Darknesses

  “And it might surface again tomorrow. Or next season.”

  “It might.” Alucius nodded.

  “And it might have already surfaced.”

  “Because of the last attack on me?”

  “Who else would spend two hundred golds to try to kill a man who doesn’t even want to…who only wants to be a herder?”

  “I don’t know that there’s anything else I can do, now.” Alucius paused, then added in a low voice, “After this last attack…I didn’t feel or sense the soarers.”

  “And…you think they’re gone?”

  “No. I don’t know what to think. It could be that they don’t know that something is happening. Or that it’s up to us now. Or that there’s nothing to be done now.” His lips quirked. “I don’t know.”

  The silence drew out before he spoke again. “I do know that I’ve needed to be here with you. It almost seems as though the whole world wanted to keep me from you, that every time I thought I could head home, something else happened.” He looked into her deep, golden green eyes, eyes that mirrored her very being.

  “Perhaps it did…but you’re here.”

  Once more, their lips met, gently, as did lifethreads and spirits.