And suddenly Grimult’s hand was surrounding hers, holding it firmly, lending her his warmth and his strength, limited though both were after their ordeal of the last days.
“Your husband?” Amarys managed to get out, a hand clutched at her chest.
“Yes,” Penryn confirmed, clutching Grim’s hand a little tighter to hers. “I thought... I thought that you should know.” She raised her chin a little, awaiting their censure, for an admonishment that perhaps in another life might have been theirs to give.
In that life, they might have been her authority, might have held sway in her choices, but this was not one where she would budge. She did not regret a moment of it, but their response might determine if she held some remorse in having shared such an intimate so soon.
Rezen cleared his throat, and Penryn could see Grimult’s throat working, as if he was about to speak. Or worse, to apologise.
The only wrong that had been done was in the sages’ eyes, and she would not pretend that she held their custom as her own. Not anymore.
“You are most welcome,” Rezen offered, and Penryn felt herself relax. If that had not been the first words that came to his tongue, he hid it well. And she was grateful.
Amarys still held a look of worry that bordered on panic, but she forced herself to nod all the same. The urge was there to go to her, to offer comfort that she should not require, but Rezen moved first, pulling his wife close. He murmured softly to her, his words low and given only to her, and Penryn stood, observing them both. Grimult did much the same to her when she was overwhelmed, but it was a curious thing to be able to observe it directly than merely to receive.
Worley and Terik were peppering Grimult with questions of his training, eyes keenly searching for sign of ancient weaponry given to his care. She had seen him tuck a few into his borrowed clothing, others still tucked away at Braun’s residence, and he answered most indulgently, although whenever her gaze went to his, he was looking back at her.
She could not blame them for their interest. She found Grimult a far more interesting person than herself in any case, and if there was to be jealousies from her, it would not be toward those with a proper admiration for her husband.
Amarys’s eyes were closed, and Penryn found herself moving toward her, Grimult allowing her to go even as he was penned and surrounded by brothers that did not quite feel like hers.
Penryn swallowed, wondering if she could conjure the bravery to use the word, but finding that her courage failed her. Mother might have been possible, but Mama...
That was too difficult, spoke to a life that she had not actually led, and she could not manage it.
“Are you well?” she asked instead, drawing their attention to her. She had kept her voice low, not wishing to startle, but Amarys’s eyes flew open anyway.
“I worry for you,” she answered quickly, and it was not a foolish concern. “Even if I am so very pleased that you...” words failed her, and rather than attempt to push past her emotion, she pulled Penryn into a quick embrace. “I only just got you back. And you will be having a home of your own now, and you won’t—” she stopped herself short, and Penryn could well imagine what she had not dared to say. She already was conjuring imagines of a daughter within their home, perhaps not the fledgling she should have been, but the weeks and months passing until memories were between them, relations established built on time spent and lives lived.
And that was not to be.
Not solely for the reasons she supposed, but for far more pressing realities. Penryn had not returned for this, had not dared her life and Grim’s so she might know the pleasures of an ancestral home and a family to occupy it.
She had come to warn them.
To save them, if she could.
She swallowed back her own fears, and pulled back from her mother, taking her hands gently in hers. “I have work yet to do,” she told her honestly. “And I do not know what my future holds. But I have this night with all of you, and I call myself blessed for it.”
She had not meant to make her mother cry, but there was no mistaking the shine to be found there. “Only one?”
Penryn nodded. Time to rest, time to heal, and perhaps, if all were amiable, to establish the beginnings of bonds that should have been there from the very start.
Despair was at the edges of her mother’s vision, but Rezen murmured softly to her once again, and she braced herself. “But you will come back?”
A promise that would be easy to give, but harder to fulfil. And above all, this woman had earned her honesty. “If it is at all within my power,” she answered solemnly. “I will come back.”
She had not allowed herself to think that far head. To indulge in idle fantasies of where they might live, where she and Grimult would call a home of their own. He had a family to consider as well, one that must miss him fiercely and a farm that required tending.
But despite it all, she would return here, if only for a time. To know her parents.
And Grimult could not fault her for that, surely.
Amarys took a shaky breath, and clutched her close once again. “You will do what you must,” she breathed out, perhaps more for herself than for Penryn. “You are far braver than I.”
Was it bravery? She had no idea. Perhaps more rightly, it was
