Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,48
other woman's hair swished faintly, signaling her own nod. “By the person I trusted most, loved most, in the world.”
Loved most…
Such an innocent turn of phrase, but the click as everything came together in Widdershins's head was so deafening, she was stunned it didn't bring the others running back into the room.
It explained so very, very much.
With infinite care—not only of her own physical wounds, but her friend's emotional ones—Shins turned and sat up, so she could meet Robin's eyes. She drew up the blanket, clutching it to her chest. Not out of any sense of modesty, not with Robin, but because doing otherwise would have felt as though she were making light of what she should have known years ago, but only just figured out.
“How long?” she asked softly.
Robin, to her credit, didn't even pretend not to understand. “The cliché would be to say since the day I met you. And I think that's partly true. But…for real, for certain? Since after Genevieve died.”
One hand still holding the sheet to her, Shins reached out with the other to cup her friend's cheek. Robin's sigh was almost a sob as she leaned into the touch, her eyes shut.
“I do love you, Robin. You know I do. It's just, I don't…it's not…”
“Not like that.” The younger woman's eyelids fluttered open, exposing brimming tears that she refused to shed. Taking Widdershins's hand in her own, she slowly removed it from her face. “I know.”
Widdershins was crying again, this time—since Robin would or could not—for both of them. “But you are my family, Robin. Is that…is that enough?”
She took the other woman's fierce embrace—one that threatened to knock her back off the bed and would probably have been a lot more pleasant without the many wounds—as a yes.
They stayed there for a while, Shins gazing absently at the room beyond Robin's shoulder. Guest chamber, probably. Heavy oak furniture, polished to an almost golden gleam; basin of shining silver; heavy-framed mirror on the wall. She found herself idly planning different ways of sneaking said basin and mirror from the room—not because she actually planned to steal anything, but as an exercise to calm her racing mind, make her emotions lie placid again.
“Besides,” Robin said mischievously, pulling back from the hug and rather shamefacedly wiping her nose on one sleeve, “I've drilled peepholes into all the bedrooms at the Witch, so wherever you end up staying will do for me.”
Something in the way Widdershins's jaw so limply dropped, nearly bouncing off the mattress and quite possibly wobbling around the room, sent the girl into absolute hysterics. Shins herself joined her a moment later, the both of them laughing until even the uninjured one began to hurt.
She'd been to one of her flats; she'd been to the Flippant Witch; she'd been to the Guild. Here, now, for the first time since she'd returned to Davillon, Widdershins felt like she might be home.
Several more hours of sleep, a few more treatments of Igraine's balm, a large helping of Olgun's magic, and the emotional weight of almost losing her best friend finally lifted from her shoulders, Widdershins felt like a new woman.
A new woman who had been built with some defective parts, perhaps, but new nonetheless.
The fact that she was freshly bathed, no longer caked with dried sweat and blood, and once more dressed in clothes neither stiff nor well on their way to becoming confetti didn't hurt her mood any, either. Robin had brought along a portion of the wardrobe Shins had left behind, so long ago. They weren't her “working leathers,” but the black trousers, forest-green vest, and deep-burgundy tunic were all dark enough, loose enough, and sturdy enough to make do.
Even if they did make her smell like the inside of a dusty drawer.
She stood, idly examining the portrait hanging above the (currently unused) fireplace, while the others drifted into the room behind her. Framed in gold filigree, it portrayed a somber, darkly dressed noblewoman in somber, darkly hued oils. She looked just similar enough to Evrard that she could have been of d'Arras blood—or she might have been an utter stranger, the painting provided as decoration by the Golden Sable itself. Who the steaming purple pits knew what sorts of luxuries the patrons of this place would expect? Even during the brief period of her life she'd spent with Alexandre Delacroix, when she'd truly been wealthy, she'd have avoided this sort of place like…well, if not like the plague, then at least a rash