Page 56 of Strange Grace
It makes Rhun snort helpless laughter. Arthur lets go.
But there’s a shimmer of tears in Rhun’s eyes when he opens them. “I feel like it, though, Arthur. I feel lost. I should be telling Mairwen this. It’s the sort of thing I would confess to her, not you. I always wanted you to think I was impervious to—to hurt. To damage. I wanted you to think you couldn’t hurt me, no matter what, so you’d stay by my side.”
Arthur hisses. “I’m such an ass. And a terrible friend.”
He shakes his head. “I asked too much from you.”
“No, never. You never did. It was just... love you wanted, Rhun. I thought giving it to you was weak, or made me weak at least. I’m the ass for holding it against you.”
Rhun eyes Arthur, frowning. Why can’t he remember what happened to change Arthur? It couldn’t have merely been death. He’d give anything to remember. Rather remember Arthur than everything else that happened in the Devil’s Forest.
The two young men—so much older today than yesterday—don’t realize for a long moment that their breathing has aligned. Rhun lifts his right wrist, and Arthur mirrors him, until they hold the binding bracelets together, not quite touching but existing in the same tingling air, pressing warmth against each other. Wind shifts the golden grass around their ankles, murmuring along the rolling hills of the valley with the smell of smoke and clear winter ice. Arthur opens his hand and Rhun follows this time, and they put their palms together, sucking in air at the same time at the strange sensation dancing down their wrists along the lines of their veins.
“It’s like a handfasting,” Arthur says, but the scorn does not reach his eyes. His gaze hooks into Rhun’s, and Rhun almost feels something. His breath hitches.
“You kissed me in the forest,” Rhun whispers before he can stop himself.
Arthur startles, frowning. “I don’t remember.”
Despair is a thing Rhun never thought he’d become used to.
“But Ibelieveyou,” Arthur continues ferociously. “I walked out of that forest alive, Rhun, and I feel that way. Alive. On fire. I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You weren’t afraid of me.”
Arthur eyes him, incredulous. “I was afraid of what you were, and what I thought I was.”
Rhun shrugs one shoulder, feeling dull. “You’ve always been on fire.”
And then here comes Mairwen, hurrying toward them in an ugly gray and brown outfit. Rhun thinks there must be something symbolic about none of them in their own clothes, like everything they were before is so changed nothing fits. It’s Arthur who reaches his other hand to Mair, holding it out as she marches down the hill from the pasture, speeds up to skip and stumble, her own hand reaching until their fingers skim together. Rhun takes her other hand and reels back at the great clap of energy uniting them suddenly.
Their hands grip tighter, and Mairwen gasps, grimacing as if in pain. Between their feet the grass sprouts green, feathering with new spring seeds.
“Mair?” Rhun asks.
Arthur pulls her nearer, so the young men hold her between them, all three pairs of hands still clasped. She shakes her head hard, eyes shut, mouth tightly drawn. Rhun and Arthur share a fearful glance over her hair. Rhun shrugs. Arthur shakes his head slightly.
They wait, watching each other and watching her, watching the thin tracks of clouds stretching in from the west. Rhun is grounded, heels and toes firm to the earth, and it’s good and right here with the two of them, hands held, even if everything outside their circle is broken and pockmarked with secrets.
—they climb together onto the crumbling altar, hands held, all of them trembling as the branches of the Bone Tree tremble overhead, and the skulls rattle, teeth clattering in nasty laughter—
Rhun grunts at the memory.
Mairwen’s head falls back. Color returns to her lips. His own skin is over-warm, but pleasantly so. Like sunshine and laughter. There are three tiny purple flowers flaring teardrop petals at Mair’s feet.
“Violas,” Mairwen says, blinking, her eyes unfocused, then, “I have to ask Baeddan about the Bone Tree.”
“WhereisBaeddan?” Rhun asks, eyeing the pasture hill behind Mair, from which she came.
She frowns. “Inside?”
“No,” Rhun says, and Arthur says, “He wasn’t with you?”
“Oh no.” Mairwen releases both of their hands and turns in a rather frantic circle. “Where would he go?”
Arthur snorts. “On a murderous rampage? Or skipping though the fields of sheep, singing old shepherd songs? Who can tell with that one?”
Rhun says, “Home.”
