Aelion Silverwind's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Her hand rested in his. Aelion did not move. Three years he had waited for this, and now he feared a single wrong breath would end it. She watched the seedlings, not him. He had no words that seemed worthy. So he held still and let the silence stretch, afraid it would turn cold. The pull came the wrong way. She began to draw her hand back. Aelion felt the trust slipping through his fingers like water. He had won the moment and did not know how to keep it. He did the only true thing he could. He turned his hand and held hers a breath longer, then guided her fingers down to the soil beside the pot. "They root better if you plant them yourself," he said. "Your mother would want your hands in the dirt, not mine." She looked at him then. Something in her face loosened. She pressed her fingers into the earth and pulled the first seedling from the pot. He cupped his hands around hers to steady the small roots. Together they set it in the ground. She patted the soil down and did not let go of him afterward. "You could have named your price for the wolf and left," she said. "You kept coming back." "I had no price to name." She almost smiled. They planted the rest in a row, hands brushing, her fine skirt gray with dirt. The dawn light climbed the garden wall. When the pot was empty, she sat back on her heels and looked at the row of green. "Come inside," she said. "I want to show you something." She led him through a door he had never passed. The hall inside her house was wide and cool. On the far wall hung a great banner, and on it a golden lion with sweeping wings, stitched in thread that caught the light. Aelion stopped beneath it. "My family's mark," she said. "My mother chose the winged lion. She said our blood should reach higher than the ground allowed." She touched his arm. "No one comes into this hall. I wanted you to see who I am before you decide what you want from me." Aelion understood the weight of the door she had opened. She had let him past the garden into the house itself. But her words carried a test. She wanted to know his purpose, and a wrong answer would close every door at once. "I want nothing you don't freely give," he said. "I came for you. Not the lion, not the name." She studied him a long moment. Then she nodded, slow. "Then you should know the rest of what that name carries," she said. "My family is promised elsewhere. There is a match my house made for me years ago. If you mean to stand here, you will have to stand against them." The garden had been simple. This was not. Aelion had crossed her threshold and found a rival waiting inside the walls.