Page 148 of A Heart So Green
“And in return?” He made no move to sit, looming over me with ink-black hair falling into his eyes. “What do you wish from me?”
“Your next full moon.” I uncorked the bottle and poured two measures into the cups. “The one after that. And, if the story pleases you, the one after that as well.”
“That is many nights,” he observed, “for the telling of one story.”
“Yet it is less than I hoped for.”
Perhaps Irian detected the sorrow spreading like aching roots below the warble of my voice. Perhaps he was simply bored and wished for diversion. Either way, he folded his long legs beneath him and sat beside me. The lough rippled with a crisp breeze as he lifted the cup to his lips, the faint scar puckering as he drank deep. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then reached forthe bottle. I reached for it at the same instant, and when our fingers collided, a spark sang along my arm to burst like starlight against the cage of my heart.
His storm-gray eyes slashed to mine. His pupils blew wide, emotion savage as love or despair or longing spasming across his face before smoothing away. He dropped his gaze, curling his fingers around the neck of the bottle.
“Go on,” he said, as he poured himself more wine. “Tell your tale.”
I took a deep breath. “Once, in a time of realms separated by war, and princesses torn apart at birth—”
“That is a very dramatic way to start a story,” he interrupted, sardonic.
A smile crept over my face as tremulous warmth bloomed in my chest.
“Oh, all right. I suppose I ought to keep this story simple.” I lifted my own cup to my lips and took a deep draught. The wine was bitter as heartbreak and sweet as the hope beyond it. It tasted like evil and good… light and dark… and all the gray shadows lurking between. It tasted of all the things I’d lost—and, perhaps, all the things I had yet to find. But most of all, it tasted like a promise. “She should not have drunk the blackberry wine…”
