Silver Eve (31 page)

HE WAS STANDING
a little behind me. Whole, unwounded, and wearing the same clothes as when I'd last seen him, a cambric shirt and dark trousers. They were the clothes I'd dressed him in for burial. I stared, eyes my only anchor. I was falling, spiraling somewhere, I was sure, even if I'd not moved.

“Are you a dream?” I asked, maybe in a whisper, or maybe not at all. I fought the dizziness, fumbled my way to standing—the willow plaits were spilling from my lap; I was stepping to him, throat-choked and breathless. But then I stopped. Raif's expression was so solemn, uninviting.

I reached out my hand, uncertain. “Do I truly see you?”

“You see me.”

He remained where he was, the space yawning wider between us. My hand fell back at my side, useless. I should be wild with happiness, but his face, his distance was catching the feeling, squeezing my heart with it. And then I could only ask, “How are you here?”

“You, Evie,” he said softly. “You brought me.”

I shook my head.

Raif did not argue; he rarely would. He simply shifted his gaze, looked about. “A pretty place. The little cottages, this grove.”

“It's beautiful.” My voice was husky.

Raif caught my gaze again, his eyes sad. This seemed all wrong. We were awkward. Strangers. “Evie,” he said softly, “don't do this.”

“Do this?” I echoed, and my fingers, disconnected, were somehow gesturing at the braids of willow. “It's for Lark.”

He watched me; those eyes making me ache, and then I was somehow defending: “I'm saving her, Raif. I found the White Healer—he's showing me how.” I told him this as if he'd been with me all along, as if he knew the story. Or maybe I was challenging him to know it; I was no longer looking on his sudden appearance in wonder…for it wasn't quite wonder anymore, but doubt.

Raif said, “What is this Healer?”

What,
not
who.
I frowned. “I don't remember his name.” What if Raif's appearance was meant as another distraction, my own challenge?
Attention to task
—what I was supposed to be doing.

“Evie.” Raif was softly insistent. “You never asked it.”

“Why? Why does it matter? Look at them, I'm nearly done—I'm healing Lark. We'll go to Castle Tarnec, return the amulet. Then we'll come back here where it's safe and sound…and beautiful.” I was protesting, trying to prove my intentions. I should return to the cottage. I bent to pick up the plaits.

The faintest smile lightened Raif's voice. “We.”

I gave a tiny nod. There was silence in response. And then the plaits and the White Healer fell back in significance, for I could not let Raif be so slighted. I straightened, meeting his eyes once more. They were no longer sad but warm. Kind. It hurt to hurt him.

And he said it since I could not: “You love another.”

The grove was so quiet. The withering trees so very dark and still. I nodded again. The barest motion.

“Evie,” Raif said gently. “He does not belong here.”

“I don't understand.”

“Yes, you do,” he whispered. “This is not the Rider's place. This is where I belong.”

“Don't.” I stopped him. “
Please.
Don't.” Sorrow was filling my throat. I was catching breaths like hiccups. “You
gave
me leave.”

“But you did not leave.”

“Not true! I love Laurent!” Painful silence—I shut my eyes and tried to say it evenly: “You died, Raif. I had to leave you.” Then I shook my head. “Nay. You left me.”

And suddenly the memory of losing Raif welled up, tearing into my body with needles of want. “You left. You let me go!” My hands pressed against my cheeks, my temples, trying to push back the hurt and longing, but it came out anyway. “It was supposed to be so sweet, our life! It was supposed to be unharmed! The cottage by the orchard where the apple blossoms drift and sprinkle the thatch like snow, Grandmama, and Lark, and market day, and happy babies—and you coming home to me each night.”

“Evie…” His voice bared his own regrets. “ 'Tis as you say: that is the life I belong to, not the Rider. That life, that time is gone—and that is not
this
place.”

“But it can be,” I whispered, desolate.

“Open your eyes, sweet girl. You can neither bring those days back nor force another into that picture.”

“No!” It sounded so loud. “Laurent told me he was happy here! There is nothing forced.”

“This is
your
dream, Evie. Wake up.
Think.
Some part of you knows something's wrong—you've brought me back because you want the truth.”

I slumped down on my knees. “Truth for what?” I asked hoarsely.

Raif smiled—the old smile, the one I used to fall asleep picturing was meant for me. The ache of loss burned through my chest, stealing breath, purpose. He said, “Do you know what I love about you? How curious you were about everything. You would not just look at the apple blossoms; you would want to know why they shaded from pink to white. How the mordant fixed Semel Lewen's dyes.” He looked at me keenly, then looked at my hands. “You must make your own choices. I can only warn you to see what is, not what you want.” He put out a finger to almost touch the white little bit of my knuckle, then dropped it, whispering, “Where is your curiosity now, Evie Carew?”

I looked down at my hands too. They were pale and clean—as they should be. “My curiosity brought this upon us,” I said, husky. “I'm here because I have to fix it.”

“If curiosity brought you here, then yearning makes you stay.”

Where are you weak, young girl? They will strike you where you are weak….Words from a memory I couldn't place.

“Yearning, Evie,” Raif said. “Do you not wonder why this is all just as you wish? The pretty square and pretty flowers and the innocent—”

“Why is that wrong?” I pleaded, “Can't there be a haven where there is no brutality, no threat?”

“Do you not wonder at the ease with which you are saving Lark?”

A bitter snort. How many times had Laurent suggested the same? I held up my bloody fingers. “What
ease
?” It seemed odd, then, that I'd only just seen my hands as pale and clean.

He was shaking his head. “Change your fate, Evie. Be curious again. Ask the White Healer's name. You have to see.” Raif repeated, urging, needing: “You have to
see.
”

He held out his hand and I immediately reached up, trying to grasp it, feeling that need for him, for what once was, so very deeply. The bottomless ache, the same yearning the amulet inspired, that need to go
home.
I looked at Raif, thinking I could say it through my eyes if my voice failed, but then knew I had to say it out loud. He deserved nothing less. “I loved you,” I whispered. “I so loved you and I never told you.”

He smiled. “I know.”

And then, as if the woods came rushing forward, Raif was gone, receding into darkness.

I sat still, my hand floating in empty space until I pulled it back.

What do I not see, Raif? What do I not see?

It occurred to me that there were no birds singing—where I thought the vision of Raif had brought the silence, it seemed the silence had been there all along. I looked down, unnerved by the quiet, then gathered up the plaits, rolling them into my frock so the whips would not sting my hands. I stood and walked back out of the grove.

Laurent was waiting for me. A surge of emotion propelled me straight into his arms. “Have you finished?” he murmured against my hair, and I nodded. He lifted me up onto Arro, climbed up behind, and wrapped his arms about me. I crooked my head to look at him and smiled.

The sun shone; I sat with my love. I held in my skirts the things to save my dearest friend. I could not be uneasy.

We trotted off; the air and light so warm, I dozed in the peace of it. Arro seemed to know exactly where to go; Laurent's hands barely moved on the reins. Laurent's hands—so strong and capable, sun- and wind-tanned.

And without Raif's ring.

I was almost asleep; I saw at first with only drugged curiosity. But then my eyes opened a little wider; I watched his hands. Watched how naked they rested in front of me. How they didn't move at all.

“Laurent?” I turned. “Where is the ring?”

He was smiling down at me, his eyes so very blue. “Ring,” he repeated back.

“The leather ring. That I left for you.”

He kept smiling. “It is just as you wish.”

As I wish?
“Laurent…” There was something else.

“Hush, love.” He kissed me. “We'll be back soon.”

And we were. Laurent was halting Arro before the White Healer's cottage. I asked him as he helped me from Arro's back, “Are you truly happy here?”

Laurent brushed back a strand of hair from my shoulder. He leaned to kiss me again, warm and luscious and as real as anything I could need. “I'm here, Evie,” he murmured, smiling at me. “You are happy.”

I was happy, though it didn't erase Raif's visit. I entered the cottage with my gatherings, seeing that all was sweetly the same: the fire in the hearth, Salva darning the yellow stocking in her little chair. The tabby cat sat on the hearthstone washing his paws. I looked to my left, to where my satchel hung at the door. I smelled oat bread and chicken stew.

The White Healer stood at the table pondering his herb selection. He glanced up as I entered, eyed the lump in my frock.

“Ah.” His eyes crinkled. “You have made the plaits, clever girl. Bring them here.”

Clever.
I smiled at the repeated compliment. I hurried to him, then unrolled the four willow braids from my skirts and let them drop onto the sedge-coated table. The White Healer looked at them, at me. “You found them easily?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Was there any confusion?”

I wondered if he suspected I'd been confronted, been conflicted, even. I shook my head. And then I worried he
had
magically sent Raif somehow, and I should admit that I'd been visited, been warned—

Warned.
I paused, my hand hovering at the willow braids.

The White Healer said gently, “There is not much time. You need to do up the braids, weave them into a pouch. Now, my dear, while the willow is most potent.”

I picked up the braids. My hands were trembling—shaking—just a little.
Nervous,
I thought. The way Lark would react in a crowd—

I clenched my jaw.
Lark.
I would not lose focus. “Show me.” The old man smiled.

'Twas a simple weave—over, under, over, under. Four braids made for a small mat, and then the White Healer instructed how to loop a braid back on itself. In no time I had a smallish pouch.

“Just the size for your shell,” the White Healer murmured, pleased. “Needles of hemlock and leaves of nightshade we weave in now. Poison to root out poison.” He sprinkled some of both into my palm. I pressed the dried bits into the braiding, so that the yellowish hue of the willow was interrupted with black. We added dark sprinklings from all the jars.

“You said it would take on all the colors,” I murmured. “When?”

“Patience. You will see.” The old man pointed to my satchel. “Bring the shell.”

See.
I shook off the word and retrieved my bag. The tabby cat finished his washing as I passed and gave me a doleful look.

“Here.” The White Healer beckoned me back. “Here. You've not much time. Put it in all safe and sound.”

Safe and sound.
How comforting and strange that he'd used words I'd recently used. I took out the shell, centered it inside the willow pouch.

And there it was, the little amulet nestled inside a weaving of healing willow and black poison.

“Well done.” The old man nodded. He was sweating, a sheen of moisture over his temples and brow.