When I took the Amazon oath, I believed I had made it impossible for any man to enslave me. Yet here I lie, bound in chains of my own making! What can I do? Oh, merciful Goddess, what shall I do?
By the time the sun rose, red and dripping behind the fog bank, she had fought her way to calm, and was able to discuss their impending departure serenely. “I must cut my hair; it has grown too long here.”
Peter came and passed his hand through the silky strands, long enough now to touch her shoulder blades. “Must you? It is so lovely.”
“Nothing in the oath binds me to it,” she admitted. “It is custom, no more; to show, when we work with men, that we do not seek to entice them with feminine wiles.”
He put his arms around her, and held her close. “Must we part, then, my precious? I know you are pledged not to marry, but-is there no way, no way at all that you can remain with me? I cannot bear to let you go. Do you truly want to leave me so soon?”
She said, through the pounding of her heart, “I can remain with you for a time as freemate, if you wish.”
“Jaelle, beloved, do you have to ask if I wish it?” He held her so tightly that he hurt her, but she almost welcomed the pain.
She thought sadly, Have I come to this?
“Don’t cut your hair,” he begged, caressing the locks at the nape of her neck, and she smiled and sighed.
“I will not.”
He did not know, and Jaelle would not tell him, that Free Amazons who elected to remain for a time as freemate to a lover did not cut their hair; by custom, close-cropped hair was a sign among them of commitment to solitude.
She was dressed and ready before him. Since they made a point of coming downstairs separately, she started down to the small breakfast room. The sun, flooding in brilliantly through the stone-arched windows, would at any other time have given her pleasure, after so many “dark days. Now it only meant the end of an interlude that could never come again. She might remain with Peter, but never again in such complete isolation, mutual self-absorption; the outside world would intrude, with other work, other commitments, and she grieved for the end of their brief honeymoon.
A hand on her wrist detained her; at a quick glance she thought that Peter had hurried after her, and smiled, but the smile slid off as she realized that the hand had six fingers, and simultaneously she recognized the voice of her cousin Kyril. So alike, so different. …
“Alone, chiya? Have you quarreled with your commoner lover? I should make a reasonable substitute to console you, should I not? Or did you turn to him because you so much regretted refusing me, when we were younger?”
She picked his hand off her arm as she would have removed a crawling insect. She said, “Cousin, we will all be leaving here very soon. For Rohana’s sake, let us try to remain friends, for this short time. I am sorry for all our quarrels when we were not much more than children; don’t torment me by bringing them up now that we are grown.”
Kyril pulled her against him, in a mockery of a kinsman’s embrace, and laid his cheek roughly against hers. “Nothing is farther from my mind than quarreling with you now, Jaelle.”
Shocked and angry, she removed herself from his arms. She said, almost in entreaty, “This is not worthy of you, Kyril. I am your kinswoman and your mother’s guest. Don’t force me to be rude to you!”
“And is your behavior so worthy?” he demanded, “when you put our whole family to shame with this bastard from nowhere?”
Jaelle struggled to keep her composure. “If he is truly a bastard of Ardais,” she said, “then the shame is in the misbehavior of his parents, and no fault to him. You were born Comyn, and legitimate, through no virtue in yourself. And as for my behavior-for the last time, Kyril, I owe you no account of my actions, nor any man living!”