Free Maythorn's Wish (The Fey Quartet Book 1) by Emily Larkin Page A

your face that made you beautiful; it was your heart.”
    The words silenced Maythorn. Her throat grew so tight she could barely breathe.
    “My mother guessed, when she came to live with me. She saw how I looked at you. She begged me on her death bed . . .” He paused, swallowed. “Begged a promise of me, not to offer for you, begged me to marry one of the village girls.”
    “Ren . . .” Maythorn reached out in the dark and found his face, laid a comforting hand on his cheek.
    “It’s not that she didn’t like you, it was just . . .”
    “I was a cripple, and older than you. No wife for a young man. If you had asked me, Ren . . . I would have had to refuse.”
    “No.” Ren shook his head.
    “Yes.” Maythorn laid her hand across his mouth, silencing him. “You deserved a wife who matched you, in youth and vigor and health. And that wasn’t me. But I did love you. That, I can promise you.”
    She didn’t remember Ren as a youth, but she remembered the man who’d come to take over the Dapple Bend forge. The young giant with more kindness and patience than any man she’d ever met.
    “How could I not love you once I came to know you?” Maythorn whispered. “How could any woman not love you? The kindest man in the vale. The best man in the vale.”
    Ren huffed a faint, almost soundless laugh against her hand. “There are better men than I.”
    “No. It’s not possible.” She lifted her hand, leaned closer, kissed him. “Haven’t you noticed how people respect you? How they listen when you speak? How they come to you when they’ve difficult decisions to make?”
    “The Lord Warde r— ”
    “You are as wise as Dappleward.”
    Ren opened his mouth to protest, and she kissed him again, softly, her lips clinging to his.
    Ren’s arms came around her. He gathered her close.
    The kisses they’d shared at the bridge and in the hayloft had been hungry; this kiss was quiet and tender. It spoke of love, years of silent, overflowing love.
    Time slowed. Their mouths slowed. They leaned into each other, holding each other, breathing each other’s breath. I love you. I will always love you.
    Faintly, far away, an owl hooted, and much closer, a hound scratched itself, grunting, tail thumping the ground.
    Ren pulled away from her, and shuffled sideways, changing his position, and said “Here,” and gathered her on his lap.
    Maythorn nestled into his arms, pillowing her cheek on his chest. His heart thumped beneath her ear. “How did you know I was me, and not my niece?” she whispered.
    Ren grunted a laugh. His breath stirred her hair, tickling. “Maythorn, have you never looked at yourself in a mirror? There is no one— no one —who has such a face as yours.” Callused fingertips gently touched her cheek. “I knew it had to be magic of some kind. But I was afraid . . . I wasn’t sure if you were still you, or if you’d altered inside in some way.”
    “Not altered. Just me as I always was.”
    “So I concluded.”
    “How?”
    “Tibald, first. You walked up to him without fear, and you knew exactly where to scratch him—which told me that you were you and not some other creature wearing your face.” Ren stroked her hair back from her temple. “And then there was Gavain . . . When you danced with him, when he fell asleep in your arms . . . I saw that you loved him—it was plain to see on your face—but it wasn’t a scant day’s worth of love, it was years’ worth, as if you’d treasured him from the moment he was born.”
    “I have. I always have.”
    All children were precious, but Gavain especially so. Maud had suffered three miscarriages before his birth, and two afterwards, the last taking her life.
    Poor Maud. So desperate to have children. And now dead. Maythorn closed her eyes. I will look after them both for you, Maud, she promised silently. I will love them as much as you did.
    They sat in silence for several minutes, Maythorn nestled in Ren’s lap, his hand