“They want to make you king,” she declared quietly.
He stared at her. “Who?”
“All of them. The High Council, the king’s advisors, the people on the streets, the Home Guard, the army, everyone.” She smiled wanly. “You are their only hope, they say. Alyten is too unreliable, too reckless for the job. He has no experience. He has no skills. It doesn’t matter that he is already king, they want him gone.”
“But two grandchildren survive after him! What of them?”
“Babies, barely grown old enough to walk. Besides, the Elven people don’t want children sitting on the Ballindarroch throne. They want you.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “They haven’t the right to make that decision. No one has.”
“You do,” she said.
She crossed to the fire, her slim, supple body catlike in the near gloom, all grace and efficiency. Jerle marveled at the ease with which she moved. He marveled at her composure. He was awed by the depth of her strength, even now, in the face of all that had happened. She stood before the fire, rubbing her hands to warm them. After a moment she stopped and just stared.
“I heard his voice today,” she said. “On the streets. Tay’s voice. He was calling after me, speaking my name. I heard it clearly. I turned, so eager to find him I collided with a man following me. I pushed past him, ignoring what he said, looking for Tay.“ She shook her head slowly. ”But he wasn’t there. I only imagined it.”
Her voice died away in a whisper. She did not turn.
“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Jerle said after a moment. “I keep thinking that it’s a mistake, that he’s out there and any moment he will walk through the door.”
He looked off into the shadows of the front entry. “I don’t want to be king. I want Tay to be alive again. want everything back the way it was.”
She nodded wordlessly and watched the fire some more. They could hear the patter of the rain on the roof and against the window glass. They could hear the whisper of the wind.
Then Preia turned and walked over to him. She stood before him, motionless. He could not read the look she gave him. It was filled with so many emotions that it lacked definition. “Do you love me?” she asked directly, staring into his eyes.
He was so surprised by the question, so caught off guard that he could not manage an answer. He just stared at her, openmouthed.
She smiled, laying claim to something that had eluded him. Her eyes filled with tears. “Did you know that Tay was in love with me?”
He shook his head slowly, stunned. “No.”
“For as long as I can remember.” She paused. “Just as you’ve always been in love with Kira.” She reached up quickly and put a finger to his lips. “No, let me finish. This needs to be said. Tay was in love with me, but he would never have done anything about it He wouldn’t even speak of it. His sense of loyalty to you was so strong that he couldn’t make himself. He knew I was pledged to you, and even though he was uncertain of your own feelings, he did nothing to interfere. He believed that you loved me and would marry me, and he would not jeopardize his relationship with either of us to change that. He knew of Kira, but he knew as well that she was not right for you—even when you did not.”
She came a step closer. The tears were beginning to run down her cheeks now, but she ignored them. “That was a side of Tay Trefenwyd you never saw. You didn’t see it because you didn’t look. He was a complex man, just as you are. Neither of you understood the other as clearly as you thought. You were each the shadow of the other, but as different in some ways as the shadow is from the flesh. I know that difference. I have always known.”
She swallowed. “Now you have to face up to it as well. And to what it means to be alive when your shadow is dead. Tay is gone, Jerle. We remain. What is to become of us? We have to decide. Tay loved me, but he is dead. Do you love me as well? Do you love me as strongly? Or will Kira always be between us?”
“Kira is married,” he said softly, his voice breaking.
“Kira is alive. Life breeds hope. If you want her badly enough, perhaps you can find a way to have her. But you cannot have both of us. I have lost one of the two most important men in my life. I lost him without ever taking time to speak with him as I am speaking with you. I will not let that happen a second time.”
She paused, uncomfortable with what she was about to say, but refusing to look away. “I am going to tell you something. If Tay had asked me to choose between you, I might have chosen him.”
There was an endless silence between them. Their eyes locked and held. They stood in the center of the room, motionless. The fire in the hearth crackled softly and the rain beat down. The shadows in the room had begun to lengthen with the approach of nightfall.
“I do not want to lose you,” Jerle said quietly.
Preia did not respond. She was waiting to hear more.
“I did love Kira once,” he admitted. “I love her still, I suppose. But it’s not the same as it was. I know I have lost her, and I no longer mourn that loss. I haven’t for years. I care for her. I think of her when I think of Tay and our childhood. She was part of that, and I would be foolish if I tried to pretend that it was otherwise.”
He took a deep breath. “You asked me if I loved you. I do. I haven’t really thought about it in any deliberate way—I just always accepted it. I suppose I believed that you would always be there and so dismissed any further consideration as unnecessary. Why examine something that was so obvious? There seemed no need to do so. But I was wrong. I see that. I took you for granted without even realizing it. I thought that what we shared was sufficient as it was. I didn’t allow for change or doubts or complacency.
“But I have lost Tay and a large part of myself with him. I have lost direction and purpose. I am come to the end of a road I have traveled for a long time and find no way to turn. When you ask if I love you, I am faced with the fact that loving you is perhaps all I have left. It is no small thing, no consolation to measure against my pain. It is much more than that. I feel foolish saying this. It is the one real truth I can acknowledge. It means more than anything else in my life. Tay let me discover this by dying. It is a high cost to pay, but there it is.”
His big hands reached out and fastened gently on her shoulders.
“I do love you, Preia.”
“Do you?” she asked quietly.
He felt a vast distance open between them as she spoke the words. He felt an immense weight settle on his shoulders. He stood awkwardly in front of her, unable to think of what else he could do. His size and strength had always been a source of reassurance, but with Preia they seemed to work against him.
“Yes, Preia,” he said finally. “I do. I love you as much as I have ever loved anyone. I don’t know what else to say. This, I guess—that I hope you still love me.”
She said nothing even then, standing there motionless before him, looking into his eyes. The tears had stopped, but her face was streaked and damp. A tiny smile lifted the comers of her mouth. “I have never stopped loving you,” she whispered.
She stepped forward into his arms and let him hold her. After a while, she held him back.
They were sitting together before the fire when Vree Erreden appeared several hours later. It was dark by then, the last of the daylight faded, the rain lessened to a drizzle that fell without sound on the already drenched woodlands. A silence had fallen across the weary city, and lights had begun to appear in the windows of buildings barely glimpsed through gaps in the sagging, water-laden boughs of the trees. No one lived in the palace now, the building empty while repairs were made and a ruler determined, and only the summerhouse saw life within the grounds.