Page 153 of Between Despair and Hope

“Food. Yes. Brilliant, Rain.” She stood on tiptoes to place a kiss on my jaw, and the adoration I felt through the bond set my heart aflame. “I think that’s the solution.”

“You think?”

“People only thieve because they need to, and they’re doing it within the Wend. They’re starving. Why else would they take from their neighbors? And of course that leads to violence.”

“So, we bring in food.”

“It’s a start, I think.” She tugged on my collar, pride radiating from her frame. “Oh!”

She shoved past me, and I turned to see her reaching for some rags, about to grab the pot boiling over.

“Wait, Em, let me. Go open the door.”

She only hesitated for a second before doing as I bid, and a cold rush of air burst into the tiny home. Using my divinity to coax about a third of the water out of the pot, I formed it into a ball as I walked it to the front door, extra cautious because of the boiling water steaming in the air.

“I overfilled it,” she said, sheepishly.

“I’m not sure if it’s cold enough; I think it is, but watch,” I replied as I used my divinity to shoot the water past her out into the night. A gust of wind blew at the most opportune moment, sending tiny ice crystals which formed from the boiling water flying into the air. She whooped with glee, just as I’d hoped she would.

“It froze! Gods, that was so fast!”

“It has to be extremely cold to do it that quick. Thank Aonara we had her fire on the trip here. We’d have frozen to death in the sky without it.”

“That reminded me of something I used to do with Elora in the wintertime.”

“What’s that?”

“Snow taffy.”

“Snow taffy,” I repeated, and she laughed.

“It’s maple syrup. You pack the snow and boil the syrup. When you pour it onto the snow, it cools it. The minute—and I mean down to the second—Elora saw the first snowflake, she’d start shouting about snow taffy.”

“That sounds adorable.”

“It was.” She smiled, though I felt her sadness over the bond. I tried not to think about it. I’d lost the opportunity to make those memories with them, but I would not spend my time mourning. I’d make whatever memories I could with my daughter.

“Come, I have some things to show you,” she said.

She led the way upstairs and brought me into her bedroom, lighting the lamp with her divine fire. The last time we’d been here, she’d forced me to help her make her bed. I’d thought then that it had been a taunt. That it was a way for her to send the message she’d been with someone who wasn’t me. I wasn’t sure what was worse anymore. I wasn’t glad she was unhappy and unfulfilled, not by any means. But would she have been able to find fulfillment with someone else anyway? I knew I hadn’t. If I could have gone back and not slept with the women I did, I would have in a heartbeat. There wasn’t a single gods damn one I didn’t regret after.

But my frustration over what I thought was a taunt was why I’d let her believe the number of women I’d been with was so high. A dozen women over the course of sixteen years wasn’t much, but the court gossips thought I slept with every woman I spoke to. And I let them make those assumptions, wanting them to think I was some sort of rake, so I’d be left alone. By the time I’d been set right about Emma’s experiences, it wasn’t as if I could tell her it was only a dozen women. A dozen was still far more than I wanted to lay claim to. I didn’t think it would help anything, so I kept it to myself.

I was on the verge of telling her though, those thoughts brought to mind by her old marriage bed and my desire to tell her every passing notion which weighed on me, when she dragged a trunk over from the corner of the room and directed me to sit on the edge of the bed. Settling down onto her knees beside the chest, she pulled out a folio and reached inside.

“I commissioned a sketch artist in town every few years. Mother and Father had us sit for portraits every other year, if you remember. The whole ordeal with hours of sitting frozen, the big, puffy dresses—it was miserable. I didn’t have the money for that, and truly I don’t know if I’d have put her through it anyway, but I could afford a sketch. The woman was quite good.” A sad smile crossed her face as she looked down at the stack of drawings. My stomach knotted in anticipation. “Mistress McNish passed last year. She’d spend the whole day with us, just chatting and sketching. She wouldn’t let me pay her the very first year. Elora had been such a joy, she said our company was payment enough.”

I stopped breathing as she passed the first one over to me. A toddler with short, curly hair sticking straight out from her head smiled at me. She wore a nappy and nothing else. Hands on her hips, a round swell of a belly stuck out.

“Perfect. Of course she was. Is. Gods, Em.”

“Not included was the ribbon I’d tied in her hair a dozen times that day. She took it out no sooner than I put it in.”

I laughed, holding the portrait closer to examine my daughter. “Is that a dimple?”

“Yes, she lost it when she lost her baby fat.”

“Her hair,” I murmured, awed by the unruly curls she got from me.

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