Page 25 of Strange Grace
But nobody else can see.
Nona strokes her thumbs along her prickly almost-son’s temples, then lets her hands slide away from his face. “Go outside, boy, and I’ll send Rhun along in a moment.”
He obeys.
•••
DAWN PASSES, AND NEITHER MAIRWENnor Rhun wake, having finally fallen hard and heavy into the first real sleep either have experienced in days. Mair wakes first, and suddenly. Something in the kitchen snapped her out of dull dreaming. The mattress crunches as she shifts and blinks against bright sunlight. She slowly stretches her arm around Rhun’s chest, flexes her toes, rolls her neck, and snuggles deeper against him. His breath puffs the hair at the top of her head, and one of his arms curls around her waist, pinned beneath her.
She lays a hand over his heart. A few curled black hairs accent the shape of his muscles, and she traces their path below his collarbone and down his stomach. Rhun’s hand around her tightens, and she stops moving, lifting her gaze to his still sleeping face. The sunlight gilds his short eyelashes, and an ache of fear clenches in her belly.
Swallowing it away as best she can, Mairwen glances around. Wool blankets hang on the walls to lessen the drafts from the old stone. The cream and gray brighten the entire room. He’s tied blessings and bone amulets to one of them, on the eastern wall. A trunk set in the corner holds his few clothes beside the leather jerkin and hunting hood spread over a stool. His axes lean against the trunk, his bow and quiver, as well as pieces of unmade arrows on the floor, including three white feathers she brought him, salvaged from the body of a swan in the shambles.
The sunlight brings it all clear. Sunlight from those narrow south-facing windows. Mairwen jerks, clutching at Rhun, who wakes instantly.
“Mair?” he says thickly.
“It islate,” she whispers.
Just then, the heavy blanket tied across Rhun’s bedroom door snaps aside. His mother stands with her arms out majestically, a fierce glare shaping her entire face. “Idiot children! You’re late, Rhun. Get up. Arthur’s waiting outside to go with you. And you”—Nona sweeps her eyes down Mairwen’s thinly covered body—“you’re due at your mother’s house to sew the saint shirt with the rest of us.”
And Nona Sayer is gone again. The blanket falls hard behind her.
Rhun rolls out of bed swiftly. Mair grips the corner of the blanket, sticking it and her hands under her chin. As he strips off his braies, she stares, lips parted, at all his long lines. Rhun, naked as a babe, throws open the trunk and digs in. He holds up a wad of cloth. “I know I’ll receive the saint’s shirt this afternoon, but I should wear fresh underthings to run in, don’t you think?”
Mairwen attempts a smile, though teasing is the last thing she wishes for today. “That’s what you call fresh? Balled up in your trunk?”
Rhun laughs, lighthearted as the sun. Mair longs to lose the weight on her chest too. When he stands, facing her and entirely naked crown to toes, it’s her voice she loses instead. He steps into the woolen braies a leg at a time, smiling a promise at her, and straightens, tying them fast at his waist.
She slips out of the bed and kneels before him. She ties the soft braies at his knees, skimming her fingers against his calves. When she finishes she peers up, leaning back on her heels. She smiles bright and clean and with everything of bounty she can make it. None of her shadows, none of her bristling. “I’ll help you with your stockings and the rest, too.”
Together they dress him, in dark wool and leather, tying and buckling until he’s fit to go into the forest. Mairwen slips the lacing of her bodice free and uses it to help him tie back his curls.
He kisses her mouth, and her heartbeat slows, regulating itself to the central rhythm of Three Graces: the Slaughter Moon, the bargain, the Bone Tree, and Rhun Sayer.
Rhun picks up her skirt and holds it open for her to get into, then buttons it for her. She pulls her bodice over her arms, but leaves it open on the front for lack of laces. Rhun wraps her square shawl over her shoulders, then finds her boots and helps her on with them.
From the kitchen, Nona Sayer roars, “Out, both of you, now!”
But Rhun takes Mairwen’s hand. “When the saint comes for you tonight, will you dance with him?”
“You know I will,” she says. With that, she gathers her shawl across her undressed chest and ducks out of his room, wishing she could make herself the saint.
Nona leans against her uneven kitchen table, brow lifted expectantly. Mairwen thinks she should tell Nona that her son wasgoodand broke no rules, even at the urging of the saint’s own daughter, but all she does is hold herself tall. “Good morning,” she says tightly as she leaves.
Nona Sayer snorts. “I’ll catch up to you, girl.”
Mairwen winces at the bright sunlight as she pushes out of the house and stands there, gazing down the slope of yard that ends in thick mountain woods. She can’t see any of the valley from here—for that, one must be up on that coveted second story—but the mountain trees are colorful enough, full of jewel-toned leaves and rustling shadows. Overhead the sky is perfect blue with sheer clouds. The air’s near balmy for so late in the season.
Several paces away Arthur Couch sits up from the grass. Leaves cling to his spiky blond hair. His look of surprise pinches as he sees her and stands slowly. “What are you doing here?”
Tightening her shawl around her, Mairwen clenches her jaw. “What do you think?”
“Dressed like that.” Arthur bites out every word.
“Jealous?” she asks.
Arthur’s lips part and he stares at her as if she’s both completely right and completely wrong. Mair pushes past him and starts down the path.
