“Can I order you to tell us what we should do?” Rafe said.
Winter considered this. “If you were to give that order, I would say you should ride out tonight for the Ghost Town. The moon is full and it’s bright as day. It’s an easier ride to the entrance at the Devil’s Tea Table, but the gate at the Angel Windows is by Granny Apple’s orchard, and she’ll help you.”
“We can use the help,” Jeremy said.
Winter whispered behind her hand. “You should probably order me to pretend this conversation never happened.”
Rafe whispered back. “Consider it an order.”
“What order, Your Highness?” she asked and disappeared from the doorway.
When they were alone again, Rafe said, “I have to tell you something. That thing, Ripper, threatened to kill you. Specifically you. Maybe you shouldn’t go—”
“When Skya made me her knight, I vowed to guard you both with my life. I meant it then, and I mean it even more now.”
“If you’re guarding us, who’s guarding you?” Rafe asked.
Jeremy opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a clock in a tower began to toll the hour.
Whatever he was going to say was lost.
Storyteller CornerLost Words
Well, not really. I know what he was going to say. If the bell hadn’t interrupted, he would have said, “You guarded me, day and night. Not because you had to but because you wanted to.” That’s all. Not quite a confession of love, but near enough to one that it would have made Rafe wonder what else Jeremy wasn’t telling him.
Then again, Rafe was already wondering that.
That’s what Jeremy would have said had the bell not tolled. What he wanted to say was something else…
“You did, night and day. Not because of any vows you made but because you were in love with me as much as I was in love with you. Oh, by the way, I was very, very in love with you.”
Maybe not those exact words, but something like that anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They split up. Jeremy went to get some provisions while Rafe went to the stables. Rafe had asked him how he would know which horses were theirs. Jeremy said, “You’ll know,” before disappearing down a hallway.
In the courtyard, Rafe followed his nose to the stables. It was dark inside the barn, scented with hay and horseflesh. He lit an oil lamp and carried it past the stalls.
Peering over the tops of the stall doors, he found all the horses sleeping. Brass plaques on the stall doors gave each horse’s name.
A spotted pinto horse was named Beans, and a pretty Appaloosa was dubbed Loosey-Goosey. A black stallion—Blackjack. A fog-gray mare—Quicksilver. He reached the stall of a horse with a golden coat named Sunny of a Gunny. What were those called? Palominos?
The Palomino raised his head and snorted. He bucked twice, so Rafe stepped back, scared he’d terrified it. But then the horse whinnied, and it was a jubilant sound. He put his long neck over the stall door and lowered his head as if trying to bow.
Rafe’s hand shook a little as he reached out to stroke the horse’s forehead.
“You know me?” he said, and the horse answered by nuzzling his neck. He pulled away but only to open the latch on the stall door and go inside. Sunny nearly knocked him over in his excitement to sniff him from head to toe, to nibble at his clothes and hair.
“All right, all right,” Rafe said with a soft laugh. “You know me. Wish I knew you.”
Sunny rested his long heavy neck over Rafe’s shoulder and sighed with contentment as he was stroked for the first time in years by his boy.
“I painted you once. I didn’t even know I was painting you. Thought I was ripping off Franz Marc’s Little Yellow Horses. But I wasn’t. It was you. My brain didn’t remember you but my paintbrush did.”
In his own painting, a red horse and a golden-yellow horse rested against each other while the sun set behind them.
Was the red horse in his painting also here?
“Wait here a sec,” Rafe said. He picked up his lantern and went to the next stall.
The brass plaque said the horse’s name was Reddy Freddy.
A golden horse named Sunny. A reddish-copper horse named Reddy Freddy.
“Rafe?” Jeremy called out.
“Down here. I found them,” Rafe said as Freddy put his head over the stall door and lightly nipped his shoulder.
“Hey, no biting,” Rafe said.
“He gets that from me,” Jeremy said. “Ah, there’s our lads. Hey, laddie, missed you.” Jeremy’s horse, Reddy Freddy, nearly broke the stall door trying to get to Jeremy.
“Hold on, Freddy. Calm down.” Jeremy went into the stall. “Here we are. I’m home.” He leaned against Freddy’s side, rubbed his long neck all over. “Love you too.”
“We have horses,” Rafe said in wonder. “We have horses that…match our hair.”
