Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  Rhia drew away a few inches, pushed back his light brown hair, and gazed at his face. “Marek, I can see you.”

  “I can see you, too.” He kissed her with a hunger that matched her own.

  She broke away. “Why? Why are you—”

  “Visible? Because I came for you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The night we set out from Kalindos, three days ago—” his breath came fast “—the sun went down, and there I was. Because I came, because I’d give my life to protect you. I guess Wolf decided I was finally worthy.”

  She hugged him hard again, then let go suddenly. “What do you mean, ‘the night we set out’?”

  “There’s a hundred of us. We disobeyed the Council’s orders and came.”

  “A hundred?” Nearly a third of Kalindos. “Where are they?”

  “Meeting with your Hawk right now. Coranna came, of course, and Elora and many of the Cats and first-phase Wolves.” His words spilled over one another. “The other second-phase Wolves stayed behind with their families. But all of us hunters can shoot, though most not as well as Alanka. She told me where to find you tonight, by the way, and for me to hurry.”

  Rhia was still pondering the ramifications of the Kalindon force. “The Descendants know nothing of Wolves—”

  “So we’re your secret weapon.” He gave her a sly grin.

  She caressed his cheek, rough with the stubble of a long journey. “Marek, thank you. This could mean everything.”

  He flinched as her hand came near his left eye. She turned his head toward the bright moon. One side of his face was swollen, and a deep cut slashed the skin above his eyebrow.

  She took a step back. “Skaris.”

  Marek’s gaze grew guarded. “I went to his home to—talk to him. Skaris knocked out the guard, overpowered me and took off. I followed, but he was faster.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “The next day—” he hesitated “—at the bottom of a deep gorge near Mount Beros.”

  She swallowed, afraid of her next question. “Was it suicide?”

  He spoke slowly, as if uttering carefully chosen words. “It looked like it.”

  She decided to probe no further, wanting to hear neither lies nor the truth.

  Marek filled his hands with her hair and kissed her again. “Will you forgive me?”

  Rhia’s breath stopped. “For what?”

  “For leaving your side to avenge you. It was stupid. I could have been killed or arrested, when I should have been helping you.”

  “I understand.” She locked her gaze on his. “If anyone hurt you, I’d do the same.”

  She didn’t say, “I’d kill for you, too,” words that would acknowledge Skaris’s possible fate out loud, but it was what she meant. Inside, she begged Crow not to take Marek in the upcoming battle. If she lost this man to death, it would be the Spirit Himself who would taste her revenge.

  When Rhia brought Marek home, Alanka chattered endlessly, telling her Wolf-brother everything she’d learned about Asermos and warfare.

  “They have these long bows for battle—” she held her hand high off the floor as they sat around the table “—that shoot really, really far. And the arrows are heavier. It’s hard to get used to, but we won’t exactly be hunting turkey out there.” Her smile flickered off as the concept of killing a person became less abstract.

  Tereus entered the house then, home from a late meeting with Galen and the Kalindon arrivals. He welcomed Marek like an old friend. They became acquainted over a pitcher of ale while Rhia and Alanka fed and watered the hounds.

  Rhia’s father joined her in the stable as she checked the ponies a final time before bed.

  “I told Marek he could sleep out here in the stable.” He handed Rhia a soft blanket. “The hayloft is more comfortable than the floor in the house.”

  She hung the blanket over a rung of the loft’s ladder. “Thank you for letting him stay with us.” She looped a thin rope through the latch of the gray mare’s stall door. The wily pony had a knack for escape.

  Tereus sat on a bale of hay. “He told me about his mate and child.”

  Rhia nodded as she tied a double knot in the rope. The revelation didn’t surprise her; people opened up to her father. More than anyone she knew, he listened without judging.

  “The well of Marek’s devotion runs deep,” he said. “You need that.”

  “Because I’m difficult?” Her teasing grin made him laugh.

  “I lived with your brothers for five years before you came along. Compared to them, you’re a lamb.” His voice turned serious. “But your path is a hard one, and you need someone who will remind you that this world is a good place to be.”

  She remembered the promise she had made to Crow, that she would hold on to her love of life even in the face of despair. “I do. The Other Side is so beautiful and peaceful. I think about it every day.”

  His gaze mixed gratitude with sadness, and she knew he was imagining Mayra in that realm, as Rhia often did. “For you it’s the Other Side,” he said, “and for me it’s the dream world. We Birds love our wings so much, sometimes we forget our feet and where they belong.”

  She sat next to him on the hay bale and watched his face in the lantern light. “I miss her.”

  “Yes.” Tereus seemed unable to say more, so he took her hand and kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “In the—?” She understood suddenly—he did not expect her to return to the house that night.

  A short while later, she and Marek climbed into the hayloft. The air was stuffy, so she opened a small window under the eaves.

  “It’s not a tree house,” she said, “but at least we’re sleeping up high. Sorry about the horse smell.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll get used to it eventually.”

  She wondered what he meant by “eventually.” Over the course of the night? During his short stay in Asermos while the battle raged? Or longer? She had been so happy to see him alive—to see him at all—that it only now occurred to her to wonder how long he would stay, how long she would stay and if they would stay together.

  He spread the blanket over a deep cushion of hay and sat cross-legged upon it. She mirrored his position, and he took her hands. After a long silence, he cleared his throat.

  “I spoke with your father.”

  “He told me.”

  “He did?” Marek’s face showed surprise, then indignation. “Why would he do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell you.”

  She shook her head. “Tell me what?”

  “Oh. He didn’t tell you.” He chided himself with a slight smile. “I’ll start over.”

  “Please.”

  He took a deep breath. “I asked him about marrying you.”

  A glow of joy flared inside Rhia, and she wanted to throw her arms around him and shout, “Yes! Yes!” but she realized he hadn’t actually asked her to marry him yet. She kept her face impassive and said, “Why? You wanted his permission?”

  Marek blanched at her lack of reaction, then recovered. “No, I wanted his opinion.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you would say yes.”

  “And what was his opinion?”

  “Tell me your answer,” he said, “and I’ll tell you his.”

  “Ask me the question, and I’ll tell you my answer.”

  Marek laughed. “Is there any game you can’t win?”

  “If that’s the question, the answer is definitely ‘no.’” She got up as if to leave.

  He grabbed her waist and pulled her down into the soft hay beside him. “Hold still so I can ask you to marry me.”

  “Hurry up, then.”

  He took her hands. “Rhia, I want to spend every day of my life with you. I want your face to be the last thing I see before I sleep and the first thing I see when I wake. If you can stand to do the same with me, then we should marry.”

  She simply looke
d at him.

  “Each other,” he added.

  “I’m still waiting for the question.”

  He molded her left hand into a fist and pantomimed it shoving a dagger into his heart. Then he sobered, his eyes still glittering. “Will you marry me?”

  She gazed at his face and thought that if she lived to be seventy and traveled as far as the Southern Sea, she’d never behold anything as beautiful as Marek in the moonlight.

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, seemingly with relief as much as happiness, then kissed her—softly at first, then with growing passion, which she returned. He eased her down to lie on the hay, taking care not to jostle her sore shoulder.

  She placed her palm on his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss it.

  “I love you,” she said.

  His eyes opened to meet hers with alarm. “I haven’t said it, have I?”

  “Not with words.”

  “I’m sorry.” He spread his body against Rhia’s so that every part of him touched a part of her. “I love you.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And I’m not just saying that because I want you so much I’m going to burst into flames.”

  She laughed, then suddenly drew in a breath.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Her heart pounded at the thought of broaching the topic. “When I left Kalindos, I was in a hurry.”

  “And?”

  “And I forgot my wild carrot seed. I haven’t been taking it.”

  “Oh.”

  The silence stretched between them. “What should we do?” she asked him.

  He lifted her chin and kissed her softly. “How do you feel about having a baby?”

  She gave him the only honest answer. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like a child myself, but after all I’ve been through, sometimes I feel eighty instead of eighteen.”

  “I’m glad you’re not eighty.”

  “What about you?”

  He hesitated, but when he spoke, his voice didn’t tremble. “I know that I want to have a child with you, to watch it grow up as we grow old.” He sighed and propped his head on his arm. “The question is when. When becoming a parent isn’t scary anymore? When the war is over? When life is perfect?”

  She was relieved that he shared her ambivalence. “How does anyone know when they’re ready?”

  “What about your Aspect? Can you safely move to the next phase?”

  “Can I? Yes. I’ve had these powers for ten years. They’ve just grown stronger since my Bestowing. But do I want to? That’s another question.” She hesitated. “If I become a second-phase Crow, I’ll need more training. I’ll have to go back to Kalindos.”

  His brow creased in a deep frown. “And you don’t want to?”

  “Not yet.” She gestured to the barn around them. “My family is here. They need me. And I need them.”

  “More than you need me?”

  “Why do you say that?” Her face heated. “Marek, if we get married, wouldn’t we live here?”

  He rolled onto his back and ran a hand through his hair. “I’d be the only one of my kind in the whole village.”

  “So would I.”

  “But you have to get used to that. Crows are rare. Wolves need a pack.”

  “I’ll never get used to being Crow,” she said, more sharply than intended. “And you can be part of a new pack—with me and my family. You can hunt with my brothers.” If they survive the battle.

  “It’s not the same.”

  They lay silent for a long moment, staring at the beams of the barn’s roof. Finally Rhia spoke, “You knew all along that we would come to this, that someday I’d return to Asermos with everything Coranna taught me. That was the reason I came to Kalindos in the first place.”

  “I know.” His voice hardened with petulance.

  “This is my home, Marek. I love your village, I love the forest, but this is where I belong.”

  He drew a deep, shaky breath, then let it out slowly. “Then it’s where I belong.”

  She turned to him. “You mean it?”

  He put his arm around her waist and drew her close. “I do.” His eyes were sad. “Just don’t expect me never to be homesick.”

  Before either of them could mention the fact that in a few days, Asermos might cease to exist, she kissed him. Their mouths meshed, warm and soft, and he pulled at the hem of her blouse until she let him tug it over her head.

  Her dread of the future dissipated with the spread of his hands over her skin, a sensation as familiar and precious as breath itself. She threaded her fingers through his soft hair and savored the way it filled her hands, thick and long, grown nearly to his shoulders now. She guided his mouth lower until his lips met the curve of her breast. In the distance a chorus of wolves howled, accentuating the silent stillness in the barn. Rhia shivered, but no longer in fear.

  Marek’s mouth hovered just over her nipple, tendering a warm promise of pleasure. She bit back a plea, which would only make him tease her longer. Every nerve waited, taut as a bowstring.

  Finally his tongue flicked, once, and her back arched. He grasped her waist, keeping her exactly where he wanted her.

  “Patience,” he whispered. “Even if we can’t make love, I want to make it last.”

  Marek drew off the rest of her clothes, sweeping his fingertips and tongue across each new space of bare skin, pausing at her feet to treat each toe as if it were a rare treasure. He made his way back up, and Rhia’s muscles melted as his breath warmed the skin between her thighs. An eternity passed while she waited, hands clenched with anticipation.

  Then he began.

  Slow as honey his mouth flowed against her. It knew where to find what it sought, but it teased and dawdled, until she released her frustration in a laugh that was almost a sob.

  As if in reply, his tongue’s tip found the center of her bliss and caressed it again and again with a light, firm stroke that carried her up one of the highest peaks she’d ever approached—then left her there, balanced on the edge.

  “You wouldn’t dare stop,” she hissed.

  “Not if I want to live.”

  He slipped one finger inside her, then another, curving them into the heart of her swollen fullness. Her moans pitched higher as his mouth returned to the place where she needed it, the pleasure more intense for its brief interruption. She wished they were alone in the cold forest again, out of the range of others’ ears.

  Rhia shuddered again and again in a haze of bright, burning ecstasy that flowed into every corner of her body. She almost begged him to stop, but knew it would be futile. At last he drew away to kiss and caress her legs and hips until she returned to earth.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He obeyed. She sat up and reached to untie his shirt. He restrained her hand for a moment, then relented. She drew the shirt over his head and gasped.

  His chest and torso were bruised and bandaged. Even in the dim light she saw more than a hint of Marek’s days-old injuries. Skaris couldn’t have done such damage during their brief encounter at his home. The truth stared at her: Marek had hunted the Bear, fought him hand to hand, and won.

  Her finger traced the largest bandage, over his right side.

  “I did it for you,” he said.

  She struggled to keep the tears from her voice. “I never asked you to kill for me.”

  “Then I did it for me, so I could sleep knowing that the man who wanted you dead could never hurt you again.”

  She thought of the Descendant who had come much closer to murdering her than Skaris had. “You can’t protect me from every danger.”

  “And you can’t stop me from trying.”

  Marek should have died; Skaris was stronger, faster and in every other respect a better fighter. She should have lost him.

  “If you don’t stop staring at my wounds,” he said, “I’ll make myself invisible.”

  “No.” It was the last thing she could bear. She tugged at his trousers, unfasten
ing them. “Let me see you. I want to see all of you.”

  He lay back on the hay, never taking his eyes off her, as she finished undressing him. Though she had seen him naked in the daylight many times, she relished the sight of him stretched out, ready for her, in the near-darkness.

  When she took him in her mouth, Marek’s groan was so sharp it was nearly a snarl. The sound of it quickened her own desire. He swelled and hardened between her lips. His hands grasped her hair—hands that had found their prey and taken its life in a fury born of love and loyalty. Spirits forgive her, but the thought of it made her want him more.

  Rhia let go, then crawled over him to stare down at his flustered face.

  “You’re not stopping,” he said.

  “Not if I want to live.” She lowered her hips and drove him deep inside her.

  His eyes flared with surprise, which vanished in the next instant. He clutched her body and turned them over in one motion. He pinned her left arm over her head but left the right one free, even now remembering her injury while reason abandoned him.

  Marek gave himself to her with hard, fierce thrusts, plunging her deeper into the cushion of hay. She gloried in his feral power, that it was hers alone and always would be. He muffled a roar against her neck, and when his release came, he sank his teeth into the tender skin above her collarbone. She gasped, and met his orgasm with a sudden, sharp one of her own.

  He collapsed upon her but did not withdraw, instead hugging her hips to his as he rolled to the side with an incoherent oath. They lay with limbs entangled, muscles trembling.

  “Are we still alive?” she asked finally.

  “You would know.” His breath came in rough pants as he kissed her hungrily. “Rhia, I love you so much. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  She didn’t need to see his eyes to know the truth of his words, but in their blue-gray depths she found the certainty she sought. Marek would anchor her to this world. For him, she would gladly spurn the Other Side and its inhuman peace.

  They kissed endlessly as the short summer night drifted on. Eventually he stirred within her, and they made love again, slowly, letting the Spirits work Their will upon them.