A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

81. Saelyn

Chapter 81

Saelyn

The risk feels worth it to me.

I was seventeen and empty.

The risk feels worth it to me.

I was seventeen and constantly on the verge of tears, my mother and Pah-Pah helping me into my dress, my dark locks woven into a thick band of intricate braids across the top of my head, half of my waves falling down my back in contrast to my pale skin.

The risk feels worth it to me.

I was seventeen at my own party, the lanterns aglow in a warm, muted heat, the colorful banners draped across the trees, somehow dull and out of place now that my chest ached and my throat weighed heavy with the fear that I had ruined everything.

That by refusing the risk he felt was worth it, refusing to hear any more of Thevin’s sweet words which rang in my ears since he had spoken them in my room, I had broken us. I had set us unknowingly on a new path where we could not return to where we had been.

I had begged for things not to change.

Pah-Pah was wrong. I had taken no risk, but Thevin did. Even by standing still, things had changed and I could not return to the place where we had been the best of friends. Only friends.

I sipped a goblet of red wine handed to me by Pah-Pah with the most remorseful smile I’d ever seen on his sun-kissed face. He’d done his kohl in a dark blue, he’d said in honor of the shade of my eyes.

He nudged me, holding out a golden plate of miniature cinnamon buns, each dabbed with white icing. “Will you talk to him tonight?”

I shook my head at the plate, my stomach writhing anyway, let alone with eating the sweetest food here. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh?” He set the plate down, chewing one of the sweets. “If that’s so, why has he been staring at you since he got here?”

I looked up, my gaze knowing exactly where he was, as if my heart had tracked his every move since he’d arrived at the party sixty-seven minutes ago.

He leaned against one of the trees in the clearing, party guests passing by, his eyes locked on me, regardless of who moved in front of him.

My breath stilled. My heart raged.

The risk feels worth it to me.

I was seventeen and ready to feel. Ready to love, ready to know what it meant to be wanted, to be touched. I was seventeen, and I didn’t want to fear the future changed, knowing the past had slipped me by, my best days there in those moments where I had spent them with him .

I was seventeen, and I was ready to take a risk.

I set my goblet down and rose, my dress of cerulean velvet over cream silk slipping over my feet in a delicate ensemble that was chosen for me to wear, not something I would have picked myself.

Thevin uncrossed his arms, pushing off the tree, his movement in my direction matching my own in his, passing through the sea of people, some of them dancing to the music that lifted through the night air, eating, drinking, and laughing.

He’d told me he was falling, confessed what my smile did to him as if his own had not had a mark on my heart since I was ten years old, having no name for what I felt, only wanting him around forever.

He’d wanted to risk what we had—the friendship, the laughter, the bickering at the stupidest, smallest little things just to have something witty to say, to jolt both of our hearts in our chests.

We were young. We were new. We knew little of love or life or what it meant to really take risks at all, but as our bodies closed in, mere inches apart in the crowd, I understood what Pah-Pah had said.

This was the risk worth taking. This was the change that could ruin or save me. This was the path I wanted to choose. The one Thevin had laid out before me as the one he wanted to take, hand-in-hand, heart-in-heart.

He offered his hand, and I took it, wordlessly slipping into a dance, moving across the grass with the other couples to the same endearing tune.

The light blue eyes of the friend I loved stared into mine as we swayed, the music shifting soft and light on the warm breeze that filtered through the trees of Felgren.

“I’m sorry,” I spoke, breaking the silence between us.

“No, Sae, I’m sorry. Your words were clear and precise, and I once again did not give them the credit they deserved.” He took his eyes from me and glanced around. “It’s a beautiful party. I think your mother invited everyone she’s ever known.” He smirked with a chuckle I knew he did not feel.

I swallowed, choosing my words with care. “I’ve thought about what you said.”

“Don’t. Just forget it. We’re best friends. We always have been, and we always will be.”

“I don’t want to forget it.”

We stopped in the middle of the dancers. He let go of my hand, my waist, and took a step back, shaking his head. “Don’t, Sae. You don’t need to feel like you have something to prove here. You don’t need to find some way to make me happy. I am happy. I’m happy being here every summer with you. There’s nothing more you need to do.”

“Thevin, I?—”

“It’s okay,” he interrupted, his voice breaking. “You’re still my favorite person.” He shrugged, sniffing slightly. “I’ll continue to irritate you, and you’ll continue to tell me where to go. Nothing changes, just like you said.”

He moved forward, pulling me close, his chin resting on my head pressed to his chest.

I should have reversed time. I should have gone back, and my first words at us meeting on the dance floor would be, “Thevin, I love you. I have loved you all my life, and I want to risk all of what we’ve shared if it means I get to be with you.”

But I didn’t.

And then I couldn’t.

Too much time had passed as he hugged me to his chest, and I pressed my cheek against what was solid, and warm, and home.

“Sae?” Pah-Pah tapped my shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but your mother is calling for you.”

I broke from where I wanted to stay and nodded.

Thevin gave me a small grin, brushing a thumb on my cheek. “Meet me at the meat pies when you’re done?”

I drew breath to speak, but Pah-Pah interrupted.

“I am sorry, dearest, but she is insistent.”

His face was pained as if he could hear the words she spoke to him in command, loud as thunder across the darkening sky.

I looked up to the clouds billowing in, knowing the guests would soon be drenched by a summer rain.

My eyes locked back on Thevin.

“Go, Sae. I’ll see you after at our fort in the grove.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I’ll grab a bottle of wine if you can manage the cheese.”

There he was, as he always had been.

The same Thevin with his taunting mischief written across his face, no sign of his confessions to me the day before..

I lied with a grin, nodding and following Pah-Pah, wondering how my seventeenth birthday had gone so terribly wrong as my name lifted through the rumble of the incoming storm, traveling along the wind.