Page 60 of Whisker me Away
"Thank you," she whispered, tears stinging her eyes at the unexpected show of community support. "All of you. I... I don't know what to say."
"Say you'll come home safe," Miriam said with maternal firmness. "Both of you. We've lost enough to this evil already."
"We'll do our best," Kieran promised, his arm sliding around Freya's waist with protective warmth. "But right now, we need some time to prepare ourselves mentally."
The hint was taken with gracious understanding. People began filing out with quiet well-wishes and promises to keep watch until morning.
"How do you feel?" Kieran asked, settling beside her on the couch.
"Humbled. Terrified. Grateful." Freya leaned into his warmth, marveling at how perfectly she fit against his side. "I always thought being a guardian meant protecting people who saw me as separate from them. Different. But tonight..." She turned to face him. "I can't fail them, Kieran. Not when they're trusting me with everything they love."
"Then we won't fail." His hand cupped her face with gentle certainty. "But right now, I don't want to think about ancient evils or impossible odds. I want to think about us."
"What about us?"
"About how we want to spend what might be our last night together." His thumb traced across her cheekbone with reverent care. "Do we want to spend it worrying about tomorrow, or celebrating what we've found with each other?"
The answer came without hesitation. "Celebrating."
They made love with tender intensity, their bodies joining with the desperate sweetness that came from knowing how precious their time together was. Every touch carried weight, every kiss held the possibility of being their last, every whisperedendearment became a promise that transcended whatever fate awaited them.
Afterward, as they lay entwined in her bed with moonlight painting silver patterns across their skin, conversation flowed between them like shared breath.
"Tell me something I don't know about you," Freya said, tracing lazy patterns across his chest.
"I used to write poetry," Kieran admitted with embarrassed honesty. "Terrible, sappy stuff about finding someone worth staying for."
"That's not terrible. That's beautiful." She pressed a kiss to his collarbone. "What else?"
"I was scared to claim you because I thought you deserved better than someone with no roots, no family connections, no legacy worth sharing." His voice grew quiet. "Took me too long to realize that maybe I could build something worthy with you instead of inheriting it."
"And now?"
"Now I know that home isn't where you come from. It's who you choose to build a life with." His arms tightened around her. "What about you? What don't I know?"
"I used to dream about traveling the world, learning magical techniques from different cultures, maybe even writing a book about botanical magic." Freya's voice carried wistful longing. "Grandmother always said duty came before personal dreams, but sometimes I wondered what it would be like to choose adventure over responsibility."
"Maybe we'll get the chance to find out. After we save Hollow Oak, after things settle down, maybe we could travel together. Combine your botanical expertise with my security skills and see what the world has to offer."
"You'd want that? Even knowing it would mean leaving the community you've worked so hard to belong to?"
"I'd want anything that made you happy." Kieran's voice carried absolute sincerity. "Besides, home isn't Hollow Oak anymore. Home is wherever you are."
They talked until the moon reached its zenith, sharing dreams and fears and quiet hopes for a future they might not live to see. When midnight chimed from the town clock, they knew it was time.
The walk to the corrupted grove felt like a funeral procession, their footsteps muffled by fallen leaves that crackled with unnatural energy. The ritual components felt heavy in Freya's bag, weighted with the hopes of everyone they'd left behind and the terrible responsibility of either saving or failing their entire community.
"Still time to change your mind," Kieran said as they approached the grove's edge, though his voice suggested he already knew her answer.
"Never." Freya's grip tightened on his hand. "We do this together, or we don't do it at all."
The Thornweaver's fortress had grown even more horrifying in the hours since their scouting trip. Twisted trees writhed with malevolent intelligence, their branches reaching toward them with hungry intent. The ground beneath their feet pulsed like a living heart, and the air itself felt thick with hatred so ancient and deep it made breathing feel like drowning.
But at the grove's heart, the original binding circle remained intact. Ancient stones carved with protective runes still glowed with faint light, and the ritual space carved into living rock spoke to generations of sacred work performed on this ground.
"Celeste stood right here," Freya whispered, her magic responding to the residual energy left by her ancestor's sacrifice. "She faced the same evil we're facing, with odds just as impossible."
"And she won." Kieran's voice carried fierce conviction. "Just like we're going to win."
