Heart Fortune

Nodding, she said, “You’re frightened.”

“What!”

“Frightened of being in a Family again, that you’d have to change your ways to accomodate others. Selfish.”

That stung.

“Just selfish.” She sighed. “You’ve lived on your own for so long.”

“I’ve scraped by for so long.”

But she was shaking her head. “And I admired you for your adventurous streak, for following the wind.”

He didn’t like the past tense. Straightening tall, he reached out for her hands, she let him take them, but they were cool and she didn’t intertwine her fingers with his. “My life hasn’t been as easy as you think.”

Her eyes, brown and deep, met his. “I didn’t say that your life was easy. I did say that you have grown accustomed to living life on your own terms—and that works when you don’t have close Family. You don’t have to accommodate them, don’t have to please anyone more than yourself.”

“I want to please you,” he said.

But she was shaking her head. “I don’t know that you do. You haven’t had a steady lover, either, not to mention a HeartMate.”

He flinched.

Her laugh was unamused. “You rarely say it, refer to me as your HeartMate. Call me HeartMate.”

Putting on a smile, he squeezed her hands. “Getting used to it.”

She nodded solemnly. “But you aren’t accustomed to change . . . and maybe it’s too late.”

“What?”

“You’ve gotten by on your charm, on your friendships. Is that all you want, Jace? Surface relationships?”

His throat began to dry.

“You’ve continued to do what you want, and I’ve allowed you to, because I’ve done so much what everyone else has wanted for so long. Obeyed all the rules to do what I thought I wanted.”

Surprise spurted through him. “You don’t want to be D’Licorice?”

She blinked fast. Somehow he felt her slipping away from him.

“I don’t know,” she said. She glanced around. “I don’t think I want to live in Druida City, though. I’m not sure.” She pulled her hands away, stared off in the distance, to the tall forest.

“Glyssa, H—lover.”

With her sigh he felt the last of her anger dissipate. She tilted her head so she matched his gaze. Her eyes were liquid with tears. When she answered, he heard them in her voice, too.

“You can’t say it. You have this scary, adventurous life, following rules that only you wish . . . Situations that change around you, events that might possibly move you one way or another, but you don’t truly change much. I think that I am more flexible than you, since I’ve always had to bend to the uncomfortable demands of loving Family and friends.” She swallowed. “And I don’t know if you can do that. Perhaps it is too late for us.”

Yes, her eyes were hurt, nearly despairing. But her words had thrown his mind into a scramble to find defenses. And he couldn’t.

Thirty-four

Glyssa continued, “I won’t give up my Family, no matter how irritating, or my beloved friends.” Her beautiful breasts rose with a deep breath. “I am going on a stridebeast journey to the Deep Blue Sea. You know that will take me three days. I wanted to go as a HeartMate couple. But I guess that’s too scary an idea for you, too. I think you should stay.”

“I—no!”

Her gaze had clouded. “I do expect a lot from you. More than you seem to be able to give. Stay, Jace. Please move your things from my pavilion into your tent while I’m gone.” Another humorless smile flicked on and off her face. “You’re the one with charm, the one people relate to better, so I think you should be the one to deal with our changed circumstances in the camp. I won’t be sleeping with you again, and I won’t have sexy dreams with you, either.”

Her face was utterly serious. “I understand that this encampment is too small for the both of us, so I will leave on the next airship shuttle back to Druida City.” She bit her lips, met his eyes again. “I’m not sure where I’ll be going, but you’ll always be able to reach me through my Family and friends.”

Turning on her heel, she said, “Blessed be, my HeartMate, Jace.”

She walked away and he couldn’t seem to see her. Chills chased heat through his body. He felt nauseous.

She was leaving him.

That couldn’t be.

He caught up with her in two strides, whipped around to stand in front of her. “Wait. That’s not true.” He waved his hands. “None of it. I only want to make a . . . enough gilt that we can live together on my income.”

She shook her head. “You’re deluding yourself, Jace, making gilt an excuse. If a fabulous treasure was found on the ship tomorrow that would keep the entire camp for the rest of our lives, you would still not want to live with me as a HeartMate.”

His hands were on her shoulders, but he stopped himself from shaking her. “No.”

“You have gilt, Jace. You never went back to your village after the trip you took with your parents.”

That stunned him. She knew about that? Yet . . . no one knew exactly what had happened on that trip. He’d told no one.

“You walked away from your mother and your friends and your community—”

His lips were cold. He should try and tell her about his mother, but his mind was equally cold, frozen in panic so he couldn’t think. He laughed bitterly. “My mother didn’t want me. Wouldn’t even have missed me. If she said so in whatever info you got, she lied. As for the rest . . .” His mind couldn’t even contemplate returning to the village, meeting his mother again, even after the fevers of Passage had subsided.

Glyssa stared. “I heard your mother wasn’t . . . a good person.” Glyssa’s eyes were still sad and bruised looking. “But one of the things you do also is never look back.”

She wet her lips, but didn’t need to because now tears were sliding down her face to dampen them.

Jace wasn’t sure whether all his guts were twisted inside him or whether with her slicing words, they’d spilled to his feet.

“You never looked back at our wonderful fling, though subconsciously you must have realized eventually, as I did, that our connection during that time was more than casual lovers, we were HeartMates. You never looked back,” she repeated.

He opened his mouth but couldn’t deny that truth.

“And you never looked back when you left your village. Your father wasn’t a smart man, but he was a better man than you believe, I think. He didn’t give your mother all of his pay. He had some set aside for you by his employer in an account she didn’t know about.”

That notion simply skewed his life in a different direction so fast that he barely heard her words.

“One of the merchants you apprenticed with for a while invested that gilt . . . and when your mother died, the merchant liquidated her estate. You have a respectable inheritance, Jace.” She reached into one of her sleeve pockets and pulled out a piece of papyrus, handed it to him.

Complete disbelief. He mouthed, “How?”