Ire Taverness's Arc

Chapter 8 of 19

They walked most of the morning. Kael led. Ire followed his back through pine and fern, her pack light, her tail loose behind her. He would not tell her where. Every time she asked, he grinned and said, "Soon." At midday he stopped at the edge of a clearing and set his pack down. "Close your eyes." "Kael." "Close them." She closed them. He took her hand and pulled her forward through the grass. She smelled crushed clover and woodsmoke. He stopped her and stepped away. "Open." She opened her eyes. A tent stood in the middle of the clearing. Not a traveler's tent. A wide canvas thing with the flaps tied back, staked out clean and square. Inside she could see a real bed. Blankets. A lantern on a low table. A jug of water. Wildflowers in a tin cup beside it. Ire stared. Her tail went still. "How long," she said. "Months." "Months." "I hauled the frame out in pieces. Bed came last week." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I wanted somewhere that wasn't the tavern. Somewhere the boy can't knock on the door." She walked to the tent and put her hand on the canvas. It was tight and new. The stakes were driven deep. He had checked the ground. He had checked the wind. He had done it the way he did everything, quiet and finished before she noticed. She turned around. He was watching her the way he watched a road he wasn't sure of. "You built me a room in the woods," she said. "I built us one." Her eyes stung. She pressed her palm flat to her mouth and laughed once behind it. Then she crossed the grass and put her arms around his neck and kissed him hard enough to knock his hood back. "Four days," she said against his mouth. "Four days." They did not leave the clearing that afternoon. They did not leave it that night. The lantern burned low. The bed held. Ire slept with her face against his shoulder and did not dream about the ledger, or the cellar count, or the widow's boy, or the eastbound road. She dreamed of nothing but Kael. She woke once before dawn out of habit. The tavern was two days behind her. No one needed her. Kael's arm was heavy across her waist. She listened to him breathe and let her eyes close again. When she woke the second time, the sun was up and Kael was already outside, boiling water over a small fire. He looked back at her through the tent flap and smiled. She sat up in the big bed in the beautiful clearing and understood, for the first time in a year, that the life she was saving for had already started. She pulled on her shift and went out to him and leaped into his arms. He caught her with a laugh. “You’re so beautiful baby.”