Now she was the one to take him by surprise. For a moment, he merely gazed up at her. “How would you stop it then? A heart turning to stone?”
“There is another way to protect our clan. A way that veers away from vengeance and enmity. But you must strive to find it, and you must lead the others by example.” She paused, turning her own palms upwards. “Our hands can steal, or they can give. They can harm, or they can comfort. They can wound and kill, or they can heal and save. Which will you choose for your hands, Torin?”
He answered, through his teeth, “This is the way it has always been done. The way I have been taught.”
“And sometimes we must look inward and change ourselves,” she said. “If you have killed men without cause, if you have struck them out of vengeance just because they live on a different side of the isle, then you must search within and ask yourself why you have done these things, and what is the cost for them, and how you can make reparations for them. The trade would be a good place to start.”
Torin stood. He paced the room, breathing heavily. Sidra thought he might flee, but he stopped and looked at her again.
“And if I don’t agree with your thoughts? If I can’t change to become what you hope for? Is losing you one of the costs for my sins?”
“I have been with you all this time,” she said, a soft answer that eased his rigid posture. “The good as well as the bad. Once, we were acquaintances sharing a vow. But you have become more to me than mere words spoken on a midsummer night. And I have never been one to love conditionally.”
“And yet you ask me to change?” he asked, fist over his heart.
Sidra wondered if he had even heard what she had just said to him. She had never spoken such words aloud before—that she had come to love him in a deep, quiet way. Completely, with all of his scars and mistakes and glory.
She realized she and Torin stood on two different mountains, with a deep valley between them. They saw the world from opposing sides, and she didn’t know if they would be able to find a middle ground. Their differences could be enough to break their vows, despite her feelings for him.
“You haven’t heard the things I’ve heard,” he said, as if he also sensed the divide. “You haven’t gone hungry after a raid, or watched your storehouse go lean, losing all of your winter provisions. You haven’t had to draw a sword and fight them, Sidra.”
“I haven’t,” Sidra agreed. “But I’ve had to heal wounds caused by the raids. I’ve given to those who have suffered losses, and I have been with them through their pain. And so I must say this, Torin … what has brought on these feelings within you? It doesn’t sound as if I am asking you to change, but that your own blood and bones are aching for it.”
His face went pale. He stared at her with a clenched jaw, and she sensed the divide between them grow.
“Bring the tonics to the barracks when they’re ready,” he said in a cold voice.
Sidra watched as he turned and departed. He was running from the things she had said to him, and she stood for a moment longer before sinking into a chair.
She had never felt more defeated.
CHAPTER 17
Frae was dreaming of chocolate cake and snow when she heard the hooves in the garden. A horse was stomping through the vegetables, its noble neck arched, its nostrils flaring with breath like clouds. At first, Frae thought the horse was part of her dream—she had always longed for one, despite Mirin insisting the chickens and the three cows were more than enough animals for them—until she startled awake.
She opened her eyes to the darkness and listened. She could hear Mirin’s soft, deep breaths beside her, but there … just beyond the bolted shutters, to her left. A horse whickered.
She sat forward, the blanket tumbling away from her shoulders. Without a sound, she stood and walked all the way to the bedroom door. She unlatched it very quietly and slipped into the common chamber, where the hearth embers still glowed and Mirin’s loom sat in the corner like a dark, slumbering beast. She made to go to Jack’s door but then paused, thinking she had better check and make sure a horse was truly in the yard before she woke her brother.
Frae crept to the back door. There was a small iron grill with a sliding panel built in the upper wood—a peeping window—which was a little too high for Frae’s line of vision, but if she raised up on her toes, she would be able to see out of it. She held her breath, her hands suddenly clammy as she worked to unlock the narrow panel, sliding it back until she could taste fresh air and see the constellations glittering like crystals in the sky.