“You have grown.”
“Yes. I am eighteen now, and I look my age, though I will never be tall.”
“Your mother was right. Your people grow slowly.”
She’d forgotten, but as soon as he said the words, she remembered the moment her mother had said them to her, mending the hole in a dress she’d worn out long before she ever grew out of it.
“You remember everything.”
“Yes . . . but I remember you the way you were. Not the way you are. I suspect your face has also changed.” His fingertips ran over her face again before skimming the coil of her hair, feeling each woven section that made a circle around her head.
“It is a crown,” he marveled.
“Yes. It is how all the daughters of the temple wear their hair.”
“Will you take it down?”
With shaking hands, she unwound her braid and ran her fingers through the strands. His fingers followed.
“It is soft . . . and it waves like the wind on the water.” The palm of his hand followed the length down her back, and something warm curled in her belly. His hand immediately fell away, as if he’d heard the hitch in her breath, but his attention was elsewhere.
“They are looking for you, Ghisla. The king has sent a guard for you, and no one knows where you are. A woman is calling your name.”
Ghisla scrambled up, but Hod was frozen, listening. “She has sent Dagmar to look in the cellar.”
She turned toward the hatch, terrified that a member of the king’s guard would suddenly emerge from the door in the hillside, calling her name.
“You cannot be seen with me,” she warned, suddenly far more afraid for Hod than she was for herself. She’d been so foolish. “The king will kill you.”
“Don’t worry, Ghisla. I am just a blind man. Everyone looks past me.”
“I didn’t.”
“No . . . I felt the moment you saw me.”
“You put your hand on your heart,” she whispered.
He nodded, and a new emotion flitted over his features.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” she whispered, aching. Scared.
“Tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. We will stay all week. I have entered the archery contest, and I plan to win.”
“How will you see the target?”
“I won’t. I will hear it.”
“How will you hear the target?”
He grinned. “Arwin will stand beside it, and I will shoot to the left.”
He could hear Ghisla singing—not in his head but with his ears. And yet . . . it brought him no joy. He was afraid for her. She’d gone back through the tunnel and into the temple, and before he’d gotten back around the wall and through the entrance gates, which were kept open for tournament traffic, she had already been escorted to the castle. She’d lied easily, saying she’d fallen asleep on a bench in the sanctum where the air was cool and quiet. The woman—Ghost—was too relieved to question her.
It was so late, and she was kept too long, her voice soaring through melodies that had no words—or if they did, she did not sing them. Hod knew she sang for an audience of one and the rest of the occupants of the mount could not hear her like he could. He would have been able to hear her from the hillside—her skittering heart and her soaring voice—but he hugged the walls of the castle until he was as close as he could get and listened until she stopped. She did not move after she ceased singing but waited as though she needed to make sure the king was truly asleep. Her heart settled and the whisper of her small feet on wood floors moved through the room, out into a corridor, and down a flight of stairs, the sound changing as she descended into an entrance hall that echoed like a cavern.
Two guards escorted her across the empty cobbles, the clap of their longer strides bracketing hers. The temple doors creaked opened and swished closed behind her, and the two guards retraced their steps, clop, clop, clop, clop, talking quietly to each other.
“During the full moon, the king cannot sleep without her,” one muttered. “It is a pattern I have noticed.”
“He cannot sleep without her . . . and he cannot sleep with her,” the other quipped. “Lothgar and the other chieftains would not stand for it.”
“He is the king. He will do what he wants.”
“Aye. It’s just a matter of time, though he’d better tread carefully. The whole country is about to blow.”
“He cannot take one of the daughters to wife. The moment he does—”
“The moment he does, the whole kingdom will fall.”
“The dam will burst. They are either off limits to all—even the king—or none.”
“The other daughters won’t be safe for a single day. Not just the daughters of the temple . . . but the women in the clans. It is a fine line he’s walking.”
“’Tis a fine line we’re all walking.”
“There are thirteen maidens in the village, all of marrying age—”
“An uglier lot I’ve never before beheld.”
“And you’ve beheld so many!”
The critical guard had the grace to laugh.
“Ugly or not, they have their pick of men.”
“And they aren’t picking us, though we are members of the king’s guard.”
“No . . . they want to marry into the clans. My two sisters chose warriors from the clans, though they had no feeling for them.”
“Protection?”
“Aye. One went to Joran, and one to Dolphys. My father was glad to see them go. It was an endless duty keeping the wolves at bay. He received a fine bride-price for both.”
The two guards did not seem to notice Hod as they walked back to their posts inside the palace; he could usually hear a hitch in the breath or a surge in the blood that signaled awareness, but the guards thought the square abandoned in the wee hours of the morning.
A handful of inebriated warriors approached. He suspected they were from Adyar from the tilt of their tongues over their words, but their voices were slurred and their footfalls stuttered, and they did not react to him either.
He listened for Ghisla, hoping she would call out to him again, but she must have been too afraid . . . or too weary . . . and she was silent. He circled the mount several times, walking the perimeter and winding in and out of the camps of the visiting clans and tournament goers while the world was quiet. He measured distances and determined the dangers, learning the lay of the land and making note of the sounds and scents that marked each footstep. It was what he did in every new place. People presented different challenges than animals. Mountains were harder than valleys. Wind distorted smells, and rain could quickly change the terrain. He was adept—more than adept—at taking it all in stride while listening and learning and altering his course based on experience and instinct, but he always familiarized himself with his surroundings, and he never took his abilities for granted.
He did not allow himself to doubt them either. To doubt was to falter, to falter was to fail, and in almost every situation, he knew what to do. But he did not know what to do about Ghisla.
He whispered her name, just to release it from his thoughts, and a portion of his earlier happiness swelled in his breast. She’d been so thrilled to see him. Overjoyed.