Many hours had passed since Xhex had checked in with her, the moon shifting position, the black shadows thrown by the trees pinwheeling around over the white ground. In many ways, time had no meaning, but it did have an effect: The longer she spent mulling over things, the more clearly she saw herself, her earlier realizations no longer a shock, but instead something she steeped herself in. . . .
Something she began to change herself with -
At first, the dark slash that cut through the wintry vista seemed to be just another shadow cast by a tree trunk at the edge of the property. Except then it moved.
It was alive.
It was. . . not an animal.
It was a male.
A sudden shot of fear jerked her upright, but her instincts rushed forward and told her immediately who it was. Tohrment.
Tohrment was here.
Her first thought was to go down into the underground retreat and pretend she hadn't seen him - and considering how he waited on the lawn, giving her plenty of time to identify him, he seemed to be offering her that out.
She was not going to run, however. She'd done enough variations of that to last for several lifetimes.
Rising from the chair, she went to the door that opened toward the river and unlocked it, pushing it wide. Crossing her arms over her chest against the cold, she tilted up her chin and waited for him to come forward.
And he did. With an expression of somber purpose, the Brother approached slowly, his heavy boots crunching through the crusty top layer of the snow. He still looked the same, still tall and broad, with his thick, white-striped hair, and his handsome, grave face marked with lines of distinction.
How odd of her to measure him for some kind of metamorphosis, she thought.
Clearly, she was ascribing her own transformation to anyone and everyone.
As he stopped in front of her, she cleared her throat, easing the tickle of the bitterly frigid air. She did not speak first, however. That was his due.
"Thank you for coming out," he said.
She just nodded, unwilling to make whatever cursory apology he was about to offer easy on him. No, no more easing his way - or others'.
"I want to talk for a bit - if you have some time?"
Given the way the cold wind cut through her clothes, she nodded and stepped back inside. The interior of the cabin hadn't seemed particularly warm before; now it was tropical. And cramped.
Sitting back down in her chair, she let him choose whether to stand or not. He picked the former, and did so directly before her.
Upon a deep, bracing breath, he spoke clearly and succinctly, as if he had mayhap practiced his words: "I can't apologize enough for what I said to you. It was utterly unfair, and unforgivable. There's no excuse for it, so I'm not going to try to explain it away. I just - "
"You know what?" she cut in evenly. "There's a part of me that wants to tell you to go to hell. . . to take your apology, and your weary eyes, and your heavy heart, and never, ever get anywhere near me again. "
After a long pause, he nodded. "Okay. I get that. I can totally respect that - "
"But," she cut him off again, "I've spent all night sitting in this chair, thinking about that candid soliloquy of yours. Actually, I've thought of little else since I left you. " Abruptly, she glanced out at the river. "You know, you must have buried me on a night like tonight, didn't you. "
"Yes, I did. Except it was snowing. "
"It must have been hard to get through the frosted ground. "
"It was. "
"Blisters to prove it, yes, indeed. " She refocused on him. "To be honest, I was fairly close to ruined when you left my recovery room at the training center. It's important to me that you realize that. After you departed, I had no thought, no feeling, nothing but breathing, and only because my body did that on its own. "
He made a noise in the back of his throat, as if, through his regret, he couldn't find the voice to speak.
"I have always known that you love only Wellsie, and not just because you told me so yourself in the beginning - but because it was evident all along. And you're right: I did fall in love with you, and I did try to keep it from you - at least consciously - because I knew that it would hurt you in an unbearable way - the idea that you had let some female get that close. . . " She shook her head as she imagined how that would have impacted him. "I really wanted to spare you any more pain, and I honestly wanted Wellsie to be free. Her disposition was nearly as important to me as it was to you - and that was not about punishing myself, but because I truly loved you. "