Page 18 of Bryce

“Her attitude. You haven’t noticed? She all but eviscerates you whenever she gets the chance.” He chuckled. “And you let it happen without so much as a word in reply. I give you credit. You’re a stronger man than me.”

“It’s not worth it. Besides, we have much larger issues at hand. I’d rather not waste my energy fighting with her when it’s the Gwydions who truly matter.”

That came out wrong. She mattered a great deal and had since the moment I’d laid eyes on her.

The rain turned into a downpour, and she had not yet returned.

I grew uneasy. “I wonder what’s taking her so long,” I muttered, more to myself than to my partner.

But he heard me, nonetheless. “I guess for the same reason it sometimes takes a while,” he shrugged.

I snickered, but his little joke wasn’t enough to ease my mind. I didn’t like knowing she was out there, alone, out of sight. I counted to one hundred, then to two hundred. Still no Isla.

“I’m going to check on her,” I announced, already on my feet. “I don’t like this.”

“You know she’ll only tell you off if you interrupt her,” he warned, but that didn’t matter.

I could take a bit more verbal abuse so long as I knew she was safe.

And she kept the abuse to a minimum.

“Isla?” I called out as I drew nearer the tree, wide enough around that I suspected it to be downright ancient. “Are you there?”

All I heard was the sound of the rain, then, “Aye.”

What was that note I detected in her voice? Dismay? Frustration? Disappointment?

She rounded the trunk, lowering her hood as she did. There was more than enough space beneath the branches for her to straighten fully, and hardly a drop made it through to the ground.

“I thought I’d wait out the downpour here,” she explained. “Rather than soak myself to the skin.”

“A wise plan.” I joined her, though I wasn’t foolish enough to stand too close.

“Why did you come looking for me, then?”

“I was unaware of your plan, naturally. I—we—thought something might have befallen you.”

“Liar.” She turned her back to me, watching the rain. “Leslie knows me well enough to know I can manage myself, and if she thought there was truly a chance of danger she would have come after me on her own. You wanted to have a moment alone, is that it?”

“In all honesty, no. That isn’t it at all.”

She scoffed. “Don’t pretend you’ve started caring now. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Are you planning to treat me this way for the rest of our journey?”

She kept her back to me, arms folded now. Holding herself. “I hadn’t planned on doing anything, one way or another,” she muttered. “I don’t think of you enough to necessitate a plan, honestly.”

“Perhaps you could plan to be a bit more congenial, then.”

“Why would I want to do that? What does it matter?”

“It matters a great deal, and you know it.”

“Do I?” She turned her head, revealing her profile. “Interesting, you believing you know the first thing about me.”

“I don’t understand what I did to earn this level of ire.”

“You don’t—well, I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

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