Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [79]
She shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know it as surely as I know how I feel about you.”
Tessa stared silently at him, then wiped the tears from her eyes. “I have to think about this. I have to give it some time.”
Time is something you don’t have, he wanted to say, but he managed to keep himself from doing so. “I know,” he said instead. “I know.”
They sat together on the bench, holding each other and not speaking, looking off into the dark. Hawk kept wondering if there was something else he should say, something that would better persuade her. But he couldn’t think of what it would be. So he settled for keeping her close for the time they had, soaking in her warmth and her softness, giving himself some small measure of comfort before she was gone again.
“A foraging party went out early last week,” she said suddenly, not looking at him, her face buried in his shoulder. She didn’t continue right away, but then said very quickly, “There were eleven of them, all experienced, all heavily armed. They went south toward the warehouses twenty or thirty miles outside the city, looking for fresh medical supplies and packaged goods to bring back to the compound. It was a five-day expedition.” She paused, as if waiting on him, and then said, “It’s been a week, and they haven’t come back. One of them is my father.”
He could hear the fear in her voice now, could sense the deep abiding terror she was feeling. His warnings about Candle’s vision and the strange things happening in the city had done that. He wished he had saved it for another time. But it was too late to take it back.
There are eleven of them carrying weapons,” he said, trying to reassure her. “They know what they are doing. They can protect themselves.”
He could feel her head shake in disagreement. “The Croaks and that Lizard you told me about would have known what they were doing, too. They should have been able to protect themselves, too, but look what happened.”
“It isn’t the same. Eleven armed men can stand up to anything. Your father will be all right.”
He wished he believed it. He wished he could think of something more reassuring. He knew how she felt about her father and mother and what it would do to her to lose either of them.
You’re so stupid, he told himself angrily.
“I have to get back,” she said suddenly, breaking away. She rose and went over to the door, then looked back at him. “Will you come again soon?”
He rose. “If you promise to be careful, I will. In two nights, okay?”
She came back to him quickly and pressed herself against him. “You’re the one on the streets.”
“Sometimes the streets are safer.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more.” She kissed him hard, then broke away, her black eyes shining, her face radiant with her feelings. “I want you. I want everything from you. I want to be with you forever.”
She kissed him again, and then turned and bolted back through the tunnel door and was gone. He stood listening to the locks fasten and then to the silence. He was flushed with excitement and driven by fear. He could barely contain his feelings. Two words played themselves over and over in his mind.
Don’t go.
Chapter FOURTEEN
“KIRISIN,” BIAT WHISPERED to him through the crack in the open door.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?” The Elven boy looked over his shoulder at his friend and caught a glimpse of his thin, pinched face in the pale haze of the candlelight. “Just finishing,” he said.
“Do you know what time it is?”
Kirisin shook his head. “It’s not dawn, I know that.”
There was a despairing sigh as Biat’s face disappeared and the door closed. Kirisin went right back to writing.
He was sitting on the tiny veranda of the home that the six of them shared—Biat, Erisha, Raya, Jarn, Giln, and himself. Four were from the Cintra