Page 72 of Bittersweet & Strange

“I would insist on giving you coin,” he says. “The thought of you down there starving does not sit well with me.”

I don’t understand why hearing that hurts. I’ve imagined this moment so many times that it became something I could almost touch. In every version, the doors opened and I ran. I climbed onto Bramble and never looked over my shoulder. I found my father. I went home.

None of those imaginings included standing here unable to follow him out the door.

Rhys walks toward it.

I let him go.

He steps into the corridor and continues down it without reaching for the handle. There’s no familiar scrape of wood against stone. No heavy thud as the door closes. No metallic click of the lock sliding into place.

The doorway remains wide open.

I stare at it, then slowly look around the room.

My room.

I don’t know when I started thinking of it that way. The bed is still rumpled from where I slept. A few of my clothes hang over the chair near the fire. The table where he has placed hundreds of meals sits under the window. The fire burns steadily in the hearth because Rhys made certain I was never cold inside these walls.

I look toward the open doorway again. Nothing is stopping me from walking through it. Nothing is stopping me from going home.

I should feel relieved.

Instead, I ache.

I’m finally getting everything I wanted, and as I stand in the middle of the room that has imprisoned me for months, I have no idea why leaving it suddenly feels like losing something.

29

Rhys

The village crests over the hill, and beside me, Boone immediately sits straighter in his saddle. Neither of us has spoken since we left the castle this morning. Every so often, I catch him looking in my direction, but the moment our eyes meet, he turns away and fixes his attention on the road.

The cart rumbles behind us, pulled by the second horse I use whenever I make this journey. Its wooden wheels bounce over the increasingly dry road, and the empty crates in the back knock against one another whenever we hit a rut. By the time I return to the mountain, they’ll be filled with everything the castle cannot provide for itself.

The change in temperature has happened slowly enough that it’s hard to notice at first. The snow became thinner as we descended until white drifts survived only in the shadows under the thickest trees. Eventually those disappeared too. I removed my gloves some time ago, and my coat now hangs open, allowing the warmer air inside.

Boone still wears everything he left the castle in.

He slows Bramble when we reach the top of the final hill and simply sits there. I stop beside him, following his stare toward the village spread out below us under a bright sky. Green fields surround clusters of houses and barns, thick forests stretch toward the horizon behind them, and gardens fill the spaces beside several homes. Laundry moves lazily on lines strung between wooden posts. Horses graze in fenced pastures where the grass reaches nearly to their knees.

It looks nothing like the world we left this morning.

Boone’s hands tighten around Bramble’s reins until the leather creaks. He stares down at the village without blinking, his shoulders rigid inside his coat. The longer he sits there, the shallower his breathing becomes. I expected him to be impatient once home came into view. Instead, he looks like a man considering whether to turn his horse around.

“You wanted to come here,” I remind him.

“I know I did.”

Nothing else follows.

He nudges Bramble forward, and I follow.

The warmth becomes miserable as we descend the final stretch toward the village. Boone finally pushes his hood from his head and leaves it hanging against his shoulders. His hair is flattened from hours inside it, and he runs his fingers through it once, then quickly returns his hand to the reins.

The first houses appear around us, and Boone lowers his head.

A woman carrying a basket walks along the opposite side of the road. Boone notices her first. He turns his face away and pulls his hood partially forward again, keeping his eyes fixed on Bramble’s mane until we pass her.