The Black Gryphon

Her shoulders shook with sobs. “I wish it had!” she wept into the pillow. “Oh, gods! I wish it had!”

Carefully, very carefully, he sat down on the edge of the massage table, and took her shoulders in his strong hands, helping her to sit up and turn, so that she was weeping into his shoulder instead of into a comfortless pillow. For some time, he simply held her, letting her long-pent grief wear itself out, rocking her a little, and stroking her hair and the back of her neck.

She shivered, and her skin chilled. Gesten slipped in, silent as a shadow, and laid a thick, warmed robe beside him. He thanked the hertasi with his eyes, and picked it up, wrapping it around her shoulders. She relaxed as the heat seeped into her, and gradually her sobs lost their strength.

“So that was why you chose the name ‘Winterhart,’ “ he said into the silence. “I’d wondered. It wasn’t because it was Kaled’a’in at all—it was because a hart is a hunted creature, and because you hoped that the cold of winter would close around you and keep you from ever feeling anything again.”

“I never even saw a Kaled’a’in until I came here,” came the whisper from his shoulder.

“Ah.” He massaged the back of her neck with one hand, while the other remained holding her to his chest. “So. You know, you don’t have to answer me, but who are you? If you have any relatives still alive, they would probably like to know that you are living, too.”

“How would you know?” The reply sounded harsh, but he did not react to it, he simply answered it.

“I know—partly because one of my tasks as a kestra’chera is to pass that information on to Urtho in case any of your relations have been looking for others of their blood. And I know because I lost my family when they fled without me, and I have never found them again. And there is a void there, an emptiness, and a pain that comes with not knowing, not being able to at least write ‘finished’ to the question.”

“Oh. I’m—sorry,” she said awkwardly.

“Thank you,” he replied, accepting the spirit of the apology.

He sensed that she was not finished, and waited.

Finally, she spoke again.

“Once, my name was Lady Reanna Laury. . . .”

Winterhart spoke, and Amberdrake listened, long into the night. She was his last client; he had instinctively scheduled her as the last client of any night she had an appointment, knowing that if her barriers ever broke, he would need many candlemarks to deal with the consequences. So she had all the time she needed.

He talked to her, soothed her—and did not lay a finger on her that was not strictly platonic. He knew that she half expected him to seduce her. He also knew that given any encouragement whatsoever, she would seduce him. But the situation was too complicated to allow for one more complication, and he would have been not only unprofessional but less than a friend if he permitted that complication to take place.

Much as he wanted to.

She was very sweet, very pliant, in his arms. He sensed a passionate nature in her that he doubted Conn Levas even guessed at. She was quite ready to show that nature to him.

But the essence of a kestra’chern’s talent was a finely-honed sense of timing, and he knew that this was not the time.

So he sent her back to her tent exhausted, but only emotionally and mentally—comforted, but not physically. And he flung himself into his bed in a fever, to stare at the tent roof and fantasize all the things that he wished he had done.

He had never really expected that he would find anyone he wanted to share his life with. He had always thought that he would be lucky to find a casual lover or two, outside of his profession.

He had certainly never expected to find anyone so well suited to him—little though she knew the extent of it. Right now, she only knew that he could comfort her, that he had answers for the things that had eaten away at her heart until it bled. He did not want her until she had recovered from all this—until she knew what and who she was, and wanted him as an equal, and not as a comforter and protector.

She got enough of that with Conn.

For Winterhart, whatever she had been, was now a strong, vital, and competent woman. She had a deep capacity for compassion that she had been denying, fearing to be hurt if she gave way to it.