A FRESH START
The room was dark. The sky outside was gray and the fire burned low. The room was cold. Ambeal sat by the bed. The day had sunk to a fitful dark and the shadows were gray, green, and cool.
“Milady?” a voice called. It barely reached her. She sat where she was. “Milady?”
Bronna. She was in the door, standing behind Ambeal. She sat where she was.
“Leave me.”
“Milady,” Bronna pleaded. “Please, leave him. The priest's here. He's done all anyone can do. You can leave now. Please, come and have some dinner?”
Ambeal didn't move. How could she move? Her life was here, in this bed. There was nothing she could do or say or be.
She looked down at his face. So beautiful and so cold. He was a marble warrior, fastened to a grave. He was perfect and at rest. At peace.
She reached out and stroked his forehead. It was cold.
“Alf,” she cried. “Please. Alf. How can you leave me? Not now.”
He was breathing, but just. Shallow breaths that barely lifted his chest. Slow, effort-demanding breaths. His lips were carved of marble and they barely moved. His eyes were closed.
The breeze blew in through the arch and ruffled his hair. Ambeal reached out and touched it. It was so soft. She had never felt anything so soft. She couldn't believe that this was the same hair she had felt the other day in their bed, when he lay beside her, lips bruised from the kiss he planted there.
“Alf. Please.”
She took his hand, imploring. However, there was nothing she could say. No word that could reach through to him now. He had won the fight. Lewis had declared that he was the winner – Beiste had cheated, tripping him like that. It was against the rules of combat. Everyone agreed. The first blood was his. He had won.
But what does it mean? What can it mean? You won only to leave me! Is your pride satisfied?
The misery was replaced suddenly by a sudden rage. How dare he? She was here, alone, in a world made cold by his absence. It was as if the sun had gone. As if she wandered in a night in which the stars had withdrawn, cold lamps blown out by the breeze.
“Alf!” she screamed. The sob that came out of her sounded barely human, a thing as feral as the cry of wolves. “Alf. You say you loved me. Why, then, have you left me? How dare you leave me!”
She was weeping now, sobbing, her body racked by the sobs. She was rocking and she held him to her chest, his head against her heart. His body was heavy and cold and she dragged it to her, heedless of the pain she might inflict. He was heedless of her pain! He had left her.
“Alf,” she said softly. “I loved you. You leave me now in a world alone. My world is dead without you.”
She rocked him and sobbed and the world faded away, holding only her, him, and the weight of her sorrow.
Suddenly, something changed. She was sitting rocking and sobbing and then, suddenly, there was no longer anything in her arms. The weight had vanished.
What's happening now?
She had a sudden terror that he had in truth left her, that even his body was somehow leaving her. She looked down, blank and unseeing. Suddenly, the room was no longer silent, filled only with the sound of her sob.
Someone was coughing. She looked down, horrified and then in wonderment.
“Alf!”
He was coughing and gasping, great racking sobs that made him rasp for breath, and then turned over and draw in a great heaving sob.
She looked down, horrified and pitying.
“Alf?”
He looked up at her. His eyes were unseeing at first and then they focused on her face. He smiled weakly.
“Ambeal,” he said in a voice that was tired and broken. “Where am I?”
She laughed then. She couldn't help it. She was laughing, hysterical with relief and joy.
“Alf,” she laughed. “Oh, my dear! You're well.”
He smiled wryly. His skin was wax-pale, his eyes gray-ringed and weary. “I don't feel it.”
Ambeal giggled. “Oh, you dear. You're here. You're with me.”
“Yes,” Alf said. His smile softened, filling his face with tenderness and light. He was broken, battered and exhausted. Yet he was here. He took her hand and Ambeal felt his fingers squeeze hers.
“You're here. We're together again. Oh...”
Ambeal let out a great weary sigh. Alf looked at her. He lifted his hand and touched her hair. She looked down and stroked his face.
“I love you, Alf,” she said, every word coming from her heart like a ray of light that shone from it, as bright as the morning.
“I love you, too.”
“Promise me something?” Ambeal said.
“Anything.”
“Never do something so foolish again?”
He chuckled. He winced and coughed.
“I can try,” he said when the coughing had passed. “I don't know if I can promise. But I'll try.”
Ambeal giggled then to. She reached for him and hugged him. He hugged her and his arm tensed and he leaned back.
“That hurt.”
Ambeal laughed. “I suppose it did. You silly man. You're badly injured.”
He frowned at her, eyes misting and then clearing as memory seemed to come back. “What happened?”
Ambeal shook her head. She told him. “You won. You succeeded. Beiste cheated and Lewis declared it. You are my husband now. By right. Indisputably.”
He smiled. “Good.”
“But you are badly injured. You lost a lot of blood, darling.”
He chuckled. “I can feel that.”
They sat there together in a room that was filled with the pale white of setting sunlight. They were both silent for a long while.
Ambeal sighed.
“It feels wonderful. We're free now.”
“We are.”
There was no obstacle now. No foreseen challenge. They were free.
Free to love.
Ambeal turned and smiled at Alf and the sun gilded that soft auburn of his hair. He took her hand and they sat there, hand in hand, watching the sun set.
Later, there were things to do. Ambeal spoke to her father, very quietly but very determined. He, for once, was silent. He agreed to what she said. He, too, had been shocked by what had transpired that day. He accepted her requests.
The priest came in to see to Alf. He recommended that he stay there for at least a week. Alf accepted his recommendations.
Then there were other things to discuss. The plans for the future. Where they would stay. What they would do. The plans they would make and the children they might one day have and provision for all of them. Their future.
Ambeal suggested that Alina, Alf's aunt and a skilled healer and seer, be summoned from Dunkeld, and Alf proposed instead that they travel there after a week for his convalescence. They agreed.
Ambeal sat with him in the turret room and watched the day cool to night. They hugged and kissed and just enjoyed the warmth and the togetherness. She was so, so happy.