Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses) (24 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)
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“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice.
 
 
She gave a light laugh. She felt ridiculously happy. “The old woman I met last time I was here? She hurt herself and asked for me to come nurse her. I just arrived tonight. This morning when I woke up I had no idea where I would be by moonrise! But what are
you
doing here?”
 
 
He grinned. “Looking for you, of course. Thinking how much I enjoyed meeting you, and wishing you would come back, and wondering if I’d ever run into you again.” He shook his head. “I never expected to see you at the window.”
 
 
“Have you walked by
every
night since I’ve been gone?”
 
 
He looked a little self-conscious. “Not every night. Every day, though, probably, at one time or another.”
 
 
“The rest of your life must be very dull,” she said.
 
 
He gave a rather hollow laugh; the expression on his face made her think he was reviewing some recent incident that had been anything but boring. But before he could comment on that, she shifted position as she pulled away from him, and he glanced down at her feet.
 
 
“Where are your
shoes
?” he exclaimed, still keeping his voice quiet. “You shouldn’t be walking out here barefoot! In the dirt—and the horse droppings—and the
cold
.”
 
 
She laughed. “This isn’t cold. What kind of pathetic winters are you used to wherever you come from?”
 
 
He grinned, but still looked concerned. “Ghosenhall, and it gets plenty cold there,” he said. “But you can’t stand here barefoot. Let’s—here—let’s sit down and you can wrap your feet up.”
 
 
Wrap them in what?
she wondered, but that was quickly solved. He drew her to the side of the road, where a strip of grass looked inviting even in the dark, and they dropped down and made themselves comfortable. Then he stripped off his overshirt and proceeded to bundle it around her feet.
 
 
Laughing, she tried to pull away—“Justin! Don’t put your clothes on my dirty toes!”—but he dragged her knees across his lap and held them there with one hand, his other hand around her ankles. The set of his face was intractable. She was both touched and a little annoyed.
 
 
“You remind me of my brothers
so much
,” she informed him.
 
 
“I don’t think your brothers would allow you to wander around barefoot in the cold at night.”
 
 
“Well, there you’re wrong! Who do you think taught me to do it?” He just looked at her, and that made her laugh again. She put her arms behind her to brace herself. It actually felt rather nice to have his hands touching her—impersonally enough, through the layer of clothing, but warm for all that. It was a novel sensation to be fussed over by a man and not resent it highly. Rather, to find it flattering. “My brothers are night hunters,” she informed him. “They can move through the dark as easily as most people can move through the light. We used to play games when we were children—hiding from each other, or sneaking past a pretend campsite. When the whole family was together—dozens of children, all about the same age—we would stage these very complex feuds where we would have to attack each other under cover of night. No one ever caught Torrin. And I think Hayden only was taken captive two or three times. I wasn’t as good as they were, but I can make my way through the dark. And to sneak out of a house at night,” she summed up, “you have to take off your shoes.”
 
 
“You must be really close to your brothers.”
 
 
“To my cousins, too. To all of them. The way I grew up, nothing was more important than family. If someone needed something from you—an aunt’s second husband’s son by a former marriage—you gave it to him. You never turned your back on a family member. Which meant no one ever turned his back on you. If I needed something, even now, I would just have to raise my hand—” She lifted one arm, held it before her a moment, then put it behind her again to take her weight. “And brothers and cousins and uncles would be at my door.”
 
 
“Sounds wonderful.”
 
 
“Wonderful and oppressive,” she agreed. “Sometimes you don’t always want quite that much attention.”
 
 
“Really? I like the idea of raising a hand and having a whole contingent of brothers at my back.”
 
 
She studied his face in the dark. He had strong features, quick to show a smile or a sneer, but otherwise fairly watchful. Not giving much away. Not instinctively formed for trust. “And you’ve never had that?” she asked softly.
 
 
He considered. “I have that now. In a manner of speaking. I have friends who would come if I called—no matter why I called them or where I was. People who would not abandon me. I miss them.”
 
 
Her voice was so soft it was scarcely louder than a breath. “Did someone abandon you, Justin? Did your family?”
 
 
He looked at her, maybe trying to read her face the way she had read his. She wondered how much he would tell her, this man who clearly was not made for sharing secrets. “I never really had a family,” he said.
 
 
“Three sisters. You told me.”
 
 
A quick smile, instantly gone. “So you remember that.”
 
 
“Well, of course I do.”
 
 
“They weren’t around very long.”
 
 
She sat up, drawing her feet back toward her body so she could sit cross-legged beside him. As she made no move to uncover her feet, Justin allowed her to pull away. “What happened to them? What happened to
you
?”
 
 
He spoke with absolutely no inflection in his voice. “My mother was a whore in Ghosenhall. Four children by four nameless fathers. I was the youngest, and all my sisters were gone by the time my mother died. I was ten.” He shrugged. “A long time ago, it seems.”
 
 
Ellynor felt like she had been dropped in fire. Her skin was melting; her heart was ablaze. Her eyes had been scalded—no, that came from the sudden tears. “
Justin.
How did—but that is—you are—”
 
 
“Not a pretty tale,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “I don’t tell it to get your sympathy. Just so you know how different my own life has been.”
 
 
“But then—what happened to you? How did you—how did you
survive
?”
 
 
“Oh, for a while I lived on the street.” Another swift smile, this one a little devilish. “Where I learned some of my skill at fighting. I bet I could show your brothers a trick or two I learned during those days. Then I had some luck—met some people who took me in and trained me in a profession. Now I’m a soldier, and a good one. I don’t have family, but I have friends—friends who won’t fail me.”
 
 
“Friends you miss. You already said that,” Ellynor replied. “So why are you here, now, and not with them? They didn’t turn against you, did they?”
 
 
He hesitated for a long time, and she knew he was trying to decide how to answer her question without lying. She was intrigued both by the thought that he felt he had to lie, and the realization that he wanted to give her the truth. “They didn’t turn against me,” he said at last. “They know I’m here. They’ll come for me in a while.”
 
 
Which was the least helpful reply he could have given. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You have secrets, don’t you, Justin?” she said softly. “You’re in Neft for reasons you don’t want to reveal.”
 
 
He looked at her silently in the dark, weighing his answer, weighing her. “Everybody has secrets,” he said at last.
 
 
She swayed even closer, put a hand on his arm as if she could, through touch, discern the true composition of the man. “You’re not a bad man, Justin, are you?” she whispered.
 
 
“You aren’t cruel? You aren’t here to bring anyone to harm?”
 
 
Almost unconsciously, it seemed, he lifted his own hand to cover hers. “No,” he said instantly and with such conviction that she believed him. “That I can swear to you, Ellynor. I never lift my sword except in defense. I have my cause, but it’s virtuous—I believe that with all my heart. I am never violent just for the sake of violence. Or for personal gain. I am—you can—don’t be afraid of me.”
 
 
“I’m not. Oh, Justin, I’m not afraid. I just—I wanted to hear you say it.”
 
 
“I wish I could tell you my secrets, but they’re not mine,” he said. “Or at least the biggest one isn’t, and it affects all the other little ones.”
 
 
She was almost laughing now. She realized she was still touching him, so she casually withdrew her hand and folded it in her lap. “I have secrets, too,” she offered. “Big ones. And I can’t tell them, either.”
 
 
His face assumed a mock sternness. “And are you cruel? Will these secrets bring anyone else to harm?”
 
 
To her surprise—and, clearly, his consternation—her face suddenly crumpled with tears. He reached out for her, his eyes wide with concern, but she waved his hands away and drew her legs up to make a sort of barrier between them. Then she rested her cheek against her updrawn knees until she had composed herself again. Justin didn’t move, didn’t ask questions, but she had the feeling he would prevent her if she tried to simply get up and run back to the house.
 
 
Not because he was so curious to uncover the truth about her. But because he thought her tears meant she was deeply afraid, trapped, and endangered. And he was the sort of man who liked to confront danger and defeat it.
 
 
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment and lifted her face. She still kept her knees pulled up, her hands wrapped around her ankles. “That was stupid. I didn’t think I would start crying.”
 
 
“You’re afraid of something,” he said flatly. “The Lestra?”
 
 
“I’m a little afraid of the Lestra, but that’s not it,” she said. “I was—oh, Justin, don’t hate me. I was thinking that my secret is I shouldn’t be friends with you.”
 
 
Something flickered across his face and was quickly hidden.“You’re married? I didn’t think they allowed wives into the convent.”
 
 
“No! Of course I’m not married. It’s just that—my brothers, my family—” How to tell this without giving it all away? And what did it matter if he knew she was from the Lirrens? But she didn’t want him to know, somehow. Didn’t want him to have all the pieces. She did not have all the pieces about him, after all. “The men of my family are very protective, and they don’t like to see their women—spending time with other men—men that aren’t approved by the family, I mean. They would—you would—if Torrin saw me talking to you tonight, he—well, he—there would be a fight.”
 
 
Now Justin was wearing his most sardonic smile. “I think I can handle myself in a fight.”
 
 
She took a deep breath. “Yes. I’m sure you can. But I think— I feel that I—it’s not right that I’m sitting here talking to you, and putting you at risk, and you don’t even know you’re in danger. I shouldn’t be talking to you at all, and I know that. So it’s unkind of me to keep this secret. That’s what I was thinking.”
 
 
“I think you shouldn’t worry about me,” Justin said.
 
 
“I think you have no idea how angry my brothers can get.”
 
 
“If I say I’m not afraid, will you keep seeing me?” he asked.
 
 
“I shouldn’t.”
 
 
“But you want to?”
 
 
She was silent a moment. He waited. He wasn’t patient so much as stubborn, she thought. If silence didn’t produce the answer, she thought he might try other methods. “I want to,” she said at last. “I’ve never had a—a friend—who was outside the circle of my family. Someone who thought so differently from the people I know. It’s so intoxicating! No wonder I was thinking about you all last week. But I know that it’s a risky friendship, and I know it can’t continue—even if your secrets weren’t so great that they’d probably keep us apart anyway. I know that I should just go inside right now and not even look out my window again.” She gazed at him a moment, thinking how quickly she had come to like him, how sad she would be if she never saw his face again. “But I don’t want to.”

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