'Take mine,' she said now. 'He is one of Skyracer's get, and runs in his stall if he is not given enough running outside it. Lissar went that way'-she said, and pointed, her hand a little unsteady, like her tongue on the new name-'but a few minutes ago. I lost her in the trees, but she cannot yet have gone far.'
'My thanks,' said Ossin, meaning it, accepting the reins she held out to him; she said no word further, but her face was a little less drawn than he felt his own to be.
He would have said one word more to comfort her, could he have thought of one.
But he could not, and he settled into the saddle and gave the horse his head. Trust Lilac to have persuaded Redthorn to let her take one of the most promising young horses in the king's stables on a page's errand. The colt seized the bit and flew.
And so he burst through the veil of trees into the first wide swathe of farmland, and there, at last, he saw what he sought; and he saw too that they were tired, weary nearly unto death, although he could not say for sure where this knowledge came from, for they were all still running, running as lightly as Moon on water.
But his heart was sick in him that she should run herself to death to escape him, for he was sure that she knew he would follow; and almost he took the bit from the colt and turned him away from their quarry. But he remembered the look on Lissar's face when she had turned away from him, and remembered too what else she ran from, what she had faced and broken by her own strength before the eyes of everyone in the throne room, and then he closed his legs around the colt's sides a little more firmly, and leaned a little lower over his flying mane. For he knew also that if he looked into Lissar's eyes now, now that the past had burned away, if he looked into those clear eyes and still saw a despair that could not be healed, he would return and kill her father; and he needed to know if he must do this or not.
The colt caught up with the dogs only a few steps before the first of the real woodlands began; the cob would never have got him there in time. But it abruptly occurred to Ossin that he did not know what to do now that he had come abreast of them. He could not hold them captive; they could, if they chose, duck around him and dodge into the cover of the trees after all; and he would not be able to follow them closely, a man on horseback, through the undergrowth. He could, he supposed, seize Lissar herself somehow.... But he would not. He hoped she would decide to stop of her own will. She did. She stopped like a branch breaking, and stood swaying; several of the dogs flopped down immediately and lay panting on their sides.
Ossin dismounted, pulled the reins over the colt's head and dropped them; he'd had enough of running for one morning, and would perhaps stay as he was trained.
'Lissar,' said the prince.
'Go away,' she said, between great mouthsful of air.
'No,' he said. 'Don't send me away. I let you leave me the first time because I thought that was what you wanted-that what you wanted didn't include me. But. . .'
'I do want you,' she said, her voice still weak with running, and with what else had happened that day. And as she stood she began to tremble, and her teeth rattled together; and it was all Ossin could do to stand his ground, not to touch her. 'I had forgotten that I have thought of you every hour since the night of the ball; I had convinced myself that I thought of you only every day. I remembered the truth of it when I saw you today, standing beside ... your sister.' She was too tired not to speak the truth; having him before her, himself, the warm breathing reality of him, struck down her last weak defenses; she thought she had never been so tired, and yet the strength of her love for the man who stood before her was not a whit lessened by her body's exhaustion. Her voice had dwindled away to little more than a whisper. 'But it does not matter. I am. . . not whole. I am no wife for you, Ossin.'
'I don't care about-' he began; but she made an impatient gesture.
'I don't mean ... only that I have no maidenhead to offer a husband on our wedding night. I am hurt ... in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hands and eyes and breath are a part of me.'
Ossin looked at her, and felt the hope draining out of his heart, for the red and gold were gone from her. Even her yellow eyes were closed, and her face was as pale as chalk, and nearly as lifeless. Only her glinting dark hair held its color. 'Then you do not love me?' he said in a voice small and sad.
Her eyes flew open and she looked at him as if he had insulted her. 'Love you?
Of course I love you. Ask Lilac, or Hela or Jobe, or-or Longsword. Ask anyone I ever spoke your name to last summer.'
'Then marry me,' said Ossin. 'For I love you, and I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart. I-I was there, this morning, when you when you showed the scars you wear, and I accept that you bear them, and will always bear them, as-as Ash bears hers,' for even in his preoccupation he had seen and, unlike Lilac, recognized what he saw of Lissar's seventh hound.
'It is not like that,' she whispered. 'It is not like that.'
'Is it not?' said Ossin. 'How is it not?' And in his voice, strangely, was the sound of running water, and of bells.
There was a little pause, while they looked at each other, and Ossin knew that it could go either way. He understood that she did not believe that last summer was more important than the truth he had heard spoken at such cost only an hour ago; and he could think of nothing he might say to change her mind, if his love could not reach her, if she counted the love in her own heart as nothing.
And then Ash moved forward from Lissar's side, and leaned against Ossin's leg, and sighed. And they both looked down at her. Almost Ossin held his breath, afraid that this was the last stroke, the final fragment that would produce Lissar's decision, whole and implacable and-the wrong one, the one Ossin feared. And so he broke into speech, saying anything, wanting to prevent Lissar from putting that last piece into its place and presenting him with his fate. But his tongue betrayed him, betrayed the fact that he could not think of life without her, now that he had her again, now that he had caught her when she had run away-now that he had heard her say that she loved him. 'This is the Ash I sent you when your mother died,' he said, 'and some day I want to hear why she grew a long coat, as none of my dogs has ever done and as I as their arrogant breeder am inclined to count an insult to my skill, and why she then lost it again, and what happened since I saw you last that left this mark in her side.'
Lissar's eyes were fixed on her dog, who had left her to lean against her lover; but then she lifted her eyes
