Kerowyn's Ride

Then, as he stared back at the Tower, his eyes burned and stung after all.

She didn’t come.

She hadn’t even come to say good-bye.

He turned his back on the place resolutely. She’d made her choice; he had to get on with his life. Only his eyes kept burning, and not all the blinking in the world would clear them. He was rubbing them with the back of his hand, when like the ending to a ballad, he heard hoof-beats behind him—hoofbeats he recognized; the staccato rapping of Kero’s little mare’s feet on the hard-packed snow. He’d know that limping gait anywhere, any time; Verenna had favored her right foreleg ever since an accident in his second year here, and he knew her pace the way he knew the beat of his own heart.

He turned his gelding to greet her, his heart filled to bursting. She came to her senses! She’s coming with me! I won her over—

Then as she came into view, he felt a shock, and stared, his eyes going so wide he thought they were going to fall out of his head.

It was Kero, all right. With her face made up like one of the Court flowers, her hair in an elaborate arrangement that must have taken hours to do. In a dress. A fancy, velvet dress, a parody of hunting-gear. It was years, decades out of date, and she must have gotten it out of her grandmother’s closet.

She looked like a fool. It wasn’t just the dress, it wasn’t even mostly the dress, old and outdated as it was. It was that she was simpering at him, her eyes all wide and dewy, her lips parted artfully, her expression a careful mask of eager, honeyed anticipation.

“Oh, Daren,” she gushed, as she rode within hearing distance. “How could you ever have thought I’d stay behind? After all you’ve offered me, after all we’ve meant to each other, how could you have ever doubted me?”

She rode up beside him and laid a hand on his elbow, a delicate, and patently artificial gesture. “I thought over what you’d said, and I realized how wise you are, Daren. The world isn’t going to change, so I might as well adapt to it! After all, it isn’t every day a prince of the blood offers to make me his consort!”

She giggled—not her usual hearty laugh, or even her warm, friendly, sensuous chuckle, but a stupid little giggle. Her mare sidled a little, and she let it, instead of controlling it.

That’s when it dawned in him. She was acting exactly the way those little ninnies at Court had been acting— vacuous, artfully helpless, empty-headed, greedy—Sickening. He pulled away from her, an automatic, unthinking reaction.

Abruptly, her manner changed. The artificial little fool vanished as completely as if she had never existed. Kero looked at him soberly, the absurd riding habit, painted cheeks and ridiculous hair all striking him as entirely unfunny. Verenna tried to sidle again, and this time Kero controlled her immediately.

“I just gave you everything you said you wanted me to be, yesterday. That’s exactly the way you asked me to behave.”

“In public!” he protested. “Not when we’re together! “

“Oh, no?” She tilted her head to one side. “Really? And how private is a prince of the blood? When can you be absolutely sure that our little secrets won’t be uncovered? When can you guarantee that we won’t be interrupted or watched from a distance?” He was taken rather aback—and vivid recollections came pouring back, of private assignations that had become public gossip within a week, of secrets that had been out as soon as uttered, of all the times he’d sought privacy only to find watchers everywhere. Roan stamped impatiently, reflecting his rider’s unease.

“Even if you can get away from your courtiers,” she persisted, her brows creased as she leaned forward earnestly in her saddle, “even if you can escape the gossips, how do you keep things secret from the servants? They’re everywhere, and they learn everything—and what they learn, sooner or later, the entire Court knows.”

She sat back in her saddle, and watched his face, her eyes following his. “Besides, what you live, you start to become. The longer I act like a pretty fool, the more likely I am to turn into one. Is that really what you want from me?”

“No!” he exclaimed, startling Roan into a snort. “No, what I love about you is how strong you are, how clever you are, how much you’re like a friend—the way I can talk to you like another man—”

He stopped himself, appalled, but it was too late. She was nodding.

“But this is what you asked me to become,” she replied, taking in dress, hair, and all with a single gesture. “Daren, dearheart, you don’t really want me as a lover, you want me as a friend, a companion. But I can’t be a companion in your world—I can only be something like this.”