“But I do now,” she said more softly, still holding his gaze. “And I can see that you do too, even if you think you don’t.”
He frowned.
“Dagan,” she explained. “And that must’ve been so hard after losing Kass the way you did. To be with someone else, even if it’s just casual. But it’s not, is it?”
Hendrik swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Probably is. We haven’t…it’s new.”
She squeezed his hand again. “You’re not a casual kind of guy, Hen. You should tell him that.”
He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. He would prefer to delay that particular conversation with Dagan as long as possible, considering not just Dagan’s facility with flirting and fucking, but also his history. Was it even fair to want someone like Dagan all to himself?
Piret went on, “Or maybe you are, now. Or you want to try to be. That’s a choice, too.” She took her hand back and sipped at her ale.
“He…” Hendrik wasn’t sure how to articulate the thoughts swirling in his mind just then, so he paused and drank too. “He likes to spread himself around, I think.”
She chuckled. “Well, if I looked like that, I probably would too.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said automatically.
Her dark eyebrows went up.
“I’m queer, not blind,” he protested. It was true, anyhow; always a little flushed and wild-looking even in her guard’s tabard, with those deep-set brown eyes and all that wavy hair. Anyone interested in women would be lucky to have her. Not to mention she was whip-smart and impossibly compassionate, especially considering where she’d come from and what she’d been through.
She chuckled. “Thanks, then. My point is, you made a choice to be with him in whatever way you are.”
“I’m not sure I did.” Hendrik shifted uncomfortably. “And I’m not sure I can choose not to, now. What if I—what if I’m actually nothing without someone else?”
Piret all but gasped.
The question hung there, sharp as a knife in the air between them. Hendrik, who hadn’t even realized he’d been holding that idea in his mind and had no idea for how long, hung his head. “Sorry. That was dramatic.”
“Why did you choose him?” Piret asked after a moment’s silence. “Tell me.”
“Because he made me want to laugh. He can shoot and fight, but he can heal and do magic. He shares everything he knows without asking for anything in return, and he’s constantly searching for more. He’s the cleverest man I’ve ever met, and not just about the forest—look at him over there, keeping up with Kajja. He makes people feel heard and seen, but he’s afraid no one will ever hear or see him unless he tries too hard. And when I’m with him, almost from the beginning, I’ve felt…” It had been easy, up until then; he’d told Dagan all this and more days ago. Dagan had called it seduction, but to Hendrik it had just been setting down something he’d been carrying around for weeks, getting heavier and heavier as he added to it. It had been obvious.
This part, less so. This part, Dagan had teased out of him with soft kisses and touches and whispers. This part, he didn’t want anyone else to know: Dagan felt safe like nothing else ever had. So, he just said, “He has me.”
Piret nodded seriously. “Then it’s not random lust.”
“There is nothing random about my lust for him, no. It’s irritatingly all-consuming.” But so was his affection, his desire to hold, to pet, to make Dagan smile. Hendrik shot another look in Dagan’s direction, admiring the way streaks in his dark braid glinted almost bronze in the sunlight. He thought of the smell of lavender and the feeling of that hair twining around his fingers. “But I take your meaning. He…I trust him.”
“People who’ve been where we have been don’t give out trust just so they don’t have to be alone,” Piret decided, sitting back and eying him. “Maybe you are afraid to be alone. But it doesn’t sound like that’s why you chose him. Not to me.” She shrugged. “And if it turns out you did, you have friends who can pick you back up when it all goes to the hells.”
That was what normal people did, Hendrik supposed, when an affair came to an end. Rather than going on a murderous rampage and retreating into mental disorder in the forest for moons. To be fair, though, most affairs didn’t end in death. It was pure, unadulterated terrible luck that Hendrik’s one and only had.
“In the meantime, enjoy him. And what he represents, which is that you’re choosing who you are and how you want to live, now. That’s—it’s everything, Hen. It’s a gift.”
Hendrik nodded as he considered this.
“The rest of your life, that’s still to be decided. But in the meantime, the City is crushing everyone inside it, and the Heart Wood is about to become a casualty. So, your second big choice, when it comes to who you want to be, is what you’re going to do about it.” Piret’s gaze had hardened again almost as quickly as it softened to commiserate with him a moment ago.
“They may not even ask us.” Hen couldn’t even bother to pretend hopefulness. Jessica wouldn’t have brought it up the other morning if she didn’t mean to ask them. All of them.
“Even if they don’t, we have to go. You know it.”
Hendrik swallowed the rest of his ale quickly.
“So what are we going to say, when we find out what’s going on in that Council? Because we need to be united, or they could try to push us off to the side. But it’s our city, Hen. It’s my parents, your parents, our friends in the resistance like Jak, every other guard who’s going to lose their charge to that monster in the See. How are we going to stand up for them?”
Another long pause. Then, Hendrik asked, “Did you bring an extra sword?”
She shook her head. “Bet Maya can find you one, though. And that knife looks pretty wicked.”
Hendrik took it out of its sheath and set it on the table. “Been practicing with it, mornings. It’s not like drilling with the guards, but it’s getting me sharp again.”
She picked it up and turned it this way and that, the green stone in the hilt shifting and shining. “For people who don’t mine their own iron, they’re remarkably good with it.”
“He traded for it in the Mushroom settlement.”
She chuckled. “Mushroom settlement. Sounds…not real.”
He laughed too but quietly, almost sadly. “It feels not real, too. Good mushrooms, though.”
She tested the sharpness of the blade with her forefinger, shifted the knife from hand to hand. “Think I can get one here?”
“Dagan says there’s not a lot of production in this conservancy, but it should only take a few days to get whatever you want made and brought in.” He glanced at the screen in the back of the hall again. “I’m guessing we have time. And there might already be some for sale in the market, really.”
“Ugh.” She set the long knife back on the table and gave it an approving pat. “I almost want to have one made just so I have something to do while we’re sitting around here. I tried reading the other day, I was so bored.”
