The smell of wood was delightful and heady, even in the hallway as she approached the door of the turret room. It stood open, and she felt drawn to a particular scent like a moth to a flame. She stepped inside, spotting the most likely reason for why it was so overpowering; Ewan was sawing into a piece of red wood. He didn’t notice her, so she asked, “What type of wood is it that?”
He looked up, surprised.
“My lady,” he greeted, pulling the tool out of the wood and putting it aside before bowing slightly as she approached. Then his eyes met hers again, and she felt it had been the right choice to seek him out. He smiled tryingly. She returned it.
“What smells so amazing?” she repeated.
“Cedar,” he replied.
She couldn’t keep her smile from broadening, looking around the workshop.
“What is it?” he asked.
“No, I suppose I simply didn’t expect you to be this literal,” she said. “I thought carpentry was an idea. A dream. Not that you were…”
“Building things with my bare hands?” he offered.
“Something like that,” she agreed. “What drew you to it?”
“My mother,” he confessed. “She loved the way wood continues to breathe and live even when it's cut into. She said it reminded her to stay strong no matter what. Even if someone cuts you down, chips away at you, makes you into what they want you to be, they cannot take away your truth. As long as you remember that you will be all right in the end.”
She kept from drawing a deep breath, though she needed it as her hearts began to race.
“Do you have mind magic?” she asked with a half-smile. “I feel you just read my thoughts.”
“Oh?” he wondered.
This was it. This was the opening for her to tell him everything. She could tell him all the moments that she had reflected on, the ones that had brought her right here, to this room. She would not ask for his sympathy or for his forgiveness. She would simply warn him and tell him that she could not be his mate. Not now, not ever.
But there was the weight of the most likely outcome that was suddenly settling in her chest. It kept her tongue in check, and she could not get rid of it. Even when she rested her eyes on his deep green ones, she could not bring herself to so definitively stab her father in the back.
Or make herself the stated enemy of Rogoros, of the crowned heads, of Ewan himself.
He would lose whatever sliver of faith she had managed to invoke in him.
She would doom herself to be without his company, and it was the company that she would rather keep.
You are selfish, she reprimanded, but she could not heed the voice of reason. Not when she saw good reason to ignore it.
“With everything I’ve been through,” she therefore said. “Everything I’ve done. I feel I strayed so far from who I truly am. Or, perhaps, who I would like to be.” That was stated in earnest, but she could not stand the hint of deceit that lurked just behind each word. “I want to find my way back.”
“Easy,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Follow the grains.”
“What?” she asked, her mind a blur at the touch of his fingers around her wrist, the palm of his hand against the top of hers.
“Here,” he said, bringing her over to the workbench he’d been standing at.
He put her hand gently against the wood he’d been working, letting her trace the cut.First against the grains, then with them.
“See?” he asked.
She did. One was tough, the other smooth. One path for her fingers offered resistance, the other did not.
His touch lingered. She kept her eyes on her fingertips, her mind on the sensations produced by the grains, but she nearly leaned back to have his chest supporting her. If only briefly. She restrained the urge, turning her head to look up at him. She hadn’t realized it would put her mouth in a perfect line with his and when he looked down at her it would not have taken much for their lips to touch.
She stepped away in the same moment that he let her go.
There was an awkward pause, neither of them knowing how best to proceed.
