Penryn glanced at his cloak. “And that? Where did you steal that?”
Grimult gave her a harsh look. “Commandeered,” he corrected, and Penryn rolled her eyes, but placed a kiss on his tight lips simply because she could. “They have communal laundering facilities. This was among them.”
She hoped that whatever soul had first held possession of it was not in very great need, but it was not worth Grimult’s life to suggest they return it before they make their ultimate departure.
“I have felt so guilty,” Penryn confessed. “Sleeping in a soft bed. Having a whole bathing room to myself, picturing you sleeping on the ground by yourself.”
“As well you should,” Grimult answered, speaking so perfectly plainly that at first she took him to be serious, but there was a softness to his eyes that revealed that he was teasing her.
Another time, she might have smacked him lightly on the chest for his words, but she could not even muster the show of outrage, instead settling for rolling her eyes at him again and nestling back to her previous position.
They sat quietly for a time, taking occasional sips of tea, but otherwise merely absorbing the companionship with the other, until Grimult finally cut through the silence. “You should not have left as you did.”
Penryn blinked, drowsier than she had realised for it took a moment to come back to herself and form a proper response. The words that came first were not truly her own. The reminder that it was precisely what she was meant to have done, that she had spared him the choice that he seemed unable to make—to allow him the freedom to go home and leave her to her work, just as every Guardian had done before him.
But she paused, trying to swallow back the rebuke of a Lightkeep and speak as Penryn, to the man she loved who had been hurt by her hasty retreat.
To have sealed their mutual affection with a kiss, then sealed him away behind a Wall that could not be opened, with a wing that could not support him should he try to follow by air.
“I thought I was helping you,” she said at last, an explanation even as her voice dripped with apology. “So you would not have to be the one to leave me.” She shook her head. “I did not think, I had not considered...” a breath, shaky and uncertain. “I was prepared to stay here, in this cottage, until the end of my days. And I did not want that life for you. Not when you had so much to return home to.”
“I was willing,” Grimult answered, his grip on her tightening. “If it meant you were there.”
How easily he seemed to be able to say that, that he could renounce the family of his birth when she would give most anything to have the same. He could not understand, would likely never, know what it was like to be without.
And what of his mother? For him to simply never return? His father awaiting his only son?
Sisters waiting for the brother they loved?
She did not allow herself to think of her origins often. It was obvious she had been born to a perfectly normal mother, a father involved at some point, whether or not they were a bonded pair. Had they gone on to have others? Were there siblings of her own wandering about the world, unknown to her?
The thought was a strange one, and she pushed it aside lest she grow angrier with Grim for dismissing the blessings he had in favour of just... her.
“I do not want you to have to choose,” Penryn explained, tilting her head, the better to look at him. “I do not want that pain for them, or for you to have lost them.”
“I did not wish for such a choice either,” Grimult agreed, taking one of her hands in his and pressing it between them. “But it was still mine to make. To follow you, regardless of the consequences, that should have been my choice. I have proven it could be done with little consequence.”
She did not necessarily agree. Fortune had been on their side, that he had not been seen by patrols while he wandered, disoriented in the woods, his wings fully exposed. That when reason returned to him, he had not been spotted while thieving at the laundry, that none had attempted conversation and found him to be mute, unable to understand even the basics of their language.
Success had been more chance than effort, although she would never say so, not when it would be an insult to his skills, rightly earned through practise and self-governance.
They were at an impasse, one that would likely not be overcome so quickly. They could hardly change the past, and it seemed like it would do little good to harbour resentment over the choices of the other.
The stillness came back, and it was not lost to her that neither had actually given an apology, and she wondered if that was a problem, and he was waiting for her to voice the words aloud.
But when he leaned forward, his breath tickling at her ear, his tone hushed and private even though there was none other to hear.
“Do you think this dwelling has a bathing room as well?”
And she could not help the bubble of laughter at the sudden change, and she placed one last kiss on his cheek before she made to stand. Her legs were stiff and she was grateful for Grim’s support as she steadied. She pointed to a door in the far corner. “Let us start there and see if they were equally generous.”
The first door was not a bathing room at all, but a larder filled with preserved goods, some dried in elaborate braids, others lining the shelves in their
