Pure

Finten’s eyes flashed to her face. She was smiling. He wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him or not. Maigred finished frosting the last cookie and set it on the rack with the others. She cleared her workspace, putting the dishes that needed to be washed on the back table with the rest, then filled a plate for herself. She brought the other chair from the corner, over next to FInten and sat down.

“You don’t want to go out with the others?” He asked.

She speared a piece of meat on her fork. “You’re in here.”

He watched her for a moment, trying to understand why she wanted to stay back in the kitchen with him. When she gave him a glance with a raised eyebrow, he turned his eyes to the wall opposite him.

“Was your day good?” He asked.

She nodded. “Yes. Busy, productive.”

He nodded. “Mine was too. I met a stray dog.”

“A…dog?”

He nodded. “It was a sweet thing. Lonely. There aren’t many dogs left in town. I don’t think Hadeaon likes them.”

Maigred made a noncommittal noise.

“Did you ever have a dog?”

“No. My mother wasn’t fond of animals. I brought enough of them home to drive her mad, though.”

“Did you?” Finten smiled. “I can imagine that.”

Maigred glanced at him a bit uncertainly. Finten turned to looked at her, but she was concentrating down at her plate again. “Did you know your mother?”

Finten blinked in surprise. “My mother?” He hadn’t thought about her for years. He shut his eyes and pushed his memory into the past. “I knew her. She was a good woman. I must have driven her crazy with my antics, but she never made me feel unwanted. The last time I saw her I was probably four years old.”

“Four?”

“Yes. She had a strong pull on me. I had stopped living at home soon after I turned three, but I kept coming back to see her.”

“Did you know your father?”

Finten’s eyes opened. “Oh, yes. He served a Tarasque lord. He was a good man. He taught me everything I needed to survive, how to hunt, how to find shelter for the night, how to identify poisonous plants, how to control fire. He would have been glad if I had stayed in the territory, but I was too wild. I wanted freedom. So I left.”

Maigred was looking at him again. “What was it like, living out in the wilds?”

Finten shrugged lightly. “It was good. I explored many different lands. I saw animals I’d never dreamed could exist. I saw snow for the first time in my life. I climbed mountains and saw the most beautiful sunsets. I crossed a desert. I’d never seen a land like that before and haven’t since, it was a land that knew how to protect itself.

“But the excitement wore off eventually. I started to want a proper companion. All the animals had companions that understood them, and I had none.” He swallowed, his eyes dropping to the floor as he remembered that longing inside him and how it had brought him here.

“I came looking at a pretty young age for a tarasque. I was eleven. Caevah was fifteen. I didn’t come home with her right away, I still lived out in the wilds for another three years, but we connected the first time we met. I couldn’t have left the area around her territory even if I wanted to, and I didn’t. She was…” He shook his head. “She was calm and comforting and she always had answers to any problem I came up against. I never knew her to get flustered. She was home, she was safety and comfort.

“I came home with her when I was fourteen and started to live in town some of the time. Her mother was in a hurry for Caevah to get married. Her father had died when she was nine, and all their tarasque left, but Caevah didn’t want to rush me. Events intervened though. Her mother became very ill and she insisted we marry before she passed. She was afraid our courtship connection wasn’t enough to keep me tied to her daughter and she was terrified to leave Caevah without a protector. I was fifteen when we married.

“Caevah knew I wasn’t ready to be married though, so our marriage was really just a formality that we went through for her mother. Her mother was satisfied. She died peacefully a few days later.

“Caevah was content to let things remain the way they had always been between us till I was ready to settle. It took me another couple of years to grow into the idea of being married, and another couple of years after that to really settle and stop going out to the wilds for extended periods of time, but Caevah was unfailingly patient with me.

“Truthfully, I don’t think she minded much when I was away from home, I’m sure things were much calmer when I was gone. She never made me feel unwanted though. She always greeted me with so much joy whenever I came back, that soon I never wanted to leave. She was my home,” he repeated.

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Finten resumed.

“That’s why I went after Hadeaon. She was pregnant, her ability to control her powers fluctuated wildly. Some days she could use them with ease, other days she couldn’t access them at all. Hadeaon kept destroying land after land in the south, he was becoming more and more powerful and was coming steadily north, we all knew it was only a matter of time before he reached us. I wanted Caevah and our children to be safe. I didn’t want her to have to worry about using her powers to protect the land when she didn’t even know if she would be able to. I wanted her to feel as safe as she’d made me feel.

“I made an agreement with the lords to the south of us. We were all in danger, so we joined forces. All of us and our men went south to end Hadeaon before he could threaten our homes.

“Then Hadeaon killed Caevah.

“We all had been counting on me and my men to handle the brunt of the fighting. Because of the pregnancy, our powers were the strongest they had ever been. Without us the other lords gave up the battle. We all barely made it home. We knew that Hadeaon was coming after us, so we prepared.

“Some of the lords had no time to prepare, Hadeaon was at their gates within a week, so they made a pact with him, he could pass through their lands as long as he left them alone.”

Finten took a deep breath and nodded. “That suited Hadeaon just fine. He wanted to get to us, to where Alvie was waiting for him to come claim the people here. Hadeaon came north. He came to roost in our town, and the lords to the south saved their lands and people.”

“How could they do that?” Maigred’s voice was tight with anger.

Finten looked over at her, her cheeks were flushed, her hands clenched. There were little wisps of hair around her face that had escaped her hair tie. He felt a strong desire to reach out and touch her cheek, to smooth back her hair. To kiss those pursed lips till they relaxed again.

He swallowed and clenched his hand to keep it from moving.

He had loved Caevah with all his heart, but to Finten, she was something other, she was never touched by strong emotion. She was cool and calm and analytical. She was precious to him, different from himself, something he could never quite grasp or understand. Caevah was someone to be revered, obeyed, and above all protected. Maigred was different.

She still had a quality of mystery about her and he certainly felt protective over her, but the same fire that burned in him, burned in her too. It both attracted and frightened him. If he embraced her, would she balance and ground him, or would they both burn up? Would he become unbalanced and turn?

“The lords did what they thought they had to do to protect their people. Can you blame them?”

Maigred’s mouth tightened into a flat line. “Yes. They were cowards. They should have fought.”

Finten smiled. “I’m sure they wanted to fight, that’s the nature of a tarasque. They probably made that pact on direct orders from their wives. Caevah probably would have made the same decision. She wouldn’t have taken a chance when the safety of her people was on the line.”

“That’s-” Something dark flashed through Maigred’s eyes and she looked quickly away, her jaw tight.

Finten knew that she was angry, that he shouldn’t push, but he was genuinely curious. His mouth moved without him really thinking about it. “Could you have put your people in danger by fighting, when you had the option to not fight and have the danger pass by your people?”

Maigred scowled. She abruptly reached over and took Finten’s plate from him. Then she stalked to the back table and put both of their dishes on top of the pile waiting there to be washed. She picked up a tray and walked past him without a word, into the dining room.

Finten got up and went out to get water for washing the dishes.

He was sorry that he’d made Maigred angry, but her anger comforted him. It meant that she didn’t know what she would have done if she’d had the same choice. It meant she wasn’t ruled by her fire.