She set her posture a little straighter, holding her food carefully in her lap and allowed them to look. She did not know what Harlow was telling them, of her relation to Rezen or of her place as their Lightkeep, but in either way she would bring no shame to the role.
And for the first time, she wished she had kept some of her red clothing, needing the symbol now more than ever.
She tried to find any cues that she was being summoned, that the party-leader required an audience with an actual witness rather than the leader of her clan.
Bows were exchanged, and Harlow turned, a sharp whistle coming from lips with the aid of a crooked finger. “We move on!” he instructed. The few that had not finished shoved the remainder of their meals into their mouths rather than lose out on their sustenance, and Penryn watched as Harlow came toward her.
“Trouble?” she asked, heart quickening with worry.
His lips quirked even if his eyes remained serious. “Not in the way you fear, I think,” Harlow answered, but he shook his head, refusing to answer more.
And she felt the glances still on her, the familiar prickling of her skin alerting her to their attentions.
Perhaps the trickles through the clans would begin sooner than she realised.
She pushed away the unease, embracing only gladness in its wake. They needed to know. Needed to see to the protection of their peoples.
But she feared the panic that may ensue.
For that held a kind of danger of its own.
“If there was no Lightkeep,” she mused aloud, uncertain if Grimult would be able to hear her from the angle of her head. “Would the clans war with each other instead?”
Their ways were different, their unification tenuous as they surrendered their sons as initiates. Only for a time, returning strong and disciplined, an asset to each clan regardless of whether or not he was chosen for the ultimate position.
“A worthy question,” Grimult replied, and Penryn shook herself, turning so she might look at him better. “One that I am grateful is not for us to have to answer.”
Penryn bit her lip, uncertain that was true.
In her heart, she knew that things would not be the same again. That they should not be, regardless of what the sages would twist and assure.
But what that left instead, she did not know.
And that devastation could be even greater than one family losing a child for the sake of duty.
She did not know if the conclusion was her own or had simply been placed there by the sages long before, and she rested her head against Grimult’s shoulder, exhausted simply at the prospect of it. How was one to guess what was right for an entire people?
She had not the least idea.
And perhaps she was thinking a great deal too much at all.
Her task was a straightforward one, and it was not for her to embellish. She had to make it through the doors, had to reach the council, had to convince them to listen before dismissing her entirely.
Or turning their swords on her before secrets could come seeping from her lips.
The thought made her shiver, and not from the cold that whipped around her in an unrelenting force.
She would arrive chilled through, and weary too, but there was little to be done about it.
“Is your home nearby?” she found herself asking, visions already filling her head of at least laying eyes upon it before they made their way to the keep itself. It was an unfair desire, most especially when she realised how painful it would be for Grim to see and not be allowed to tarry after so long away.
“No,” Grimult answered, and there was no mistaking the wistfulness, even as the winds carried his voice away from her. “It would be quite a distance up the coast yet, then inland even more so.”
A trek for his family to have made before the Journey. All to give their blessings.
And their goodbyes.
A knot tugged at her belly, discomforted at the word. The last thing she wanted was more partings. But her life seemed filled with those, and she wanted them for Grimult even less.
“You will see them again,” she declared, uncertain how she might ensure such a thing, but needing him to hear it all the same.
She did not like his dim, indulgent smile in return.
“I hope so,” he murmured back, as unsatisfactory an answer as he had ever given her.
If he believed that, that it was merely a hope rather than something truly within the realm of possibility, what were they doing?
If they had been travelling alone, she would have urged them to land. Would have gripped his face firmly between her hands so he could not shy away.
But they were not.
And she could not.
So she settled for hitching herself higher, her lips close to his ear. “I want more for us,” she told him fiercely. “I want the families we have known, and the one we have yet to make. And we will do what we must to see that is so.”
She pulled back, eyeing him closely. There was the burn there, the one that simmered when she spoke of a future that he coveted as well, and he leaned forward so quickly that she did not expect the kiss he placed there, might have chided him for it so open where they should any have turned to see...
Only to have him pull back again just as quickly.
It was good to push away the uncertainty, the fear, with the voicing of such desires. to remind herself that there was no room for despair.
Not when there was so much she wanted to experience.
The shoreline abandoned them soon enough, cresting to another cliffside, this time open dwellings visible from the air. Suspicious faces peeked out, some
