Penryn shook her head firmly. “That matters very little,” she informed him, her eyes suddenly meeting his, as if trying to imbue something important while saying almost nothing. “You know you have done right throughout this entire Journey.” Her smile was a sad, difficult thing. “I would like to think I have done the same, and maybe I have. It is what comes next that scares me. If it is right. If it is worth it.”
It was the most she had acknowledged there even was a next, and Grimult swallowed carefully, uncertain how he should proceed. She was clearly burdened by it, and the part of him that wanted to help her in all things insisted that she should be allowed to speak freely of anything that troubled her.
But if she was already concerned that she had not performed her duties to even her own satisfaction, plying secrets from her was not going to win her favour, no matter how he might wish to.
“You would tell me,” Grimult said instead, leaning slightly forward and fighting the urge to reach out and take her hand. “If there was something you need of me, yes?”
He could not form the words, treasonous as they were. That if she should ask it of him, he would follow her beyond the Wall. He would never speak of it, would only assist in whatever she required before...
It was madness. He should never indulge such a thought at all, and at the widening of her eyes, he thought she caught his meaning.
“You cannot,” she insisted, and he did not know if the words were hers or had been placed there by the sages themselves. “If I know what you are suggesting,” she was the one that reached out and grabbed hold of him, her eyes brokering no refusal. “In this, if only in this, you should do as you were instructed.”
He searched her expression, trying to understand the certainty with which she spoke. “Am I to assume,” Grimult began, knowing he had no right to ask, knowing every part of him implored that he continue. “That if I am not to accompany you, it is because some harm will come to you? And you do not want me to know if it?”
Penryn drew away from him, her expression shuttered. He had pressed too hard, asked too directly, and he would receive nothing else from her. Frustration welled, not at her, but at himself. There must be some importance that he was not seeing, was beyond perhaps even his comprehension, and it was not his place to resent it. He had once thought himself proficient at self-mastery, but those thoughts and youthful conceits had long since passed.
He was fallible, could make mistakes, and frequently did so. He was not immune to the charm of a pretty girl, forbidden though he knew her to be.
“The sages are not wrong in everything,” Penryn managed to get out, though her lips were pressed in a firm line and it was clear she would rather not speak the words at all. “Which is why I am here. Why I keep going rather than run and hide and live out my life by my own choosing.”
She wanted that? Fantasises came quickly, of doing precisely that. Of disappearing into the wilds and...
What?
Abandoning the family he held so dear? The people that relied on them both so heavily to see this Journey done?
It was selfish to the extreme, but shamefully tempting all the same.
“I understand,” Grimult assured her, and her shoulders slumped in either resignation or relief, he could not quite tell.
“Do you think worse of me for it?” When he could give no immediate answer, she quickly clarified. “For even a small part of me wanting to do that? To forego my task and just... be?”
She appeared truly miserable as she sat there, her eyes shining a little more than they had a moment ago, the fire making it all the more pronounced. He did not want her sadness, or her doubts.
“Penryn,” he murmured with a sigh, abandoning his plate and moving to sit next to her. Comfort was all right, after all. And nothing said they had to touch.
But he did not mind it when she quickly settled her head against his shoulder, her hand going to her eyes and batting impatiently. He could feel that she was not truly crying, there were no great heaving breaths that indicated she was attempting to contain a sob, but she clearly needed reassurance that only he was there to provide. “If with all my faults you can think me a proper Guardian...” he shook his head. It was not about him.
“I believe the sages, the people themselves, would think you a fine Lightkeep,” he tried again, feeling one of her arms twine with his, holding it close. He did not know how his heart could begin to race a little faster while he felt such peace as the same time. “We all have thoughts of selfishness from time to time. What we would like to do rather than tend to our responsibilities. But just now... when you could have told me all, you did not.”
She gripped his arm, perhaps in apology, perhaps in warning. “It is for your good,” she told him, a hint of pleading. “For everyone’s good.”
He could not quite imagine how that was true, how she could be so adamant when so much about the situation was crumbling about them, but he could not help but believe her.
He glanced at the lantern settled so near her, supported by a few stones she had collected to ensure it was not overturned by carelessness in the night when the fire burned low and light was difficult to come by.
The work was still important, that was what she was telling him. It mattered. And there was comfort in
