All at once, Bryn shut down as if remembering who they were. Or so Liv thought until she pulled back far enough to see her face wracked with grief.
"I can't…," she breathed, taking a reluctant step back. "I'm sorry."
Rejection washed through Liv as she bit her bottom lip and took a shaking step back away from Bryn. The woman seemed to want to reach out to her, the look on her face yearning to explain, but Liv only shook her head slowly and gave a shaky smile.
Taking every ounce of her control, Liv smothered the hurt and said, "You don't owe me any explanation. We need to get our things ready to leave anyway…"
She trailed off, the action unfamiliar to her. Liv always knew what to say. Only Bryn Helvig, the true Heir of Flame, could make her speechless, it seemed.
Without waiting for a response, Liv turned to her door and entered it swiftly. The next twenty minutes would be needed to bury whatever she was feeling for Maude's sister because it was becoming clear that Bryn didn't feel that way for Liv. She'd experienced rejection before, but this hurt more somehow.
Twenty minutes to pull herself together. It would have to be enough.
26
Maude could now say, in no uncertain terms, that she hated hiking.
The air in her lungs seemed to thin with every breath, burning all the way down her throat as her chest heaved. It was straight uphill once their group had left the small, ancient town that served as a gateway to the mountain where Hilgafell rested on its peak. The sun hung at the highest point in the sky, but even with the wintry weather, Maude had stripped her outer cloak and wore only the sleeveless cut shirts that she favored in Logi. She had also removed the leather corset that gave her some shape in order to allow her skin to breathe.
Sweat poured down her spine as Maude finally caught up with the rest of the group. The only straggler, besides herself, was Gunnar.
"Gods above," Maude panted as she tried to catch her breath. "People can't possibly do this every day."
Gunnar, who had just caught up to the rest of them with Dahlia acting as his shadow, sat on the fallen log on which Maude had planted herself as soon as she reached the small plateau on the mountainside.
"Those who travel to Hilgafell do so often enough that they have become accustomed to the perilous incline," Dahlia explained as she withdrew clean bandages to treat Gunnar's oozing slice on his scalp.
"You're too kind, Dahlia. I grew up on flat lands and climbed short distances," Maude grumbled as she unlaced her boots to massage her aching feet. "This long-distance endurance hiking isawful."
Liv chuckled behind her, the sound airy and light as she moved to stand in front of Maude and Gunnar. She motioned to Gunnar with her thumb and said, "At least he has the excuse of still healing."
Maude withdrew the small blade she kept in the heel of her boot and flicked it at Liv. The Light Elven plucked it out of the air mid-spin with ease, laughing before pocketing the small knife.
"We're almost there,minn månen," her birth father said, humor dancing in his silver eyes.
Nodding mutely, Maude looked back down at her blistered feet. My moon. The affectionate moniker forced her throat to swell uncomfortably.
When they had been on the longship, sailing to the island that housed Hlidestad and Hilgafell, Maude had tried to find the courage to speak with him some more. In her heart, Maude knew that she wanted to know Aeric as her father, but a lifetime of memories tainted by Helvig did not disappear just because she wished them to.
So, she started small. Maude asked him about his life: if he had grown up in Nida, how he was voted into the power he now held, how old he was. It had been staggering to discover her father was close to five hundred years old. It was one thing to hear a story about the Elven having long lifespans, but to hear it confirmed was difficult to absorb. Her jaw had been hanging open when he told her. Eventually, it became easier for Maude to speak with Aeric.
Though her father had offered up any information about himself that she asked for, Maude realized that a large part of the story— which could only be told by Sylvi— was hidden somewhere in the journals, and avoiding them wasn't going to change that. Liv may have also called her a coward for avoiding the journals that only she and Bryn could read.
Sylvi was much more cunning than Maude had ever given her credit for— spell-locking the journals so that only her children could read them by placing a small drop of their blood on the clasp was a stroke of genius that she admired from the first moment she opened the keepsakes.
During the sea voyage and overnight in Hlidestad when she should have been sleeping, Maude continued to read her mother's journal entries. To say she hadbecome enraptured by the sly wit written into the pages kept secret just for her and Bryn would be an understatement. With each passage, Maude felt closer to her mother. If she had known the real Sylvi, she would have really liked her.
With each dinner that I partake in on the prize from my encounter with the Elven hunter, I am reminded that I never learned the male's name.
Which pisses me off.
He was cunning and intelligent, his silver eyes bright with humor. But the longer I go without encountering him, the more I forget his beautiful face. To be cursed with such a one-track mind that I remember very little of important details, but everything it takes to bakebullewas a hardship I had grown up with. Until now, it hadn't really been a problem.
But now I forget the way his hair shone in the dying sunlight, the image of his face blurring each day.
At first, I had hoped to meet him again because of how aggravating he was. Now, I only wish to see his face again to know I did not create him from loneliness.
Maude had kept reading long past when she should have been sleeping, her eyes heavy but refusing to close as she discovered more about the beginnings of her mother and Aeric. As the others resumed their journey up to Hilgafell, she thought back on the last journal entry she had read in the early morning hours before her battle :
