Vassal by Sterling D'Este (reading books for 7 year olds .txt) 📗

They were sharing their lives. Right now. And Delyth would remember Alphonse when she was gone. When Enyo took it all.

“I feel… sad. About my family. They love me, but they follow Mother Agathi’s teachings very strictly. They would not understand my being with you because I enjoy it. And I know that if I ever returned to the farm, they would want me to marry Henri and have children as Mother Agathi dictates and… I don’t think I want to have children with Henri.” So she didn’t miss her family either. At this point, Etienne was more her family than anyone else. She’d spent more of her life with him.

And he was mad at her for the same reasons she couldn’t wear her veil anymore.

༄

“Thank the Gods.” The words were out of Delyth’s mouth before she could think about them. “I don’t want you to have children with Henri, either.” Perhaps that was a little insensitive… She didn’t want to belittle the way Alphonse thought about her family.

“But I understand, I think. I might not have grown up with a typical family, but the temple wants things for me that I no longer really want. It makes me feel a bit guilty, though I don’t think it would be healthy to go back and do what they want just to keep myself from feeling that way.”

She grinned at Alphonse. “Also, I’m particularly glad that you enjoy being with me.” She leaned over and brushed a kiss against the corner of the healer’s mouth.

“I…” Alphonse started and trailed off, distracted by the kiss. She brought her hand up to take Delyth’s chin, gently guiding it back for another kiss. And another. She was a rosy pink when she pulled away and sighed. “How did you learn to kiss so well?”

Delyth was breathless by the time Alphonse pulled away, her eyes heavy-lidded. She sobered at the question, though, examining the healer’s face.

“When I was sixteen, a girl from a nearby clan came to study at the temple.” She turned away, thinking back to the day she had met Tanwen, flame-haired and wild. It felt like a lifetime ago now. Something that had happened to someone else.

“We became friends, and then as we got older, lovers.” The priestess swallowed, watching for Alphonse’s reaction. “She left a while after I made the rank of warrior priestess. To fulfill her duties to her clan. There were a couple others, but Tanwen was the only one I loved.”

❀

Alphonse had been smiling as Delyth explained, thinking it nice to know the priestess had something sweet and amorous during those training years. Years that had sounded very challenging.

She pushed a bit of her own tawny hair over her shoulder and realized that Delyth looked… on edge.

Having never had a paramour before, Alphonse hadn’t realized that perhaps talking about past lovers was a sensitive topic. Perhaps that woman had left on bad terms? Or perhaps Delyth still missed her and wished to have her back…

“Fulfill duties… Like the duties I have to my family and Henri?” she asked carefully, a sinking feeling coming to Alphonse’s stomach. Perhaps Delyth had been cast aside for a male and children and a typical life.

The idea made Alphonse feel sick.

༄

Delyth’s brows rose. That was a very intuitive question; Alphonse had hit on it exactly. Perhaps because the duties requested of the healer and Tanwen weren’t incredibly different, for all that they came from very different peoples.

“Yes, sort of.” Delyth tightened her wing around Alphonse in a comforting gesture. The smaller woman looked uneasy. “She was heir to her clan, and the position came with certain responsibilities.”

Delyth left out just how certain Tanwen had been of their ability to get around the rules. How she’d wanted the halfbreed anyway until the raiders attacked… The priestess didn’t want to acknowledge that darkness inside herself.

“It was a long time ago, though,” she went on. “Besides, if she had not left, I might not have ended up here with you. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

Alphonse flushed happily. “I broke my bones falling down some stairs. I was hurrying to get to class on time and tripped over my skirts.”

The priestess’s eyes widened. “Did you heal them right then?”

It seemed miraculous to her, how easily Alphonse could knit bone and sinew back together. She had taken the broken bones in Delyth’s wing and mended them in moments, just the moon before.

She nudged Alphonse with her shoulder. “I’ll bet you weren’t even late to class.”

Shaking her head, Alphonse held up her wrist. “The masters decided it was time for me to learn, so they permitted me to do my own wrist. It took me three days to get it right. Of course, when I got it wrong, the bones had to be rebroken.”

The grin disappeared from Delyth’s face. “They just left you alone? For days? With a broken wrist?”

Gods, that must have been painful. The more the priestess heard about these masters, the less she liked them. They had abandoned Alphonse and the Cabot man both in her story from earlier.

The trainers at the temple, for all their faults, had never left their students in such precarious positions. When Delyth had her own wrist broken, they had sent her to have it healed immediately.

❀

“They say you can study and study and study, but at some point, you have to take that theory and put it into practice.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, seemingly not all that upset about her upbringing.

She had learned how to heal, after all.

And she could do it in even the most strenuous of circumstances. Perhaps that would not be true if she had been coddled or not given opportunities to fail so horribly.

“Delyth,” Alphonse started, placing her hand on the warrior’s leg, “I am very sorry about last night. I— I suppose, having grown up in such an intensely competitive manner, I took wooingyou more… studiously than I should