After more kisses than she could count, but not a single one she regretted, Scarlet and Philip left the warm pool behind.
“Bring her clothes!” Philip shouted. “And a blanket!”
He turned back to her and she held his face in her hands. “You’re here. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Shall I call you Scarlet? Or Esme?” he asked.
“Esme and Edmund when we are alone,” she said. Then she looked him over carefully. “You look older.”
“I have been through some things.”
“We both have,” she said.
He nodded and then touched his thigh. The wound was still there, but closed—better. There would always be a scar. “How did you do that?”
She looked up into the sky rather than answer.
He understood.
Two women arrived with clothing and a blanket.
Philip looked at the blanket. Wool. It seemed familiar.
Scarlet caught him looking at it. And then he looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
She grinned, pink rising to her cheeks.
He reached out and touched her chin and her nose, her cheek, her hair. Like the comfort from the blanket, but a thousand times better. She kissed his palm.
The two women held the blanket between them while Scarlet changed.
When the last of her wet things were gone, she rose on her toes, peered over the top edge of the blanket at him, and smiled. It was a look that knew exactly what was behind the blanket—almost a dare.
He looked up at her from where he sat.
She raised both eyebrows.
The tips of his ears went red first, then the rest of him caught up.
At that moment, Scarlet would have given up the duchy to have that night back in the garrison with the knowledge she now possessed.
They brought fresh clothing for Philip as well and an identical wool blanket, which they held while he changed. Once his trousers were off, he wiggled his eyebrows at Scarlet and she laughed out loud.
“It’s a wonder you didn’t drown in this pool,” she said.
“Can I help it if I saw your footprints here and thought I should take a bath before I saw you again? I had weeks of road grime on me.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s fair. You do smell pretty good. I don’t know what I’d have done if the stinky version of Edmund tried to kiss me on purpose.”
“Tried to kiss you?” he asked. “I think you were the one initiating nearly all of that.”
“I think it was pretty even.”
“Okay, that’s true,” he said. “And I take nothing back.”
They stood for a moment at the edge of the pool, the steam rising around them, neither of them reaching for the road yet. The army was out there. The rest of the world was out there. It had been waiting for them before and it would wait a little longer.
He looked at her the way he had looked at her across a masquerade dinner table — as though he was confirming something he had suspected for a long time and was only now allowing himself to believe.
“Esme?”
“Yes?” She turned her attention to him.
He sat on a stone near her, held her hands, and looked into her eyes for a few seconds before lowering them to his feet. He scuffed his boot in the dirt as if debating, and then spoke softly. “I’ve loved you ever since we were ten years old.” He paused, then slowly lifted his eyes, hoping the confession didn’t frighten her. “I wanted you to know that.”
It was the first time a man had said that to her and meant it, and it was everything to her. All the years of hope resolving in one simple statement. Unconsciously, she brought her hand to her mouth and shook her head just slightly — not to deny it, but because she could hardly believe it.
She looked at him with happy tears in her eyes. “I have loved you for just as long.” She said it because it was true and he had earned it and she wanted him to know as well.
“I did try to find you,” she said. “I went back to the abandoned building every week for months. But finally, my father put a stop to that and we moved back to our ancestral home, out of the city. But I looked for you for years.”
“I did too,” he said.
Scarlet nodded. Somehow she already knew that. “Besides, I knew you loved me when you stole that first kiss.”
“Stole? I’ll have you know I have a very good memory of that moment.”
“As do I, and you kissed me.”
“I remember it differently. A certain girl brought her lips way, way too close for the situation.”
“I was twelve. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.” She smiled at him.
Philip feigned consternation and frustration. “I’m going to warn you right now, miss. If I’m going to be blamed for every kiss, then I’m going to make sure they are worth it.”
She considered this for approximately half a second.
“Okay,” she said, smiling happily.
She took his hand and they walked back toward the road.
By the time they stepped out of the tree line, the morning mist was gone and the full scale of Scarlet’s company became apparent to Philip. He stopped walking.
Carts. Wagons. Horses in numbers. Entire households strung out along the road as far as the tree line would allow him to see. Children sitting on the backs of carts watching him with frank curiosity. Dogs. A goat, for reasons he could not immediately determine.
“How many people did you bring from Psalter’s Point?”
“One thousand, six hundred thirty-two contracts,” she said. “Over two thousand people came.’
He looked at her.
She looked back at him with the expression of a woman who has done something enormous and is waiting to see if anyone is going to point that out.
He looked back at the road. At the carts. At the goat.
“You brought an entire legion.”
“Among them, two hundred sixty Wentworths by name or proven blood,” she said.
“How did you convince them?”
“The promise of land.”
“As tenants?”
“As owners,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment. He had spent six years fighting for this land one mile at a time, with two hundred men, losing scouts in the eastern pass. She had ridden twenty-eight days alone and come back with an army and a migration.
“We have got to win the land first,” he said.
She loved that he said we, but did not comment on it.
“You must have run into Urukesh on your trip,” he said.
“I met their leader.”
“You’ve met Krang Haddagan?”
“Yes,” she said. “I met him early in my journey and he let me pass in exchange for venison. When did you meet him?”
“Weeks ago. And venison was also involved. We fought off wolves together.”
“Really?”
“And there’s something else about him.”
“What?”
“He’s joining the Knights Celestial.”
“An Urukesh in the Knights?”
“There is precedent. The order is two millennia old.”
She looked at Philip thoughtfully. “I think he will make a fantastic knight. I found him to be very wise and thoughtful. It was he who first warned me about the—Philip!”
“What?”
“You don’t know about Ashcroft!”
“Know what?”
“He’s dead,” she said.
Philip’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”
Scarlet told him the story—about how Lance had shown up at the moment of Benedict’s death, how the undead creatures drained him of his life, and tried to do the same to her. How Ashcroft had accompanied her to Psalter’s Point and then decided to return to Stormrest.
She left out the part about the marriage proposal. There wasn’t any point in telling Philip about that. The question had been asked. The answer given. It was over.
“But then he was found, drained of life, just like Benedict was. Those undead killed him too.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Philip said.
“Why?”
“Because they were working for him, or with him. They were with him when he passed through the garrison, though I did not know what they were at the time. And then they killed Benedict. And then Ashcroft showed up just in time to save you — very convenient I might add.”
“Right, but I’m not following,” she said.
“After they killed Benedict, he sent them after me.”
“That’s not possible,” she said. “We destroyed them at the river. Ashcroft himself cut one of them down. I watched them fall.”
“All I can tell you is that the ones that came after me — one of them was wearing the same boot I saw at the garrison with Ashcroft. Three claw marks on the heel.”
She went still. “One of the ones that killed Benedict had that same mark.”
“Yes.”
“But we destroyed them.”
“I know,” he said. “And yet they tried to kill me. And they very nearly did. That’s why my hair has started to turn. They took some of my life.”
“How did you survive it?”
“Epherion channeled fire through me,” he said. “And somehow what was drained from me returned—mostly returned.”
“You have been through a lot,” she said.
Philip nodded, gravely.
“He manipulated me,” she said, quietly. “But it still doesn’t make sense. Why would they then kill Lance if he had been working with them? And why was he working with them in the first place?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Philip said. “Ashcroft was a pompous blowhard, not a necromancer.”
“I don’t know,” Scarlet said. “He knew a lot of things.”
“Are we talking about the same man?” Philip asked.
Dinner that night on the road was far different from what Philip had become accustomed to. There were two thousand people in their company. There wasn’t just one dinner. There were hundreds of them—shared across the mass of people.
It was the first night on the road that Philip felt he might sleep well. It was unlikely that anything was going to try to attack such an encampment.
Philip sat next to Scarlet on a log that he had carried to the road for a bench. They ate warm, freshly baked bread, slathered with peanut butter, drank goat’s milk, and chewed on jerky said to be made from a grunoch, which tasted better than it sounded.
Jaden Smythe, who provided it, said, “They are bad-tempered and territorial, but delicious. Nobody admits liking grunoch jerky until they’ve had it three times, which we will before we get to Stormrest, so keep your opinions at bay until the third try of it. And then let me know what you think.”
After Mr. Smythe moved on to entice others with his grunoch jerky, Scarlet said. “Actually it’s pretty good.”
“I’ve had much worse,” Philip agreed.
They sat in silence with Scarlet, legs crossed, bouncing her top leg and mindlessly tapping the back of his calf with her stockinged toes. He didn’t mind at all.
“I set our tents right next to each other,” he said.
She nodded her head and then shivered.
“You cold?”
“A little.”
He hopped up off the log and was back two minutes later, draping a wool blanket around her. He had one of his own around his shoulders.
“I switched blankets,” he said.
“You did? Why?”
“First of all,” he said. “I totally thought I misplaced it and was quite upset with myself for my stupidity, so I was glad to have found you absconded with it.”
“Can I tell you the truth without you making fun of me?” she asked.
“That’s really hard to guarantee,” he said. “But I’ll try very hard.”
“I took it because it smelled like you,” she said. She held her hand to her face as she said it, biting the tip of her thumb and raising her eyebrows, watching to see how he would respond.
But he was nonplussed. “That’s why I switched them just now.”
“Why?” she asked.
“You’ve had that blanket for weeks. Now it smells like you. So I’m keeping it.”
She giggled.
“You captivated me as the swan. And honestly when you first took your mask off I wanted to ask if we had met before.”
“Really?”
“But it became obvious you were the Duke’s daughter. So it couldn’t have been true.”
“When did you know?”
“Chenguer mentioned your middle name. Later that night I figured it out.”
“I never knew.”
“So you felt nothing before?”
“Well—you said you didn’t want me…”
“ I never said that.”
“Well you said—” and then she paused. No he hasn’t said that, had he?
“Never said that. Never thought that,” he insisted.
She thought it over and realized she had constructed the idea—a wall of protection. She got up, flipped a half burned log back into the center of the fire, and sat next to him again. “Just so you know, I did feel it too.”
“Truly?”
“Oh, yes. When we were in your lodge, alone?”
“Yeah?”
“I was afraid.”
“Why?”
“I thought you were going to kiss me. But I was also afraid you wouldn’t.”
“You were afraid of both?”
She nodded. “I was ready to fall in love with you even then, plus you asked me to spend the night.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Shush,” she said. “Let me remember it how I want.”
He reached over and placed his hand on her knee and just let it rest there. Scarlet wrapped both arms around his.
“Do you think, someday we might not sleep in separate tents?” he whispered.
“Edmund!” she whispered. “That’s very bold of you.”
“Not at all. I have heard that husbands and wives do sleep in the same tent.”
“Yes,” she hissed looking around to make sure no one heard them. “Husbands and wives, which we are not!”
“That could be remedied,” he said.
She stared at him, measuring his eyes as he looked into the fire. Then she smiled in the darkness and was quiet for a while as they watched the flames paint a rainbow of colors.
Finally she asked, “You know what?”
“Huh?”
“There’s something kind of special about falling in love with you twice.” She laid her head on his shoulder.
“I know exactly what you mean.” He tilted his head to touch hers.
They breathed together. Calmly.
As it was, they slept side by side, in separate tents, but they were so close, that they held hands most of the night.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible.