Creusus's Arc

Chapter 42 of 43

A second year at the mill taught Creusus the shape of a quiet life. He knew the yard master's whistle and the price of bread. He knew which board of the porch creaked when Kallista stepped out at dawn. The tournament was a place he had walked away from. The demon was sealed in a world he had broken. He had nothing left to chase. He had time, and he meant to use it. He found her in the flower garden behind the innkeeper's wall. She stood inside the ring of blossoms she tended most mornings, petals layered in circles she had planned herself. Her white dress caught the low sun. She held a cut stem in one hand and a pair of shears in the other. "You are early," she said, without turning. "The mill does not open for an hour." "I am not going to the mill." She looked at him then. He had washed. He had trimmed the long hair the dark realm had left him. His knuckles were bare of the black wrappings for the first time in a year, tucked away in his pack at the door. "You look strange without them," she said. "I wanted my hands clean today." He stepped into the ring of flowers. He did not kneel. He was too heavy for that and she had never wanted show from him. He took the shears from her fingers and set them on the path. He took her hand. "I lost you once," he said. She frowned. "I fell asleep in the shack. You told me." "You did." He held her hand tighter. "I will not tell you the rest today. Only that I lost you, and I found you again, and I do not want to spend the years I have left uncertain of you." Her eyes did not leave his face. She was very still. "Marry me," he said. She breathed out. A bee moved between two red blossoms at her knee. "Yes," she said. "Creusus, yes." He pulled her against his chest. She laughed into his shirt. The shears lay in the dirt at their feet. Somewhere over the wall the mill whistle blew and he did not turn toward it. When she stepped back her face changed. She looked at his empty knuckles again, and past them, to the pack he had left by the gate. "You said you would tell me the rest one day," she said. "One day," he heard himself answer.