“I would like to walk through it.”
Ivo eyed the building uneasily. The burnt part was mostly to one side, while the remainder appeared reasonably sound. Briar firmed her lips, and gazed at him with big eyes, managing to look mulish and pleading at the same time. She hid a smile when he gave a long-suffering sigh.
“We can look inside without danger, can’t we, Ivo? And you will protect me, won’t you?”
His eyebrows rose cynically. “Very pretty, Briar, but I do not believe that meek pose. You need more practice.” He began to dismount. “Come then! But do not move away from me, and if I say we must go, then go we must.”
“Very well, Ivo,” she murmured, eyes brimming with laughter. He swung her down and she took his hand, and together they moved into the abandoned building.
’Twas hard to believe this was once an elaborate gift, Briar thought wearily. The shrine her father had built to Anna. The air was acrid. Smoke and damp and neglect caught in her throat. Briar had been here rarely, but she well remembered how the candles had shone and the people had laughed. As usual, Anna had been at their center, glowing and beautiful, for such attention was her milk and bread. And her father had been so happy, in his quiet way, because Anna was happy.
Aye, she had thought at the time, this is love.
To put someone else above one’s self.
Could she do such a thing? Was she capable of it? Not of putting her sisters above herself, for she had done that often enough, but a man. In particular, Ivo. Could she ever love him that much, enough to set him higher than herself?
Aye, there was the test.
Her doubts caused her to pull away from him despite his warning. She set off on her own, making her way farther into the shell of the building. Light shone dully through a hole in the wall, the outline jagged. Birds twittered in the sagging roof high above, where they had made snug homes in the moldering thatch.
Here, where there had been joy and laughter, was only emptiness.
Does that mean I should not put my reliance in love? That it does not last?
The warning rang in her head like a bell, but she ignored it.
Anna’s love had been false, just as her father’s happiness had been false. Briar’s memories of the past were brittle, a false fairytale. What she and Ivo would have must be solid and real…
“Demoiselle?” Ivo was standing close behind her and she had not even heard him come up. “Have you seen enough of this place? Whatever there is left of your father, you will not find it here. Let me take you somewhere warmer.”
His breath was hot against her nape. Briar shivered and leaned back against him. He was so solid, so safe, and it was frightening how easily she had grown used to him being there. Dangerous, too. For in Briar’s world nothing was certain, and she had learned not to rely upon anything or anyone.
Do I dare do so now?
“Do you remember my mother, Ivo? Not Anna, but my real mother?”
She spoke quickly, to still her own fears. Perhaps sensing her inner turmoil, he rubbed his hands over her arms, slowly, as if to warm her through the cloak. As if to comfort her.
“I remember her a little. She was small and hot-tempered, like you.”
Briar smiled and rested her head on his chest, content to listen.
“Once, when I hurt myself at training, she tended my bruises. I remember her scolding me, but I knew she didn’t really mean it. We both understood that. I remember her kindness—small matters she dealt with, to ease my homesickness.”
“And yet my father did not love her, not as he did Anna. He married my mother because it was agreed between their parents. He married Anna for love.”
“Did Anna love him?” He sounded curious.
“Perhaps, in her way. I don’t think she was able to love anyone very much, but because he gave her everything, she responded to him. I believed at the time that it was love. Now…you have made me see the truth, that she gave her body freely.”
Ivo continued to smooth his hands over her arms. Briar felt the warmth from his touch, and the comfort, the offering of his support without words.
High above them, through the crisscross of charred roof beams, the sky looked bleak. This was a grim and depressing place. It spoke of too many lost dreams and shattered lives. Ivo had been right, there was nothing for her here.
“Let us go,” Briar said.
It was in that moment they heard the footsteps, the grate of boots against fallen stonework and timber. A dark shape appeared at the far end of the building, silhouetted against the jagged hole in the wall. And stood, watching.