Somehow, he knows my thoughts. “I won’t let that bastard king touch you,” he says, low and feral. “I won’t let him. Do you believe me, Bryn?”
I tilt my face toward his, his earrings flashing in the light of the rising moon. My heart beats, beats. I want to fold myself into him. Borrow his strength because I am not sure I have any left of my own. “Yes,” I whisper. “I believe you.”
We stop walking, and he gazes down at me in the moonlight, one finger tracing the line of my brow. My skin sparks where he touches me.
“Brynja,” he says, his voice uneven, a question in his eyes.
I give him the smallest of nods because I find I can’t speak, and then he’s leaning his head down, crushing his mouth against mine. I kiss him back, raw and wild, and his hands are on my shoulders, pulling me closer. He tastes of salt and wanting, of the mead we drank at the public house and the slight tang of spiced lamb stew. He holds me so tight there is no space for breath in my lungs, and suddenly I am not here anymore, in the moonlight with Vil. I am down in the dark by a rushing river. I am—
I break away, panic jolting through me.
Vil looks at me, breathing hard, his whole body trembling. His eyes spark with hurt. “Brynja, I thought—”
“My fault,” I manage. I’m shaking, too. I gulp desperate mouthfuls of air.
“There is no fault,” he says roughly. “There is nothing wrong with—” He waves one hand between us. “This. You and me.”
Something sticks in my throat, and I want to cry. “I know.”
“Then what is it? Why did you pull away?”
I don’t know how to explain it to him. I don’t know how to explain it to myself.
Vil’s jaw tenses. He kicks at the ground, and another cloud of gnats swirls up. “I don’t know what the king did to you, what his damned son did to you, but I’m not them, Brynja. I would never hurt you. I would never—”
“Ballast didn’t do anything to me,” I say to the grass, my raging pulse not quite back to normal.
Vil curses. “We both know that isn’t true.”
And there it is. I flick my eyes up to him. “Saga told you.” Her betrayal hurts, but it isn’t, I guess, unexpected. We have peace, Saga and I. Understanding. In all things but this.
Vil’s throat works and he looks away, fighting to regain control of himself.
“I’m sorry,” I say miserably, helplessly.
His eyes find mine again, and the anger has already ebbed out of him. “It’s all right, Bryn. You’ve been through a lot, and it makes sense that you need time to ... understand it all. To understand yourself. I’ll wait for you. I don’t mind.”
I bite my lip, the tears pressing hot. “Thanks, Vil.”
He gives me half a smile, but I don’t miss the sorrow in it. “You don’t need to thank me.”
We walk side by side the rest of the way back to our camp. He doesn’t take my hand again, and I know that I’m selfish for wishing he would.
“You were gone long enough,” Saga says when we finally step up to the fire. “Thought you’d gotten yourselves killed. Or ... lost.” She grins at us, and my face washes hot.
But Vil doesn’t let her bait him, which I’m grateful for. “Bit of a walk, both ways,” is all he says.
I feel hollowed out as we eat our dinner. Vil catches my gaze across the fire and smiles at me, this time in earnest. I’m the one who looks away.
When we’ve eaten, Saga makes tea and asks for another story. Vil tells it this time.
“The Bronze God lived on an island in the sea. He was god of minds, and so could speak to the minds of all things, manipulating people and animals and even matter into doing his will. But he grew weary of friends and lovers who stayed with him only because of the power that seeped out of him whether he meant it to or not, ensnaring them to his will.
“So he lived for a time alone, eating fish that willingly swam into his nets, listening to choirs of birds who sang for him all day long, because he once had a stray thought that it would be pleasant if they did so.
“But one morning, he woke to find that his island had moved through the sea and joined itself to the mainland, answering the unspoken pain of his loneliness. There he found the Prism Goddess in her wondrous garden. Of all the pantheon, the Prism Goddess is the most powerful, for she holds within her pieces of all the other gods’ magic. And so the Prism Goddess was the only one among men and gods who could resist the Bronze God’s power. He fell in love with her, but she did not return his love.”
Vil lapses into silence, and I feel heavy and wretched. He could have chosen any story at all, andthisis the one he picked?
