Page 67 of Homeward for a Spell

Ollie did not love the road.

Sage loved the road—needed the road, in fact.

Sage had never figured out how to need Ollie, or to let herself be needed.

Though her wife still hovered within reach, they might as well have been standing across the glen from each other for how much distance had settled between them.

Sage doesn’t relay precisely what she and Ollie said to each other in the tavern that night; those words and the last memory of her childhood sweetheart–turned–ex she keeps sealed in a jar in a cabinet in a corner of her heart. Instead, she simply tells Araphi, “They wanted me to leave. We fought all night, and parted ways the next morning.”

“Ollie wanted you to leave the party?”

“To leave…the road. Leave adventuring. But I couldn’t agree.”

“Why not?” Araphi’s dark brows crease in a way that reminds Sage a little of Ollie, though only fleetingly.

The two are alike in some ways. Beautiful, of course, and each with their own undeniable attracting force, like the power that tugs the high tide toward the moon. It had been hard to walk away from Ollie, but it had been impossible to contemplate staying. And it wasn’t only the thought of settling down in the Rookery, or some small hamlet near the capital where calamity seldom strikes but nobody ever has quite enough of anything, including happiness. Sage tears off an over-large bite of buttered bread with her teeth to buy herself time before she answers honestly. “I felt…that I hadn’t found what I was looking for yet.”

“What was that?” Araphi asks gently.

Sage is fairly certain that once upon a time she could name precisely what she was chasing. But sitting across from Araphi—who Sage fought so hard not to want, only to find that giving in was as simple and satisfying as slipping into a hot spring after a long journey—she can’t remember for the life of her what’s missing.

“Maybe I’ll know when I find it.”

Araphi tucks her knees up to her chest, her robe skimming the tops of her bare feet. “My mother was a bard once, you know. But the family demanded that she give up playing for the court once she married my fathers. Anything but a somber quartet playing at company functions they regard as lawless frivolity. They want the same of me when I marry Denby. Or wanted, I suppose, seeing as we’re unlikely to live through the week, let alone until the wedding.” She seems to perk up just slightly at this thought.

But Sage is awash with sympathy—for Araphi, and for the woman her mother might have been. “That’s awful!”

“Of course, that’s not to compare my family to your ex-wife. They wanted you to give up adventuring to keep you safe. But the cost would have made you miserable, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sage agrees, surprised to be seen so clearly.

“You’ve never regretted the choice, then?”

“Well…if I had gone with Ollie, then I wouldn’t be here.”

“What, trapped in a blizzard in the middle of the Northlands?”

“With you,” Sage corrects, and grins against her will. “Hard to regret that.”

“Even though we’re probably going to die in the wilderness?” She’s trying to match Sage’s smile, but the catch in her voice betrays her.

“Let’s not go so far as that. It’s true that we’ve got rather a lot of problems to solve, beginning with the fact that I can’t walk on this leg.”

“I’ll carry you again, then.”

“It’s miles back to the temple,” Sage points out. “Even dry, we’d fare only a little better in this storm than we did before.” As if to punctuate her words, a fierce gust of icy snow rattles like a palmful of bone dice against the windowpane.

“Perhaps if I go alone, I can move more quickly, and bring back help—”

“No,” Sage snaps, surprised by her own vehemence. “No,” she repeats more gently. “Even if you made your way there once the snow stopped, we’ve no idea what you’d find. Bramble might have lied and turned the party against us, told them we conspired to make off with the tooth together. And there’ll be Remy to contend with.”

Just sometimes, with an item this valuable, a client is willing to pay extra for…let’s call it an insurance policy.

She recalls Remy’s words on the temple steps. There wasn’t time to press him for an explanation before she set off after Araphi, but whatever he’d meant, it doesn’t bode well for them if he believes they’ve compromised his mission. She’d not send Araphi back to face him alone, no matter the bard’s skill for persuasion.

“Besides,” she continues, “Remy is still set on bringing the artifact to your aunt. Clearly, we can’t have that.”

“So we make our way alone?” Araphi guesses.