He wiped his face. “I couldn’t stay in the Alamant. Not knowing what I’d done.” He was running. The same as she. “But after nearly two years . . . I’m tired, Caelia. I’m going home.” He met her gaze. “Someday, you’ll be tired of running and ready to return to your family, only it won’t be an option anymore.”
She let out a long breath. You were right, Atara. I don’t want to live in a place where I have to pretend my son didn’t exist. Unable to bear his judgment, she turned away. “My son died. He was born too early and he died.” That had been the worst of the rumors—that she had done something to end her pregnancy when she hadn’t. She opened her mouth to say the rest, but it wouldn’t come.
Stunned silence. “Surely your husband—”
“I don’t have a husband. I never did.” It felt good to say it. To own it. “Mal . . . When I got sick, he left me. My own father barely speaks to me. The entire town suspects.” Suspicion alone was enough to ruin her. “And the worst part is that I wanted my baby to die, from the moment I realized I carried him. I even wrote it on a ribbon for the Curse Tree.”
She’d been relieved when she’d gone into labor—she wouldn’t have been able to hide her growing belly much longer. It was far too early for him to survive. Even she knew that.
And then she’d held her baby and everything had changed. She took a cleansing breath. “I don’t know how it is in the Alamant, but in the Idelmarch, unwed mothers are shunned.” She felt the sharp whispers, the knowing looks. Her title had insulated her, but it wasn’t enough to save her.
Defiant of the judgment that was surely in Gendrin’s eyes, she squared her shoulders and forced herself to face him. “I told you, there is nothing for me to go back to.”
He didn’t look away. Not once. Neither did he say anything. Not for a long time. The hope inside her wavered like a new vine before a bitter winter wind. And then he spoke, “What is his name?”
She blinked in surprise. “Whose name?”
“Your son?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. “I-I never gave him one.”
“You should name him.” He held out a hand to help her up. “He deserves a name.”
Warmth slid down her face, falling against her collarbone and seeping through her skin to land with a plink into the hollow, brittle nothing inside her. Together, they turned away from Hamel and toward the Alamant.
Chapter Seven
Storm
Gendrin gave her his belt and knife. “No one should be in the forest without a weapon.”
She took it, the leather warm from his body, the tooling worn. The knife was as jewel-like as the sword. It didn’t fit. Gendrin pushed the knife through the leather to make a new hole. Caelia wrapped it around herself and tightened the buckle. He nodded in approval.
He took the pot of water from the fire and left while she washed up as best she could. There wasn’t much she could do about her dress—not unless she wanted to spend the day naked or wet. But her skin and hair were mostly clean. When she’d finished, they started out.
The forest encased Caelia in a living wall, blocking the sky and making her feel small and vulnerable. Anything could be hiding just out of sight, watching her. She jumped at an abrupt bird call. Then again as another burst out of some brush to her right.
“That sound is a copperbill,” Gendrin said. “The other bird is a forest hen—they’re delicious. If I’d been paying better attention, we could have had it for lunch.”
He named each forest sound and pointed to edible plants and poisonous ones. With the steady litany of his voice, her fear gradually abated. The pain eased too. The more she moved, the more her muscles limbered up.
As the day went on, the wind picked up until it gusted, the trees swaying violently above her, fall leaves ripped away en masse and tripping over each other on the ground.
They stopped for lunch, huddled between the roots of a tree as they ate dried bread and meat. The warm sunshine had been replaced by a bitter wind. Caelia kept tight hold of her cloak, her fingers numb with cold.
By the time evening came on, black clouds boiled over the blue sky, leaving them in perpetual twilight. Thunder cracked and lightning sizzled. The rain sheeted in a downpour that left Caelia soaked in seconds. At least I’m cleaner, she thought miserably.
Gendrin stopped, his mouth fixed in a grim line. He shouted to be heard over the wind, “Wait here.”
Before she could protest, he shimmied up a tree. She watched him, the tree cavorting about like a drunk man tethered to the ground. He tied up his pod and fixed his pack to a branch. When he finally dropped back down, his expression was grim.
She backed away from him. “Are you mad? We can’t go into a tree in a storm. It will be blown down or struck with lightning.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
She shook her head, rain streaking down her face. “There has to be somewhere we can shelter. An overhang or cave.”
“The beasts can’t sense us in the trees.”
“Surely they’re as eager to escape the storm as everything else.”
He looked about nervously and held out his hand. “Trust me, Caelia.”
He’d already saved her life once. He’d learned her deepest, darkest secret and hadn’t treated her any differently because of it. She did trust him. How could she not?
She placed her hand in his. He boosted her onto the first branch. The tree shifted beneath her. His pod was halfway up, and each bough swayed more than the last. She held on tight, her whole body locking up with fear. Gendrin came up behind her.
“Can’t we pick a lower branch?” she shouted.
“Not if we’re to be beyond the beasts’ reach.”
He went first, stretching back to pull her up beside him. She strained for a branch that shifted out of her grasp, leaving her leaning too far toward. Unbalanced, she cried out. His hand snaked around her hips, steadying her against him.
“You all right?” he asked.
No. But she would never admit it. She looked up to find him close and looking down at her. He felt warm and solid and real. She didn’t pull away. He didn’t let go. The storm suddenly seemed far away.
A blush heated her cheeks. What was she doing? She’d just escaped a bad relationship. She had no desire for another. She shifted slightly back. He dropped his hand.
Clearing his throat, he turned and climbed. She was more aware of his hand gripping hers, of his body’s proximity. When they finally reached the pod, he pointed to her borrowed belt. “Take it off. Get inside the pod.”
The pod must be what he called the hammock. She did as he asked. He strapped the belt to the tree along with his baldric, sword, and shield. He held open the pod for her. She sat and then shifted her legs inside. She scooted over as he came in after. The pod mashed them together, the edges of their arms and legs touching, and both tried to pretend they weren’t.
He shut the pod, which was surprisingly waterproof, though they were both soaked, so it didn’t matter much. He spread a blanket over them. She pulled it up to her chin. It was coarse and smelled of damp wool. She shivered hard, trying, and failing to fight off the chill.