“What are you doing?” Danial said curiously from the doorway. “Who are you talking to?”
“Saving a spider,” I explained, blushing. “He’s in there most times because we don’t use this tub too often anymore, and he’ll die if I don’t scoop him out—”
Danial had become still as a statue, watching me. “Why did you save him, Lady?” he said raggedly. “Why?”
It suddenly hit me: he remembered that other night with me years ago.The spider in my old house whom I’d saved in front of him, the night Danial had asked me to give him my Oath. Oh shit. “Because I can’t watch him struggle to live without helping him,” I said, tense as a coiled spring.
“Why not just move him somewhere else?” Danial whispered. “He would be safe, if you moved him.”
His old but still familiar words made my heart race. I took a deep breath and tried to slow it. “He might not be able to survive where I put him. Outside right now, it’s too cold. Winter is coming—”
“Why do you bother to save him, knowing you will only have to save him again?” Every one of his words echoing down from years past was raw agony, tortured.
I took another deep breath and faced him. “Because I can’t let him die, not when I know I can save him.”
Danial came to me hesitantly. He almost reached out for me, but then he drew his hand back. I held his gaze with my eyes, but didn’t reach out for him.
My reason said to break the moment, to stop what was happening with a few cruel words. But I felt the same for him as I had that long ago night I’d first saved him. I just couldn’t leave him in his grief, because it was so much easier for me to let him think I was dead, not if there was a chance that he would remember me. He’d done so much for me, to save me, to make me happy, and he was the father of my firstborn child, and my Oathed One. Even if he didn’t remember that any more, I did.
I owed him this. And God damn it, whatever else I was, I always paid my debts.
“I remember a night, years ago,” Danial said hoarsely, his expression fearful and also hopeful. “A night I never told anyone about, not Theo, not my brother, no one. I remember another place, another woman, and another bathtub that held a drowning spider.”
I thought frantically. What did I say to him that night? I needed the exact words. What were they?
“She saved its life in front of my eyes, even though she was embarrassed after. I told her that she wasn’t crazy for saving a spider. I compared it to her saving me, when an attacker was trying to kill me.”
Danial had said that and more, the night he’d asked me for my Oath.
“She said to me a single phrase,” he whispered. “But it was enough for me to know that she was the one I wanted. I asked her to promise herself to me that very night.”
There was so much hope in his voice, so much pain and fear that he might be wrong, that I wouldn’t know the words, or even what he was talking about. Reliving the memory, my words of that long ago night suddenly came back to me. “I told you I couldn’t let you die, not if I could save you.”
Tears spilled out of Danial’s eyes as he reached for me, embracing me as if he would never let me go. “You are her,” he rasped, shaking with joy and realized hope. “You are my Sar. God, it’s true.”
“Yes, I’m her,” I whispered.
He sank to his knees, still holding me, and I eased down to the floor with him, unwilling to let him go. For a long time Danial just cried in my arms, his tears soaking the front and shoulders of my bathrobe. I stroked his hair and told him not to cry, that he was loved and I was here, in his arms.
He pulled back from me finally, and looked at me for several moments, studying my face. “Why do you not look as I remember you?” he said softly. “Your hair, your face, even your voice, it’s completely different.”
“It was the injury you took at the hands of Ulysses,” I said carefully. “My choker with your symbol fell off. Dev and I got to you as soon as we could. You almost died, your heart was stopped for minutes, and it affected some of your memories.”
“Why could it not be of my youth!” he said angrily. “Or of all the years I spent alone! I have spent almost a year without you! Months thinking you were dead, and grieving for you!”
I felt myself wanting to give in to the moment. Hadn’t this been what I’d hoped for? And now it’s finally happening. “I’m not dead, Danial,” I said, taking his face in my hands. “I’m here with you.”
Danial leaned forward, and kissed me. I slid my fingers into his hair, caressing him as I kissed him back. He picked me up in his arms, still kissing me, and carried me in, to Lash’s bed. He left me for a moment to shut and lock the door, and then he was back, easing down beside me. Danial kissed me gently at first, but soon he was crushing my body against his, his hands sliding over my feverishly hot body, caressing and squeezing me through my robe as he kissed me. I pushed him back gently, and pulled off my bathrobe, revealing my nakedness. Danial looked at me darkly, and then he was pulling off his shirt and jeans, tearing the black cloth in his haste. |
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