Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(30)
Author: Kristin Cashore

She would accept his protection after all, if truly she needed it. She was not too proud to be helped by this friend.

He’d helped her in a thousand ways already.

And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need – if a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from everything.

That was settled then. She closed her eyes and slipped into sleep.

———

Katsa didn’t know what was wrong with her when she woke the next morning. She couldn’t explain the fury she felt toward him. There was no explanation; and perhaps he knew that, because he asked for none. He only commented that the rain had stopped, watched her as she rolled her blanket, deliberately not looking at him, and carried his things to the horses. As they rode, stillshe did not look at him. And though he couldn’t have missed the force of her fury, he made no comment.

She wasn’t angry that there was a person who could provide her with help and protection. That would be arrogance, and she saw that arrogance was foolishness; she should strive for humility – and there was another way he’d helped her.

He’d gotten her thinking about humility. But it wasn’t that. It was that she hadn’t asked for a person whom she trusted, whom she would do so much for, whom she would give herself over to. She hadn’t asked for a person whose absence, if she woke in the middle of the night, would distress her – not because of the protection he would then fail to give, but simply because she wished his company. She hadn’t asked for a person whose company she wished.

Katsa couldn’t bear her own inanity. She drew herself into a shel of sul enness and chased away every thought that entered her mind.

———

When they stopped to rest the horses beside a pond swol en with rainwater, he leaned against a tree and ate a piece of bread. He watched her, calmly, silently. She didn’t look at him, but she was aware of his eyes on her, always on her.

Nothing was more infuriating than the way he leaned against the tree, and ate bread, and watched her with those gleaming eyes.

“What are you staring at?” she finally demanded.

“This pond is ful of fish,” he said, “and frogs. Catfish, hundreds of them. Don’t you think it’s funny I should know that with such clarity?”

She would hit him, for his calmness, and his latest ability to count frogs and catfish he couldn’t see. She clenched her fists and turned, forced herself to walk away. Off the road, into the trees, past the trees, and then she was running through the forest, startling birds into flight. She ran past streams and patches of fern, and hil s covered with moss. She shot into a clearing with a waterfal that fel over rocks and plummeted into a pool.

She yanked off her boots, pulled off her clothing, and leaped into the water. She screamed at the cold that surrounded her body all at once, and her nose and mouth fil ed with water. She surfaced, coughed and snorted, teeth chattering. She laughed at the coldness and scrambled to shore.

And now, standing in the dirt, the cold raising every hair of her body on end, she was calm.

———

It was when she returned to him, chil ed and clearheaded, that it happened. He sat against the tree, his knees bent and his head in his hands.

His shoulders slumped. Tired, unhappy. Something tender caught in her breath at the sight of him. And then he raised his eyes and looked at her, and she saw what she had not seen before. She gasped.

His eyes were beautiful. His face was beautiful to her in every way, and his shoulders and hands. And his arms that hung over his knees, and his chest that was not moving, because he held his breath as he watched her. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had she not seen this before? How had she not seen him? She was blind. And then tears choked her eyes, for she had not asked for this. She had not asked for this beautiful man before her, with something hopeful in his eyes that she did not want.

He stood, and her legs shook. She put her hand out to her horse to steady herself.

“I don’t want this,” she said.

“Katsa. I hadn’t planned for it either.”

She gripped the edges of her saddle to keep herself from sitting down on the ground between the feet of her horse.

“You… you have a way of upending my plans,” he said, and she cried out and sank to her knees, then heaved herself up furiously before he could come to her, and help her, and touch her.

“Get on your horse,” she said, “right now. We’re riding.”

She mounted and took off, without even waiting to be sure he fol owed. They rode, and she all owed only one thought to enter her mind, over and over. I don’t want a husband. I don’t want a husband. She matched it to the rhythm of her horse’s hooves. And if he knew her thought, all the better.

———

When they stopped for the night she did not speak to him, but she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there. She felt every move he made, without seeing it. She felt his eyes watching her across the fire he built. It was like this every night, and this was how it would continue to be. He would sit there gleaming in the light of the fire, and she unable to look at him, because he glowed, and he was beautiful, and she couldn’t stand it.

“Please, Katsa,” he finally said. “At least talk to me.”

She swung around to face him. “What is there to talk about? You know how I feel, and what I think about it.”

“And what I feel? Doesn’t that matter?”

His voice was small , so unexpectedly small , in the face of her bitterness that it shamed her. She sat down across from him. “Po. Forgive me.

Of course it matters. You may tell me anything you feel.”

He seemed suddenly not to know what to say. He looked into his lap and played with his rings; he took a breath and rubbed his head; and when he raised his face to her again she felt that his eyes were nak*d, that she could see right through them into the lights of his soul. She knew what he was going to say.

“I know you don’t want this, Katsa. But I can’t help myself. The moment you came barreling into my life I was lost.

I’m afraid to tell you what I wish for, for fear you’l … oh, I don’t know, throw me into the fire. Or more likely, refuse me. Or worst of all, despise me,” he said, his voice breaking and his eyes dropping from her face. His face dropping into his hands. “I love you,” he said. “You’re more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone could be. And I’ve made you cry; and there I’ll stop.”

She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him. She stood. “I need to go.”

He jumped up. “No, Katsa, please.”

“I won’t go far, Po. I just need to think, without you in my head.”

“I’m afraid if you leave you won’t come back.”

“Po.” This assurance, at least, she could give him. “I’ll come back.”

He looked at her for a moment. “I know you mean that now. But I’m afraid once you’ve gone off to think, you’l decide the solution is to leave me.”

“I won’t.”

“I can’t know that.”

“No,” Katsa said, “you can’t. But I need to think on my own, and I refuse to knock you out, so you have to let me go. And once I’m gone you’l just have to trust me, as any person without your Grace would have to do. And as I have to do always, with you.”

He looked at her with those nak*d, unhappy eyes again. Then he took a breath and sat down. “Put a good ten minutes between us,” he said, “if you want privacy.”

Ten minutes was a far greater range than she’d understood his Grace to encompass; but that was an argument for another time. She felt his eyes on her back as she passed through the trees. She groped forward, hands and feet, in search of darkness, distance, and solitude.

———

Alone in the forest, Katsa sat on a stump and cried. She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.

She couldn’t have him, and there was no mistaking it. She could never be his wife. She could not steal herself back from Randa only to give herself away again – belong to another person, be answerable to another person, build her very being around another person. No matter how she loved him.

Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone’s but her own.

After a while, she began to thread her way back to the fire.

Nothing had changed in her feeling, and she wasn’t tired. But Po would suffer if he didn’t sleep; and she knew he wouldn’t sleep until she had returned.

———

He was lying on his back, wide awake, staring up at a half-moon. She went to him and sat before him. He watched her with soft eyes and didn’t say anything. She looked back at him, and opened up her feelings to him, so that he would understand what she felt, what she wanted, and what she couldn’t do. He sat up. He watched her face for a long time.

“You know I’d never expect you to change who you are, if you were my wife,” he finally said.

“It would change me to be your wife,” she said.

He watched her eyes. “Yes. I understand you.”

A log fel into the fire. They sat quietly. His voice, when he spoke, was hesitant.

“It strikes me that heartbreak isn’t the only alternative to marriage,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He ducked his head for a moment. He raised his eyes to her again. “I’ll give myself to you however you’l take me,”

he said, so simply that Katsa found she wasn’t embarrassed. She watched his face.

“And where would that lead?”

“I don’t know But I trust you.”

She watched his eyes.

He offered himself to her. He trusted her. As she trusted him.

She hadn’t considered this possibility, when she’d sat alone in the forest crying. She hadn’t even thought of it. And his offer hung suspended before her now, for her to reach out and claim; and that which had seemed clear and simple and heartbreaking was confused and complicated again. But also touched with hope.

Could she be his lover and stillbelong to herself?

That was the question; and she didn’t know the answer. “I need to think,” she said.

“Think here,” he said, “please. I’m so tired, Katsa. I’ll fal right asleep.”

She nodded. “Al right. I’ll stay.”