“I did not expect it to be here so soon,” Grimult confessed, knowing that was ridiculous. Their calculations had not been so very wrong, and he had only been robbed of a day, perhaps two. But to see it on the horizon, looming and black and tall even at this distance...
There were no such partitions amongst his kind. Pens to keep animals and perhaps unmindful fledglings from attempting to follow their parents, but the tallest walls of the sages’ keep were not even a quarter of this scale, even at a distance.
Penryn took a step nearer to him, her eyes soft as she regarded him. “We knew it was coming,” she murmured softly. “Although selfishly I am conflicted also.”
Was that what it was? Selfishness? When she claimed so insistently that her passage beyond was for the good of his people as a whole, yet the desire not to part was so strong.
She had not told him of how the Wall had come to be. Of how the hunts and death had ended.
But a Wall was nothing to his kind, so it stood to reason that she would be facing the land-dwellers when she crossed, for reasons he could not begin to name.
She reached up, her hand settling on his cheek, her smile dim but present.
“Why did you tell me that story last night?” he asked. “Why not before?”
Her expression clouded, but she did not pull away. She chewed at her lip for a moment, her eyes seeming very far away. “Because...” she took a breath, and there was a catch that suggested it had to pass through some emotion she was trying to contain. “Because I know you better now,” she answered, her eyes flickering back to meet his. “And I do not think you would have the peaceful life I dream for you if you did not understand. At least a little.” Her thumb moved over his cheek. “Because I see the bitterness in you, the doubt even now that you have not been used for nothing. That you were asked to take a life for good reason and not for a Journey that meant nothing at all.”
He swallowed. He had not confided such thoughts in her, and not for the first time he wondered if she had some connection into his mind upon his placement as her Guardian. “Will the tether end when you cross over?” he asked at last, his throat feeling strangely tight even to ask it. He did not want it to go, did not want her to go, yet he knew she would.
And soon.
“Tether?” she asked, her face betraying her genuine confusion.
“The pull,” he clarified, wondering if she knew the spell by a different word. “The compulsion to be near you, that ties us together.”
Her brow furrowed and she shook her head, her hand slipping to rest against his chest. “I have no magic, Grim. I thought you realised that by now. I am just a girl that lost the draw and was snatched away from a family I will never know. To serve a purpose that is bigger than just me.” She leaned forward, and for a moment, however brief, he thought that she was going to bestow him with a kiss.
But then she halted, pressing her forehead against his chest before she released a shuddering sigh, and took a step back from him.
There had been no tether. Never had been. No magic that had presented her to the sages and heralded her coming as the Lightkeep.
He waited for another sense of betrayal to wash over him, but it did not come. He had never mentioned it to her, the pull that he felt toward her person, had come up with a conclusion on his own and simply nurtured it himself.
And if there was no magic, no spell, then it was simply... her.
His desire to be near, his wish to keep her safe, to be her companion just because he wished to.
And there was something comforting in that. Freeing. That it was natural rather than another trick.
But would certainly not end when she went beyond the Wall, not if such a feeling was solely his own.
He swallowed, watching her walk away. It was enough to set him moving, not wanting the distance between them.
Just a girl.
But still a Lightkeep.
For a broken lantern that was never truly of importance.
But her... what she must do...
That was what mattered.
He could not be angry about that.
And so he hastened after her, reaching out and drawing her back to him, her squeak of surprise quickly stifled as he drew her to his chest. He did know what draw she had lost, the way the sages went about choosing which child to take away and sequester, but it sounded far more random than he ever would have supposed it to be. He wanted to murmur into her hair that if she was willing, if she was brave enough, if she was able after her duty beyond the Wall was finished, he would take her home with him. He would ask every couple throughout the clans if a child of theirs had been lost—or not lost. Taken away. Mutilated. Sheltered beyond what was reasonable for what would be asked of her.
But Penryn did not seem to think there was an after. Her focus was merely on the end of the Journey itself, of a task she would not discuss with him.
They had given her no skills, no means to protect herself or make shelter or hunt for her food.
It was as if...
As if they wanted her to die.
The thought was a sobering one, one that settled too quickly into place. He had often wondered at the sages’ choices, how they
