1REUNION
Aelis’s breath caught in her throat as she rounded a turn and saw a lean, hooded figure watching her from beneath a spreading pine. She wasn’t sure if she had entered the valley proper yet, as she’d last seen it in the early grip of winter, and the geography had been somewhat obscured.
But there was no mistaking the grace of the figure that watched her for a moment, then turned away and disappeared, nor the braid of deep red hair that swung down over her shoulder.
Aelis felt a fist squeeze her heart. To gather herself, she slipped from her saddle and took both her mount’s and the packhorse’s reins in one hand and led them forward.
Past the stand of pines, she saw the hall and the cluster of outbuildings she knew and dreaded and the tall shape she longed for leaning in the doorway.
Aelis and her two animals stopped a yard or two from the doorway, clouds of dust rising from the grass behind them.
“Been a while.” The voice in the shadowed doorway creaked with disuse.
“I’m sorry,” Aelis said. “But I came bearing gifts.”
“Is one of them is a scroll or an amulet or some other piece of magic fuckery that can get me out of here?”
“Not yet,” Aelis said. She wanted to whisper the words, murmur them in shame, but forced herself to look straight at the figure and speak to her directly. “But … some of it might make the time pass more pleasantly.”
Maurenia took a step forward from the log wall of Rhunival’s Hall—Maurenia’s Hall now, Aelis supposed—and slid her hood down. Her hair was long, longer than Aelis had ever seen it, and plaited into a braid that rested over one shoulder. This new style left little doubt of her half-elven heritage, showing off the pointed tips of her ears. Aelis had known her to prefer to keep them obscured.
“There’s no one here to see them.” Maurenia’s eyes, a pure crystal blue, bored hard into Aelis.
Can she hear my thoughts here? No. She just read my eyes, Aelis thought. She had a hard time peeling herself away from Maurenia’s look, and not just for the usual reasons that she was the most beautiful woman Aelis knew and that she was badly, stupidly in love with her.
But because those blue eyes carried an accusation that Aelis, for all her abjurer’s power, couldn’t deflect or evade.
“Well,” Maurenia said, “are you going to stand there or are you going to explain what you meant about making the time pass?”
Aelis tore herself away, went to a wicker basket strapped to the packhorse, and untied the knot that held it shut. “A twelve of Tirravalan orange, for a start,” she said, slipping a heavy glass bottle free of the basket.
When she turned around, Maurenia was a half-step behind her, not having made a sound closing the distance. Before Aelis could say another word, the half-elf slipped her arm around Aelis’s waist and drew her close.
Aelis did not quite drop the bottle of wine, but she came closer than she ever had, sober. Maurenia filled her entire being as they kissed; her scent, the touch of her hand and her lips, the feeling of their bodies pressed together.
“I’m still angry,” Maurenia said a few heated moments later. “Don’t think for a moment that I’m not. I will be angry until the day you get me out of here, and for quite some time after that.”
“I know,” Aelis said, leaning her head on Maurenia’s shoulder. “You have every right to be.”
“Please tell me there’s tea on that animal,” Maurenia said, stepping away but keeping hold of Aelis’s free hand.
“Some of Tun’s herbal concoction. Which is better than tea anyway.”
“Elisima’s ass, but what you know about what is and isn’t tea couldn’t be pinned to a card,” Maurenia sniffed. “Still, that’s better than nothing. Whatever Rhunival left behind ran out and I can’t figure out how to re-create it.”
“Come on,” Aelis said. “Let’s get the packhorse unloaded, and…”
“You can get the packhorse unloaded,” Maurenia said, flashing a dangerous smile. “I’m going to have a bath. If you hurry, the water might still be hot enough when you can join me.”
* * *
Maurenia had changed Rhunival’s Hall in subtle ways. There was no clutter, for one; no tools or crockery sitting unused on a table. Everything was in its place. A new hearth was half constructed along the far wall, a planned replacement for the central fire pit and open ceiling. As Aelis stacked boxes, baskets, and parcels upon the empty table, she took a careful look about and realized that there was a weapon to hand within two quick steps of anywhere in the hall. A sharp woodaxe hanging on one wall, a too-long-for-kitchen-work knife on another, a heavy club with metal studs worked into its knob sitting handle-up right by the doorway.
“Who exactly is she expecting to fight?” Aelis muttered as she pulled more bottles free from a wicker pannier. “Or what?” The place didn’t feel like Maurenia’s entirely, not yet, but given another year it would be thoroughly transformed.
It will not be that long. I swear it won’t. Aelis didn’t dare say those words aloud, fearful that some lingering woodshade’s magic might twist or bind them.
Maurenia rejoined her as she was unsaddling the horses and wondering what to do with them. Wearing only a long robe and sandals, her hair wet and dark around her neck, Maurenia went to the animals and stroked their faces. Both sets of ears turned to her, and she leaned close to them, murmuring quietly first to the one Aelis had ridden, and then to the stouter packhorse.
“Let them roam,” she said, “unbridled. They won’t leave m … the valley.”
* * *
Aelis didn’t want to mentally catalog the ways her lover had changed since her magical confinement in the wilderness had begun in early winter. But she was a necromancer, an anatomist, and observing and recording things was part of who she was. There’d be no overt physical changes, no gain in height or change of eye color or the like. Her skin had more sun in it, and her hair as well; both were incredibly fetching on a woman whose appeal was untamed to begin with, Aelis thought. Her scent was different; stronger and more redolent of wood, smoke, and sun. But most notably she was stronger and somehow wilder, a fact brought into stark relief as Aelis lay gasping on blankets spread across a bed of pine needles under the spreading shade of trees behind the hall. Maurenia was sitting up, working open the bottle of wine they’d taken outside with them as the afternoon wore on toward evening.
Aelis was not quite yet capable of sitting up, so she contemplated Maurenia’s back.
And noted instantly that scars she’d seen on her lover’s shoulder blades had vanished.
She sat straight up and laid her hand on Maurenia’s back. Startled, the half-elf whirled around.
“I’m sorry,” Aelis said. “But … you had scars there.”
“Everyone on a ship takes a falling block or a whipping rope end at some point…” Maurenia grabbed at one of the blankets and tried to pull it over herself.
“Had, Maurenia. They’re gone.”
“If you go running for ink and paper to make a study of me, this is going to be a short visit.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Aelis said. Not where you can see, anyway, she thought. “We did talk about you making notes, testing limits, that kind of thing.”
“We also talked about you devoting your days to figuring out how to get me out of this fucking imprisonment, but I haven’t heard any plans.” Maurenia stood up and stalked inside, leaving Aelis to gather the blanket and hurry after her.
“I found something,” Aelis said. And gods, but I am hoping you can read it. She went to her baggage and pulled out a soft linen bundle wrapped with leather cordage. She unwrapped it and let the linen fall open, revealing the book the Errithsuns had brought her.
Copyright © 2025 by Daniel M. Ford
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