Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [81]
“Let’s go,” Kylar said, all wolfhound.
Jarl was standing at the window, pensive. “I was in love once,” Jarl said. “Or something like it. With a beautiful girl nearly as fucked up as I am.”
“Who was she?” Kylar asked.
“Her name was Viridiana, Vi. Beautiful, beautiful—” Jarl looked up and stiffened. “Vi?”
He went down in a spray of blood, an arrow passing fully through the center of his neck. His body dropped to the wood floor like a sack of flour. He blinked once. His eyes were neither afraid nor angry. His expression was wry.
Can you believe that? his eyes asked as Kylar drew him into his lap.
And then Jarl’s eyes said nothing at all.
“Can I show Kylar?” Uly asked. She was clutching the very doll that Kylar had picked up a few days before. Elene smiled; Kylar was doing better at being a father than he knew.
“Yes,” Elene said, “but you run right home. Promise?”
“Promise,” Uly said, and ran.
Elene watched her go, feeling anxious, but she always felt anxious about little things. Caernarvon wasn’t like the Warrens. Besides, the house was only two blocks away.
“We need to talk, don’t we?” Aunt Mea said.
It was getting late. The sun’s rays slanted down on merchants who were packing up their goods and heading home. Elene swallowed. “I promised Kylar. We agreed that we’d never tell anyone, but—”
“Then don’t say another word.” Aunt Mea smiled and took Elene’s arm to guide her back to the house.
“I can’t,” Elene said, stopping her. “I can’t do this anymore.”
So she told Aunt Mea everything, from the lie of their marriage to their fights about sex to Kylar’s being a wetboy and trying to leave it behind. Aunt Mea didn’t even look surprised.
“Elene,” she said, taking her hands. “Do you love Kylar or are you with him because Uly needs a mother?”
Elene paused to fully humble herself in the face of the question, to make sure what she would say was true. “I love him,” Elene said. “Uly is a part of it, but I really love him.”
“Then why are you protecting yourself?”
Elene looked up. “I’m not protecting—”
“You can’t be honest with me until you’re honest with yourself.”
Elene looked at her hands. A farmer’s cart loaded with the day’s unsold produce rattled past them. The light was fading and the street was beginning to get dark. “We have to get back,” Elene said. “Dinner must be getting cold.”
“Child,” Aunt Mea said. Elene stopped.
“He’s a killer,” Elene said. “I mean, he’s killed people.”
“No, you were right. He’s a killer.”
“No, he’s a good man. He can change. I know it.”
“Child, do you know why you’re talking to me even though you promised Kylar you wouldn’t? Because you agreed to something that isn’t in your nature. You make a terrible liar, but you tried because you promised. Isn’t that what he’s done?”
“What do you mean?” Elene asked.
“If you can’t love Kylar for the man he is—if you only love him for the man you think he could be—you’ll cripple him.”
Kylar had been so unhappy. When he’d started going out at night, she hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to know what he did. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked.
“Do you think you’re the first woman who’s been afraid to love?” Aunt Mea asked.
The words cut deep. It cast a different light on their nightly making out and fighting. She’d thought she was being holy by not making love with Kylar, but she was just terrified. She felt so far out of control already that surrender in the bedroom would have left her powerless. “Can I love him if I can’t understand him? Can I love him if I hate what he does?”
“Child,” Aunt Mea said. She gently laid a thick hand on Elene’s shoulder. “Loving is an act of faith as much as believing in the God is.”
“He isn’t a believer. An ox and a wolf can’t be yoked together,” Elene said, knowing she was grasping at straws.
“You think a yoke only refers to wedding rings or love-making? You don’t need to understand him, Elene, you need to love him until