He hadn't meant to.

Afterwards she still wasn't the same but at least she was there, alive, warm, in his arms. She was quieter, and it took some time for the members of the household to recover from the shock of her presence, when she was supposed to be dead. But they only had that through rumors. As distant and withdrawn as she was, it was easy enough for him to convince them that she had simply been injured, and was recovering.

With the help of a little magic, of course. But what was magic for if not to help with the little things in life? Like bringing her back. The grief had almost killed him.

He never wanted to endure the like again, not in his life. Not in hers, either.

"I brought you dinner," he said, a peace offering. She had been in the room all day, staring out the window. He would have cooked it himself, but that was not among his many skills. "Are you hungry?"

She barely moved when he set the tray down on the table, her head turning slightly until she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He wasn't sure, but he thought she smiled. He hoped she had smiled.

"No," she whispered, just as he had stepped up behind her, his hands brushing over her hair. "No, thank you."

His fingers clenched in the air above her shoulders for a moment. She shuddered as he lifted her hair, but her neck and shoulders were warm under his cooler hands. She was so tiny. So fragile. She hadn't seemed so before. Now she seemed like such a tiny person to hold such life and such power. Such a beautiful life, and such unimaginable power and strength.

How could he have let her go? He couldn't lose her, not then. Not now. He only realized he was holding on too tightly when she made a sound that was somewhere between a squeak and a murmur. "Sorry…" he whispered. "I'm sorry."

"I know." She sounded so sad.

His hands brushed along her shoulders, up and down, gentle. It was almost like it had been for a few moments, as she sighed and relaxed back against him, as his arms closed around her. He closed his eyes and let his head drop down, breathing in the lavender and sharp water scent of her hair. The scent of her skin. It had been a long time since he'd caught her scent on his body or on his pillow.

"Don't…" she turned her head as he kissed the back of her neck, pulling away. There wasn't far to go, she was standing in front of the window, but she slipped around between him and the wall and moved to the other side of the room. "Please. Don't."

He bit back the hurt and anger that wanted to surface; he had always been patient with her, would not push her. Didn't want to. "What's wrong?" He didn't turn to look at her, either. The look on her face… he was afraid to see.

She shook her head and made a sound that he knew, when she didn't know what to say or how to express herself but wanted to acknowledge that she'd heard. He waited for her to sort through her thoughts, find the ones that she wanted to say.

"Wh--"

He tensed.

"How was your day?"

Meaningless conversation. He listened to her play at eating, the click of the bowl or the mug on the tray, and he knew she wasn't eating much of it. She hadn't since he had brought her back.

But he told her anyway, and they went round and around in conversation, in the room. She wouldn't let him get close to her again and it hurt, it made his chest tighten and ache with the implications, what that meant for their future. His words took on a sharper edge but the subjects remained meaningless. As though they were as they had been, before the battle when things had changed.

He didn't remember what he said. It hadn't meant anything at the time, at least he thought it hadn't. But she was at the window again and her tiny fist was white against the stone.

"Why did you do it?" she asked, without turning around.

"Do what?" But it wasn't a question. It was part question and part warning, his voice sinking lower. More dangerous.

She could be dangerous too. She whirled. "You know damn well what, Lord of Bainbridge. That magic is proscribed, and for good reason. Not that you would consider those reasons when you broke every law, shattered every restriction."

"I had better reasons," he snapped back, infuriated by her refusal to see and twisting inside from the anger in her voice. "Those restrictions were meant to bind wizards and sorcerers without…"

"Without what?" she interrupted, hands clenching into fists again. "Without compunction, without sense, without hesitation to do the unnatural simply to satisfy their own desperate needs?"

"I brought you back," he snapped. The hurt rang audible in his voice, along with the building rage. It did nothing to silence her.

"To what?"

He took a step back, eyes wide, throat swelled shut with the sharp emotion.

"You brought me back to a half-life of nightmares, and pain, and knowing that the man I trusted more than anything, the man I loved, cared more for himself and his pain than he ever thought of me. You replaced my life with ashes and muck and you expect me to be glad for it?"

He reached out to her, stepping towards her and not stopping when she flinched away, although it did make the words choke off in his throat. "Dear heart… I did it for us. For you. I couldn't… I wanted…"

"You couldn't, you wanted. You never gave a thought to what I might have wanted for myself…"

Stuck one too many times, the sorcerer's face twisted, ugly. "You were in no position to want anything."

She didn't retreat, didn't flinch. But her eyes sparkled with unshed ears and her voice was hoarse and weak when she repeated. "You never thought of me. Not once, to think, perhaps this is not the way to go about things. Perhaps she wouldn't want to be dragged back to a half-life of nightmares and an unfeeling…"

"Stop." His voice was just as strangled, but with anger, not grief. "Stop."

"You selfish bastard…" It came out barely above a whisper, and she didn't flinch even when he grabbed her shoulders. "You should have let me die."

He didn't mean to. He didn't know what he meant to do, but surely it wasn't that. The world broke down into a series of moments. The moment when he pulled her close and kissed her fiercely, not out of love but out of a need to remind her that she was his and nothing could or would change that. The moment when she hit him, hard and vicious, across the face. The moment when she went flying through the air. The moment when he realized that it had all been to provoke him to this, her lifeless body on the floor and blood pooling on the stones.

The second time, he noted, was no easier than the first. He rocked her in his arms for several sobbing hours, blaming her, blaming himself for having been so easy and so careless. His fingers soothed through her hair as he reassured her that it was all right, it would be all right. He would make it all better.

He had to bring the materials up to their bedroom, but he managed, working swiftly and with the surety of practice and knowing that he could not afford to make a mistake. Before he finished he washed the blood from the stones, righted the table, cleared away the broken bowl. Erased any evidence of what had happened. That way, when she gasped her way back to life, when he pulled her against him on the bed and cradled her in his arms, she wouldn't remember. She tucked her head against his chest and cried from the nightmare she believed she'd woken from and he said nothing against it. If she didn't remember, she wouldn't feel the pain of it, and perhaps now they could finally start anew.

The second time they had that argument went no different from the first, except that it was on the parapet, and she threw herself off the tower rather than make him commit the act. The third time she confronted him with the dagger and from across the room, and he had barely taken two steps. The fourth time once she knew he stopped her himself. The fifth time the Council intervened.

He begged to be allowed to see her one last time, and wasn't. He begged to be allowed to speak to her, and they refused. He needed someone to convey a message, that he was sorry, that he loved her.

They said that if he loved her, he would have left her there. They didn't understand, they would never understand.

Centuries later he thought they still didn't understand, but perhaps, after centuries had passed, he allowed as perhaps he hadn't understood either.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.