Except that Bek wasn’t a boy, as he had already noted days earlier. He was a man, grown up on this journey, changed so completely that he might be someone else altogether.
Even so, he could not quite believe what he was hearing. “When did this happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re sure?”
She didn’t bother to answer, but he saw her shoulders lift slightly as if to shrug the question away.
“You don’t seem suited to each other,” he continued, and knew at once that he had made a mistake. Her gaze shifted instantly, her eyes boring into him with unmistakable antagonism. “Don’t get mad at me,” he said quickly. “I’m just telling you what I see.”
“You don’t know who’s suited to me, big brother,” she said quietly, her gaze shifting back to the witch. “You never have.”
He nodded, accepting the rebuke. He sat down now, needing to talk about this, thinking it might take a while, and having no idea what he was going to say. Or should. “I thought what Hawk thought—that you were never going to settle on anyone, that you couldn’t stand it.”
“Well, you were wrong.”
“It just seems that your lives are so different. If you hadn’t been thrown together on this voyage, your paths would never have crossed. Have you thought about what’s going to happen when you get home?”
“If I get home.”
“You will. Then Bek will go back to the Highlands and you’ll go back to being a Rover.”
She exhaled sharply, let go of Grianne Ohmsford’s hands, and turned to face him. “We’d better get past this right now. I told you how I feel about Bek. This is new to me, so I’m still finding out what it means. I’m trying not to think too far ahead. But here is what I do know. I’m sick of my life. I’ve been sick of it for a long time. I didn’t like it on the Prekkendorran, and I haven’t cared much for it since. I thought that coming on this voyage, getting far away from everything I knew, would change things. It hasn’t. I feel like I’ve been wandering around all these years and not getting anywhere. I want something different. I’m willing to take a look at Bek to see if he can give it to me.”
Redden Alt Mer held her gaze. “You’re putting a lot on him, aren’t you?”
“I’m not putting anything on him. I’m carrying this burden all by myself. He loves me, too, Redden. He loves me in a way no one ever has. Not for how I look or what I can do or what he imagines me to be. It goes deeper than that. It touches on connections that words can’t express and don’t have to. It makes a difference when someone loves you like that. I like it enough that I don’t want to throw it away without taking time to see where it leads.”
She eased herself into a different position, her physical discomfort apparent, still sore from her wounds, still nursing her injuries. “I wanted to kill the Ilse Witch,” she said. “I had every intention of doing so the moment I got the chance. I thought I owed that much to Hawk. But I can’t do it now. Not while Bek believes she might wake up and be his sister again. Not after all he has done to protect her and care for her and give her a chance at being well. I don’t have that right, not even to make myself feel good again about losing Hawk.
“So I’ve decided to try to do what Bek can’t. I’ve decided to try to reach her, to see where she is and what she hides from, to try to understand what she’s feeling. I’ve decided to let her know someone else cares what happens to her. Maybe I can. But even if I can’t, I have to try. Because that’s what loving someone requires of you— giving yourself to something they believe in, even when you don’t. That’s what I want to do for Bek. That’s how I feel about him.”
She turned back to Grianne Ohmsford, lifted the girl’s hands in her own, and held them anew. “I keep thinking that if I can help her, maybe I can help myself. I’m as lost as she is. If I can find her, maybe I can find myself. Through Bek. Through feeling something for him.” She leaned forward again, her face so close to Grianne’s that she might have been thinking of kissing her. “I keep thinking that it’s possible.”