Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,36

she had been still…to the very end.

Chapter Fourteen

Time, Dorovan found, didn’t ease the pain of losing a bond, any bond. Delae. Gone she might be - his visits to her and her homestead at an end but he still talked to her, to Delae, feeling her bright spirit alive around him. He knew she’d moved on, passed into the Summerlands but still he talked to her. After so long with her, he didn’t know how to be without her. The bond was broken and there was an emptiness where she once had been.

The loneliness was nearly crushing. Having not felt it for so long and then having it return was nearly more than he could bear.

Especially in these days.

They were beset. Every Enclave faced creatures from the borderland in such numbers as no one could in memory recall ever having faced before.

He rode to exhaustion and fought the same way.

So, he talked to her in his thoughts.

There were those in the Enclave who sensed through the empathy that he was in pain and tried to ease it but he could speak to none of them. There would be too many questions. Some wouldn’t understand - he couldn’t tell them he’d loved her, had loved Delae, one of the race of men. That she’d been a friend-of-his-heart, a true bond and he’d lost her.

In the darkest hours, sometimes though - there is occasionally a light. Her name was Marantha, a Hunter from Alatheriann come to aid them. Something about her lightened him and eased his heart, something that called to him, although he resisted it until one night he dreamed.

Delae looked at him with exasperation and love. “Isn’t this what you waited for so long? Would you deny yourself what you gave me, all those years? This is what I wished for you. I love you, I will always love you. But she will love you, Dorovan, always, as I could not and cannot. Go to her, Dorovan. Go on…”

Pain, grief and sorrow pierced him sharply, the loneliness nearly unbearable. The dream shook him out of sleep, drew him to his feet and sent him questing.

He found Marantha by one of the pools, clearly as unable to sleep as he. She turned to look at him.

In the way of their people she was beautiful to him, her spirit warm. Her hair, as dark and as glossy as a raven’s wing, ran as straight as a waterfall down her back and shoulders. Her eyes were large and beautiful, as green as new leaves, her skin tawny. She was tall, nearly of a height with him. She could lay her head on his shoulder.

“There is no one else I have spoken to of this but I had a friend-of-my-heart,” Dorovan said abruptly, without preamble. “She was a woman of men. I have never known anyone with so much courage. I lost her.”

If Marantha was his soul-bond, she would understand.

“How long?” Marantha asked, feeling the open wound within him, holding out her hand.

The grief in his eyes tore at her, the pain in him so deep. His words surprised her and the content more, but that loss explained so much.

“Months,” he said, “as men measure it.”

Shocked, pained, she whispered, “Oh, Dorovan.”

That was too long for any to bear such pain alone.

He looked into her emerald eyes as their hands touched, heard the words Marantha offered him and knew this time he could say them. He could speak the truth.

“Tell me,” Marantha said.

And so he did. He told her of Delae, of her fierce courage, of her bright spirit, of her deep and abiding love, of sweet Selah and of Ailith.

When he was finished he looked at her, emptied, and felt his heart at ease for the first time in what seemed an age.

“I hadn’t magic enough to save her,” he said, “there should have been some way.”

Marantha’s fingers slipped between his, in the way of their people, to share his grief and sorrow, to give ease - as Delae had done once long ago, all unknowing. Marantha’s eyes were luminous in the darkness.

In wonder, he reached out to touch her face, seeing strength in her eyes, purpose, joy and more than a touch of courage - to have not fled in the face of what he’d said. He’d loved a woman of man…in the face of all the proscriptions against it. Somewhere in the Summerlands, he knew Delae watched. Her courage had carried to her granddaughter…and that child was the stuff of which legends