and heart. You keep your promises, Kylar, even if they harm you.”

“So you spurn me to save me?”

“Spurn you? I have lain with you. I have shared with you my body, my mind, as I have never shared with another. Will never share again in my lifetime. If I take your
vow and keep you here, if you keep your vow and stay, how many will be harmed? What destinies would we alter if you did not take your place as king in your own land? And if I went with you, my people would lose hope. They would have no one to look to for guidance. No one to heal them. There is no one here to take my place.”

She thought of the child she knew grew inside her.

“I accept that you must go, and honor you for it,” she said. “Why can't you accept that I must stay?”

“You see only black and white.”

“I
know
only black and white.” Her voice turned desperate now, with a pleading he'd never heard from her. “My life, the whole of it, has been here. And one single purpose was taught to me. To keep my people alive and well. I've done this as best I can.”

“No one could have done better.”

“But it isn't finished. You want to understand me?” Now she moved to the window, pulled the hangings over the black glass to shut out the dark and the cold. “When I was a babe, my mother gave me to Orna. I never remember my mother's arms around me. She was kind, but she couldn't love me. I have my father's eyes, and looking at me caused her pain. I felt that pain.”

She pressed her hands to her heart. “I felt it inside me, the hurt and the longing and the despair. So I closed myself off from it. Hadn't I the right?”

There was no room for anger in him now. “She had no right to turn from you.”

“She did turn from me, and that can't be changed. I was tended well, and taught. I had duties, and I had playmates. And once, when I was very young there were dogs. They died off, one by one. When the last . . . his name was Griffen—a foolish name for a dog, I suppose. He was very old, and I couldn't heal him. When he died, it broke something in me. That's foolish, too, isn't it, to be shattered by the death of a dog.”

“No. You loved him.”

“Oh, I did.” She sat now, with a weary sigh. “So much love I had for that old hound. And so much fury when I lost
him. I was mad with grief and tried to destroy the ice rose. I thought if I could chop it down, hack it to bits, all this would end. Somehow it would end, for even death could never be so bleak. But a sword is nothing against magic. My mother sent for me. There would be loss, she told me. I had to accept it. I had duties, and the most vital was to care for my people. To put their well-being above my own. She was right.”

“As a queen,” Kylar agreed. “But not as a mother.”

“How could she give what she didn't have? I realize now, with her bond with the animals, she must have felt grief as I did for the loss. She
was
grief, my mother. I watched her pine and yearn for the man who'd ruined her. Even as she died, she wept for him. His deceit, his selfishness stole the color and warmth from her life, and doomed her and her people to eternal winter. Yet she died loving him, and I vowed that nothing and no one would ever rule my heart. It is trapped inside me, as frozen as the rose in the tower of ice outside this window. If it were free, Kylar, I would give it to you.”

“You trap yourself. It's not a sword that will cut through the ice. It's love.”

“What I have is yours. I wish it could be more. If I were not queen, I would go with you on the morrow. I would trust you to take me to beyond, or would die fighting to get there with you. But I can't go, and you can't stay. Kylar, I saw your mother's face.”

“My mother?”

“In your mind, your heart, when I healed you. I would have given anything, anything, to have seen such love and pride for me in the eyes of the one who bore me. You can't let her grieve for a son who still lives.”

Guilt clawed at him. “She would want me happy.”

“I believe she would. But if you stay, she will never know what became of you. Whatever you want for yourself, you have too much inside you for her to leave her not knowing. And too much honor to turn away from your duties to your family and your own land.”

His fists clenched. She had, with the skill of a soldier, outflanked him. “Does it always come to duty?”

“We're born what we're born, Kylar. Neither you nor I could live well or happy if we cast off our duty.”

“I would rather face a battle without sword or shield than leave you.”

“We've been given these weeks. If I ask you for one more night, will you turn me away?”

“No.” He reached for her hand. “I won't turn you away.”

 

H
E
loved her tenderly, then fiercely. And at last, when dawn trembled to life, he loved her desperately. When the night was over, she didn't cling, nor did she weep. A part of him wished she would do both. But the woman he loved was strong, and helped him prepare for his journey without tears.

“There are rations for two weeks.” She prayed it would be enough. “Take whatever you need from the forest.” As he cinched the saddle on his horse, Deirdre slipped a hand under his cloak, laid it on his side.

And he moved away. “No.” More than once during the night, she'd tried to explore his healing wound. “If I have pain, it's mine. I won't have it be yours. Not again.”

“You're stubborn.”

“I bow before you, my lady. The queen of willful.”

She managed a smile and laid a hand on the arm of the man she'd chosen to guide the prince. “Dilys. You are Prince Kylar's man now.”

He was young, tall as a tree and broad of shoulder. “My lady, I am the queen's man.”

This time she touched his face. They had grown up together, and once had romped as children. “Your queen asks that you pledge now your loyalty, your fealty, and your life to Prince Kylar.”

He knelt in the deep and crusted snow. “If it is your wish, my queen, I so pledge.”

She drew a ring from her finger, pressed it into his hand. “Live.” She bent to kiss both his cheeks. “And if you cannot return—”

“My lady.”

“If you cannot,” she continued, lifting his head so their gazes met, “know you have my blessing, and my wish for your happiness. Keep the prince safe,” she whispered. “Do not leave him until he's safe. It is the last I will ever ask of you.”

She stepped back. “Kylar, prince of Mrydon, we wish you safe journey.”

He took the hand she offered. “Deirdre, queen of the Sea of Ice, my thanks for your hospitality, and my good wishes to you and your people.” But he didn't release her hand. Instead, he took a ring of his own and slid it onto her finger. “I pledge to you my heart.”

“Kylar—”

“I pledge to you my life.” And before the people gathered in the courtyard, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, long and deep. “Ask me now, one thing. Anything.”

“I will ask you this. When you're safe again, when you find summer, pluck the first rose you see. And think of me. I will know, and be content.”

Even now, he thought, she would not ask him to come back for her. He touched a hand to the brooch pinned to his cloak. “Every rose I see is you.” He vaulted onto his horse. “I will come back.”

He spurred his horse toward the archway with Dilys trotting beside him. The crowd rushed after them, calling, cheering. Unable to resist, Deirdre climbed to the battlements, stood in the slow drift of snow and watched him ride away from her.

His mount's hooves rang on the ice, and his black cloak snapped in the frigid wind. Then he whirled his horse, and reared high.

“I will come back!” he shouted.

When his voice echoed back to her, over her, she nearly believed it. She stood, her red cloak drawn tight, until he disappeared into the forest.

Alone, her legs trembling, she made her way down to the rose garden. There was a burning inside her chest, and an ache deep, deep within her belly. When her vision
blurred, she stopped to catch her breath. With a kind of dull surprise she reached up to touch her cheeks and found them wet.

Tears, she thought. After so many years. The burning inside her chest became a throbbing. So. She closed her eyes and stumbled forward. So, the frozen chamber that trapped her heart could melt after all. And, melting, bring tears.

Bring a pain that was like what came with healing.

She collapsed at the foot of the great ice rose, buried her face in her hands.

“I love.” She sobbed now, rocking herself for comfort. “I love him with all I am or will ever be. And it hurts. How cruel to show me this, to bring me this. How bitter your heart must have been to drape cold over what should be warmth. But you did not love. I know that now.”

Steadying as best she could, she turned her face up to the dull sky. “Even my mother did not love, for she willed him back with every breath. I love, and I wish the one who has my heart safe, and whole and warm. For I would not wish this barren life on him. I'll know when he feels the sun and plucks the rose. And I will be content.”

She laid a hand on her heart, on her belly. “Your cold magic can't touch what's inside me now.”

And drawing herself up, turning away, she didn't see the delicate leaf struggling to live on a tiny green bud.

 

T
HE
world was wild, and the air itself roared like wolves. The storm sprang up like a demon, hurling ice and snow like frozen arrows. Night fell so fast that there was barely time to gather branches for fuel.

Wrapped in his cloak, Kylar brooded into the fire. The trees were thick here, tall as giants, dead as stones. They had gone beyond where Deirdre harvested trees and into what was called the Forgotten.

“When the storm passes, can you find your way back from here?” Kylar demanded. Though they sat close to warm each other, he was forced to shout to be heard over the screaming storm.

Dilys's eyes, all that showed beneath the cloak and hood, blinked once. “Yes, my lord.”

“Then when travel is possible again, you'll go back to Rose Castle.”

“No, my lord.”

It took Kylar a moment. “You will do as I bid. You have pledged your obedience to me.”

“My queen charged me to see you safe. It was the last she said to me. I will see you safe, my lord.”

“I'll travel more quickly without you.”

“I don't think this is so,” Dilys said in his slow and thoughtful way. “I will see you home, my lord. You cannot go back to her until you have reached home. My lady needs you to come back to her.”

“She doesn't believe I will. Why do you?”

“Because you are meant to. You must sleep now. The road ahead is longer than the road behind.”

The storm raged for hours. It was still dark, still brutal when Kylar awoke. Snow covered him, turning his hair and cloak white, and even the fur did little to fight the canny cold.

He moved silently to his horse. It would take, he knew, minutes only to move far enough from camp that his trail would be lost. In such a hellish world, you could stand all but shoulder to shoulder with another and not see him beside you.